6 December 2021
The weather certainly wasn’t the best for walking as I travelled from Exeter along the A38 to Ivybridge and then to the large National Trust car park near Cadover Bridge. My windscreen wipers had been on almost continuously all the way. The breakfast team on Radio Devon had been talking about walking and ironically Gordon had said that it wasn’t a day to be out on the moors. However, after a journey of over an hour to this part of Dartmoor, I certainly wasn’t planning to give up on my planned walk.
There was only a single car apart from mine and I pulled on all my wet weather gear before stepping outside. Soon I was trudging down the road and noted the sodden and miserable looking ponies by the bridge. I turned off on a path heading up towards Wigford Down. Almost immediately I spotted the restored Cadover Cross.
Within a few minutes, I was delighted to see the cloud starting to rise and some more open views opening up to the east across Dartmoor. The rain had stopped so I didn’t need all those waterproofs – anyway it felt warm and I was getting far too hot as I climbed the hill.
Dewerstone Rock soon came into view. As I arrived, I had the tor to myself. There were a few carvings on the rock including a memorial to the poet, Nicholas Thomas Carrington who wrote, amongst others, two long poems: “The Banks of the Tamar” and “Dartmoor”. As I was leaving, two walkers approached from the opposite direction – clearly the earlier weather wasn’t bad enough for others to be put off and for me to be the only moorland walker.
I descended through the woods, taking a wrong turning and ending up by a ruined cable house at the top of an old tramway used to transport granite. I descended further using the tramway as a path and eventually arrived on the banks of the Plym close to its confluence with the River Meavy and a footbridge near the Shaugh bridge.
I walked through the car park, where there are old china clay kilns and then ascended an initially steep path to Shaugh Prior. I reached the road and walked through the village passing two crosses as well as the village church and the pub – not yet open.
I turned off the main village road to ascend further on a narrow lane and then crossed a wider road on to the moor. I was heading for the trig point at Saddlesborough Hill, from where there are views of old china clay workings. This industrial landscape was to be a prominent feature of the rest of my walk.
I made for Hawks Tor, arriving just after the start of a squally hail shower which led to me rapidly pulling on waterproofs. A couple of walkers were already sheltering under an overhanging rock. However there was blue sky and it didn’t take long for the hail to stop.
I headed on to the more spread out stones of Collard Tor and then descended, almost reaching the road at Wotter. I followed a track and path to Blackalder Tor.
I crossed the side road to Lee Moor and then the “main” road, following a path at the side of the road before turning off and discovering Whitehill Tor.
I seemed to be in the grounds of a china clay works but managed to get through and out the other side on to open moor. Soon I was ascending again to a vantage point at Crownhill Tor.
A path and track led me off the moor to the road at Tolchmoor Gate. I followed a bridle path between two china clay quarries. It seemed to peter out to nothing and then I found myself on a good track. I was stopped and challenged by a man in a quarry owned van but explained where I was heading. He told me that I would encounter quarry vehicles but actually what he said made little sense as when I offered to use a different route he told me that’s where ALL the big quarry trucks were. I suggested that if I went the way I had originally intended then I would be well past the area by the time the trucks drove up. Indeed I was as I didn’t see any further quarry vehicles.
However, it was difficult to find a way out of the quarry area and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it. It just looked like a reasonable route on the map with what seemed to be a connecting track between two rights of way. The whole escapade wasn’t helped by another extremely heavy hail shower, which sent the touchscreen on my Satmap berserk.
Having eventually managed to escape from the quarry area, I reached the restored Blackaton Cross. The short, sharp storm had passed over. From there it was an easy walk on a track / minor road back to Cadover bridge, which I reached just before dusk. The ponies were still there although looking somewhat less bedraggled than in the morning. There were even a few more cars in the car park.
I managed to find a further seven tors / hills from the list so that brings my total to 200. However only 199 are legal as one was on private property. One more to go to reach the official magic double century!
Where's Kathryn? 