A tale of two walks..

We've done two walks in the past week in the same general area of Dartmoor - on the western side, quite close to Burrator reservoir. In both cases, the nominal distance was "about 6 miles", according to our leader for the day, and in both cases the actual distance was more like 8 miles. Nothing new there! I thought I'd mention a few things that might not have featured in previous posts and which interest me.

For those who like maps, here is a clip of our routes taken from the relevant OS sheet. After using Romanian maps recently, my admiration for the detail and accuracy of our OS maps has been renewed.

Walk 1: 11th September 2014
This one started well into the moor at the car park in the lee of Gutter Tor and close to the 'scout hut', which was being used by a large number of young army recruits doing young army type things. From there we headed across Ringmoor Down to Brisworthy (War Horse country apparently) and then followed the Plym River up to Ditsworthy Warren. Our route continued across Ditsworthy Down to visit some impressive stone rows and hence back to our starting point. Excellent weather and views all the way around.  

Keen eyes will discern the rectangular shape of a mediaeval long-house, traced out by the dots. The smaller dots indicate the position of the cross passage that separated the animal quarters (hatched) from the living quarters. The solid line shows that the living quarters of this one were, rather unusually divided into two rooms. These houses were always built on a slope so that the animal quarters were lower down so that the muck etc could drain away easily.

This part of the moor was used for many centuries as a place where rabbits were farmed in large artificial warrens. Here's a good one on the hill opposite. Good soil was heaped up into a large mound, perhaps 3 - 4 foot high, with a drainage ditch around it. Always on a hill so that drainage was never a problem, they were located well away from crops and the isolated reaches of Dartmoor was just the place for them. Also the rocky nature of Dartmoor meant that burrowing rabbits were pretty much restricted to the soil of the mound or warren. The practice lasted from the 1300s through to the early 1900s.

Can you guess what we are looking at?  No? It's a vermin trap. Stoats and weasels were voracious predators of the rabbits in the warrens and they had to be controlled somehow. I'm not sure how effective these traps were in reality but they are fun to come across and interpret. They worked like this.....

Stoats and weasels do not like running across open ground and will follow walls when they can. The warreners made use of this by shaping walls so that they funnelled into a channel. I've traced this on the photograph.

Once in the channel, which would have had a cover of some sort, the beast triggered a trap which came down and kept it in the channel, and available for future dispatch. No-one really knows what the trap mechanism was like but you can see that the granite was grooved to accommodate it.

This squarish looking structure is a wind strew, built on a (very) breezy promontory. Harvested grain would be thrown from the top of the wind strew for wind to blow away the chaff, hence sorting the wheat from the chaff. There are just a handful remaining on Dartmoor and all attest to the agricultural practices of several centuries ago.

Probably as good a Bronze Age burial cyst as you'll come across anywhere. The chamber is clearly visible and the cap stone is propped up to the right. In their original form, they would have been completely covered in soil and would have formed a distinct mound.

Walk 2: 18th September 2014
The weather was variable on this walk, fine most of the way but with one short-lived but heavy downpour about half way around. Long enough for us to get our wet kit out but, as soon as we'd put it on, it stopped. We began just outside of Sheepstor village and skirted Burrator Reservoir through the woods to Norsworthy Bridge. Then it was up the track and across a stretch of open moor to Crazy Well Pool. Heading roughly south-west we headed towards Down Tor and Cuckoo Rock, before descending into the Deanscombe Valley and its long abandoned farms. Our last segment took us across Yellowmead Down, contouring around Sheeps Tor and back to the cars. Another good day out.

An example of sustainable transport? We didn't see any so couldn't check the accuracy of this sign.

I don't think I'll ever lose my amazement over how much of today's Dartmoor landscape is the result of many centuries of mining. Take this view: the valley bottom has been scoured, pitted, flattened, lumped and bumped by tin workings. At one time, so much silt was being produced and washed down into the sea at Plymouth that the navy complained about the need to continually dredge clear passages for their ships from the harbour into the English Channel. An early example of unintended consequences?

Part 37 of my occasional series on isolated Dartmoor trees. Autumn is coming and the leaves have gone. Although in this particular spot, the leaves are just have likely to have been stripped off by the wind as by biology.