Swimming in Dartmoor

Not content with walking a full week, we left Wales and headed south to Dartmoor national park for a weekend of hiking in the moors.

Unfortunately, the weather conspired against us (finally!).  Overnight, the world turned into a raging torrent, and driving rains made the visibility nil.  While we were happy to walk in the rain, a raging storm was another story.  Dartmoor can be featureless, and it would be quite easy to get lost on the open moors once the fog rolls in.  

It started to clear, so we hopped in the car and drove to a nearby trailhead, passing raging rivers and washed-out roads and super puddles of hydroplane goodness.  By the time we got there, we were once again in the thick of it.  We napped in the car for a bit, then decided to take drastic action.  

We cozied up in the Warren House Inn, feasting on delectable rabbit pies and scrumpy, a hard apple cidre drink that was quite strong and warming.  Usually, we save the big meal for a victory post-hike splurge, but with nothing much to do, we decided to go for it.  

The Warren House is the best kind of pub: remote, ancient, low-ceilinged, roaring fireplaces, and a creepy poster in the women's toilet.

We stopped by one of the National Park Centres after our warming lunch.  The ranger was friendly and talkative and knowledgeable, and told us which hikes would be off limits as the streams were way too high to make crossings feasible.  He recommended a walk that was mostly in the forest up to Bellever Tor.  We got ambitious and turned it into a 5 mile loop. 

The tors here are iconic- large, free-standing rock stacks on the tops of an otherwise smooth hill.  

It was wet, and blowing.  These people were taking shelter in the tor, trying to eat lunch.  

But a place like Dartmoor is almost best enjoyed in bad weather.  It lends a certain sense of doom and gloom that you just can't get on a sunny day.  Even with my feet squishing inside my boots with every step, I was content to soldier on.

We continued on to Laughter Tor, then back to the car park through the moors and woods.

What is most remarkable about Dartmoor is how much stuff there is here, hidden in plain site.  Standing stones, hut circles, villages, stone circles, cairns, pillow mounds and mines dot the OS maps with so much information that it is difficult to get to point A to point B without wandering off to explore.  The helpful ranger had pointed out a few good ones to check out on the maps- entire villages of bronze-age settlements are still found, completely free for you to explore if you are so inclined.  Not one of them is signposted...the ranger said that "If we signposted one, we'd have to signpost them all,  we'd have nothing but signpost marring the moors".  So with a map and a compass, you can find all sorts.  This apparently was a very high-demand real estate area back in the day.  

 We hiked until dark, and then headed back to dry off and warm up- we got soaked even with waterproofs with the wind driving the rain, but we stayed relatively comfortable as long as we kept moving, and we were thankful anytime we were in the trees and a bit out of the wind.

The next day, we had less rain, but the fog was thick and eerie.

We left our tiny, warm cottage and headed back up into the moors.  Despite multiple changes of newspaper and leaving them in front of the radiator all night, the boots were still damp, so the socks were doubled.

We left the car park and started headed up to Hookney Tor, with thick fog rolling in.

Bennet's cross

Looking back, we could see the Warren House pub....

And then a few minutes later, we could not....

 From Hookney Tor, you can look across to Hameldown Tor, but snuggled in the little valley is something remarkable:

Grimspound.

A prehistoric farming village, complete with 24 stone huts inside a stone wall.  

 A very pregnant pony....

The ponies running wild on the moor are a bit more refined and pretty than the ones in Wales and Cornwall, and they have their own breed registry.

Soon, we were back in the thick fog on Hamel Down, with a skewed sense of direction.  The ravens, also blind to their environment, were flying low and letting out loud grawks, mysteriously appearing and then fading back into the thick fog.  

The subtle colors were making me swoon- tiny closed buds of heather, juniper and wintertime grasses.

This, I loved:

In the middle of the moor, Warren House gets its own signpost.  It was a sign from above: after 8 miles, we were ready to turn back and get one more rabbit pie before heading back to London.

We did get distracted though:

A row of orderly standing stones, laid out by some ancient tribe.

Once again, Dartmoor revealed itself as the kind of place that I'd want to go back to.  There's so much to see and explore, you could entertain yourself for ages.

We did have a really nice parting pie and scrumpy, then hopped into the car and drove back to London.  I couldn't ask for a more amazing winter hiking week.

