Dartmoor 365: Legis Tor [S7]

A couple of years ago I purchased the book Dartmoor 365 by John Hayward, which promotes the beauty and wonder of Dartmoor National Park. The premise is simple enough:

‘The National Park originally comprised 365 square miles, and in this work every one has been visited in order to record in word and illustration at least one item of interest in every square mile.

Whenever you are within the Park boundary you will be able to plan excursions of an hour, a half day, or a full day, to find the items suggested, and indeed many more as well…

…There is no other book that covers the moor in such a methodical way. Besides the expected pages about hills and rivers, fords and bridges, tors and crosses, topics such as plant lore, village life, legends, letterboxes, architecture and archaeology, all find a prominent place.’

In the time since buying the book I have shaded in a very modest number of 36 squares, meaning that I still have more than 300 still to go. Previous posts outlining walks to some of these squares can be found by clicking here (these posts include Pixie’s Cross, Cuckoo Rock, Hingston Stone Circle, and Windy Post). Although I continued to visit squares last summer in 2022 (mostly in the triangle that stretches from Tavistock to Princetown to Yelverton), I failed to upload to the blog due to my writing drought of that period.

However, I was given a jolt of energy to continue the Dartmoor 365 odyssey after watching an episode from the excellent YouTube series The Dartmoor Podcast in which George – the Dartmoor podcaster – set out on a day’s binge to find 14 different squares (much beyond my record, which I think stands at 3). Also, I now had time on my hand with the academic year finishing, granting me lots of opportunity to head out to Dartmoor and explore once more.

I was probably a tad ambitious, hoping to visit four or five squares, but as it turned out I could shade in two new squares after the day was done. I spent a couple of hours tackling with bracken and getting lost whilst walking up the river Plym, spotting Ditsworthy Warren House in the distance (I will head back for a proper inspection of S8 in the future), before then heading back westwards to Legis Tor (S7 on the map).

Dartmoor 365‘s description of Legis Tor focuses on rabbit warrens, which doesn’t do this location justice. Maybe it was the ominous dark clouds circling, but it seemed to me that Legis Tor offers a spectacular vista (which hopefully my photographs provide some idea of).

So, S7 gets me up and running for the summer. The mission is to reach a more respectable number of Dartmoor 365 squares before I return to college in September.