The moors

Duncan: A curse on Moors and Saracens! If it were not for their ungodly ways, Master Robin would never have left. What manner of name is "Azeem"? Irish? Cornish?
Azeem: Moorish.

Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves (1991)

When teaching my students about England, 3 things always seemed to interest them the most. They didn’t really care about the famous architecture, and if I even dared to mention history they would all fall asleep almost instantaneously. They even got bored of Stonehenge when they found out that people weren’t sacrificed there. However, the 3 things that were always guaranteed to illicit interest were
- The England football team
- The fact that, in an average year, rainfall will be recorded on around 300 days (you should see the sheer horror on their faces).
- And finally that England doesn’t have any mountains.
This sort of information seems unbelievable to a 10 year old who has grown up in a country dominated by mountains (as Korea is), and whose grandparents probably spend most of their free-time climbing up these mountains to taste the fresh air, get roaringly drunk, and then stagger back down again. They can’t fathom it, so naturally ask to see pictures of this fantastical flat land and want to know where English grandparents go hiking. Not wanting to confuse them any more by telling them that people don’t really go hiking in England, I say ‘The moors’. ‘The moors, the moors?’ comes the confused echo. They don’t know this word. Their home room teacher begins to look worried. I tell them I don’t know the Korean translation. 30 expectant faces turn to their home room teacher who was just at that moment trying to sneak out of the door. She doesn’t stop. So, we turn to the dictionaries which of course only contain North American English. The word moorland isn’t there. I promise to find out for next lesson, and we carry on with the lesson. As we finish the class, the home room teacher reappears and asks, ‘English people go hiking in North Africa?’

The moors I refer to in this post are not to be confused with the curved-sword toting, Muslim North Africans of yesteryear. Nor is it some new psychological disorder invented to make excuses as to why rates of obesity in England have skyrocketed. In fact, the moors I am referring to are those vast, bleak, windswept, rain-sodden, peat covered upland areas found over large parts of the UK. In particular, the moor on which I’ve found myself trudging around on rather frequently in the past few months - Dartmoor.
As anyone who looks on Wikipedia will be able to tell you, Dartmoor covers a huge chunk of central Devon, about 950 square kilometers. Being a moor, it is characterised by its steep rolling hills that reach a modest 621m at High Willhays, although most of the moor lies at around 300m. Most of these hills are topped with what seemed like random piles of grey boulders. These piles are actually where the underground granite has been exposed by weathering and the resulting landforms are known as tors. These tors are found all over the moor and are often focal points for day trippers as well as serious hikers ‘tor-bagging’. The tors are also the focus of the Ten Tors race held each spring.
England is well known for its awful weather, but Dartmoor can be truly horrendous. Due to its elevation, any rain bearing cloud that crosses the region is soon induced to unburden its load all over the moor. A lot of rain bearing cloud crosses England. This means that even in summer any hiker would be well advised to carry waterproofs and emergency shelter. I’ve been walking myself on what seemed like a calm, clear day in summer when suddenly a huge bank of cloud has blown in off the English Channel, reduced visibility to zero and given us a good account of its precipatory properties. Fortunately I had a raincoat. Megan didn’t.
All this rain means that the high moor is almost always completely waterlogged. The tops of the hills are dry in places, but away from the ridge the grass covers a thick layer of peat punctuated with marsh, mire and bog. This means that when walking you need to be prepared for soggy feet. You will mess up at some stage and put your foot through what looked like a patch of firm green moss, but in fact turns out to be a shallow pool of bog water sitting over thick sucking bog. After rain the whole hill side turns into a patchwork of streams as the surface water cannot penetrate the already saturated peat. Any track quickly turns into a brook.
Due to this excess of water and peat growth, trees are almost completely absent from the high moor, grasses and ferns being the most abundant vegetation. This means the moor is perfect for the wild ponies that populate it. The moor is also home to a huge number of sheep and cows. The sheep are often quite comical, as in their desperation to flee any passing hiker they can find them self stuck on one side of a river, while the rest of the flock is on the other. Unable to find a suitable fording point they often leap lemming style off the bank into the rushing water and get swept downstream. Much panicked baaaing later it extricates itself at a shallower point. The cows are a different kettle of fish. I believe Dartmoor cows are the stupidest, but scariest cows in the world. When you approach they all instantly stop eating and let their jaws hang open. They turn their heads to look at you with that empty eyed herbivore stare, with their mouths hanging open. And they all just watch you in complete silence as you walk past, their heads turning to follow you as you pass. Such is the vacantness in their eyes though you can never tell if they will suddenly snap and decide to eviscerate you with their horns. These animals also have tendency to carry on eating throughout the night and can cause mild panic in any half asleep camper when they stand next to his tent farting and ripping mouthfuls of grass and tent peg out of the floor.
So doesn’t sound particularly appealing? Well, that’s where you would be wrong. There is something very special about the stark, desolate landscape of the open moor. It’s almost alien in its emptiness. When hiking out on the high moor you are in a true wilderness. You can see for miles (when the rain stops) and see no other person or animal, just the wind blowing through the tall grass. You can feel truly isolated and alone surrounded by nothing under a huge threatening sky. You are in a place that still truly belongs to nature. You feel truly alive battling across the thick sucking mud, leaping across streams, dodging snakes while desperately trying to differentiate the path from a brook, spotting what’s bog and looking for a dry place to camp before that huge rain cloud on the horizon gets to you. And when you do manage to hump it up to one of the tors, the views can be truly breathtaking. The change in landscape down from the browns of the high moor to the verdant greens of the valleys is fantastic. These hillsides are highlighted with a glittering latticework of streams and rivers that empty down into valleys that contain quintessential English villages with their stone wall cottages, medieval churches and traditional ale serving public houses.
Besides the beauty of the landscape the moor is also full of other things to see. It is one of the most archaeologically fascinating places in England with stone circles, standing stones and prehistoric settlements covering the higher ground, remnants of a less English climatic phase. Grimspound in particular is a huge, well preserved settlement enclosure from the later Bronze Age.
This long history of inhabitation has lead to some fantastic stories and folklore being associated with the moor. This ranges from ‘The hairy hand of Dartmoor’ - a disembodied hand that took control of peoples’ steering wheels on a stretch of road near Postbridge, causing them to swerve off the road - to modern tales of panthers and other big cats prowling the more remote locations. The place is truly fascinating with seemingly every village having its own ghost story.
Hiking the moor couldn’t be easier. You just need to pick up a Dartmoor OS map; a pair of hiking boots and a raincoat and you’re off. Easy hikes can be made from Tavistock, Plymouth and Okehampton. Whilst longer two or three day treks are possible following well established trails like the Abbot’s Way from Buckfastleigh or the Two Moor Way from Tavistock. You don’t need a guide and most of the moor is open access, although you do need to check if the part of the moor belonging to the MOD is open to walkers on certain days. If you see red flags flying then it’s a safe bet that you might get hit with howitzer rounds if you keep on walking.
It is a constant source of irritation to me that the residents of the south west don’t make enough of this pristine environment. We pay so much to go and see so many places around the world, yet I am of the opinion that few places can match the desolate beauty of Dartmoor. If you are visiting Devon, get out of the decidedly predictable towns and off onto the winding lanes of the moors.

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