Breaking it Gently to My Inner Druid

I read a rather hilarious article in the New Yorker a couple weeks ago regarding Stonehenge.  There's a paywall, but here's the intro if you are interested.  Anyway, she talks about how various spiritual groups who call themselves Druids have adapted Stonehenge as their own, and there's really no basis for this as Druidism as we know it is a Victorian-era invention.  Seriously!  The idea that the Druids created Stonehenge has been debunked a thousand times over, but this is the temple of their choice anyway.

What is this place?  A bronze age calender of sorts, a gathering spot, a grave yard.  This area of the Salisbury Plains is filled with ancient henges and circles and burial mounds, and evidence of great feasts in the area remain.  None of these are more iconic and recognizable and hold the mystique as Stonehenge.  It is somewhat magic, no matter what you choose to believe in.

They've changed the site around a few times recently- they have tried to keep this area free of development, despite having a highway going right past it.  A brand-new visitor center and a car park is about a mile from the site, with a countryside walk or a bus ride in store for those who want to see the henge.  Saying that, to actually get here from London takes a bit of work.  It's easiest by car as the nearest train station is about five miles off.  The only other way to get here is, sigh, joining a tour.

I'm sad to say that this is what I ended up doing- I hate tours, and I am loathe to join one, but in this case it was the cheapest and easiest option.  It also gets you expedited admission into the site (which can be quite a long line) and a really useful audio guide.  Still, it was a tour, and we were only allowed an hour and a half at the site, and I could have done another hour or two easily, and the flexibility to be here early or late in the day for better lighting would have been nice.

I did take roughly seven million pictures: the sky was brilliantly blue that morning, and I couldn't help myself.  I wish to come back in late afternoon to capture more shadows, and I think bringing a drone to fly around and get a nice view would be a brilliant idea.

Anyway, it was a lovely spring day.  Seeing Stonehenge was amazing, and I'm glad I did it.

Set outside the circle is the Heelstone, a great chunk of rock that the sun rises directly over during the solstices.  The arrow on the ground next to it points to the "avenue", a depression in the earth which was used as the pathway to access the monument by the ancients.



Unless you are here for an Equinox or a Solstice, you are confined to a pathway well outside of the circle.  Damage to the stones is the biggest concern- graffiti and people walking and climbing them has done a bit of damage over the years.   A few of the stones have fallen, some have been reinforced with concrete at the bases, and a few more have been righted.  Preservation at sites like these can be tricky.

The path swings you around wide, so you get good views of the surrounding countryside and chalky hills and mounds around the monument.

It's quite funny- the highway that runs by gives motorist a nice view of the site, so everyone is rubbernecking it and creating a 20-minute traffic jam as they drive by.

 You can also see a shallow bank and ditch circling the stones- this is the "henge", the original monument that was built thousands of years before the stones were erected here.  This site had been sacred for eons.

That's the heelstone way over to the right:

As you walked along the path, you got to see it a bit closer, and the inner circle of smaller stones appear.  Despite not being able to get kissing-close the the site, it was impressive regardless.  The stones, even from afar, are enormous, and the engineering required to place the stones on top of the standing stones must have taken immense energy.  The stones themselves were brought in from a quarry at least 25 miles away.

The general flatness of the Salisbury Plain contributed to this most impressive  collection of rocks.

The brilliant yellow in the nearby fields is rapeseed, the seed they make canola oil out of.  It is really in bloom right now, illuminating the landscape with brilliant mustard colors as more and more of it gets planted to feed the bio-fuel industry.

Colonies of rooks were on the prowl looking for easy meals.

I also spotted a kestrel, hunting mice in the field next to the monument.

You can walk back the mile to the car park via a chalky path through the sheep fields, across more burial mounds.  The visitors center is brand new and quite modern, with a recreated bronze age villa out front and artifacts and skeletons that have been found in the pits around Stonehenge.  Regrettably, I didn't really get a chance to see much of it as the tight schedule the tourmaster had given us.  He was serious about it too:  ten minutes after our scheduled departure time, he gave to order to leave despite the headcount was seven people less than what we started with.  I guess some people were really taken in by it all.  

I'm trying to figure out a good time to go back, as there are three other henges and sites close by that are much less visited and controlled, and free to see- Avebury, Woodhenge and Durrington Walls.  All slightly less than iconic, but if you are nerdily happy to visit circles and stones and posts into the ground left by the ancients, this area is pretty much your zen place.