travel

Walking the Moors

Doug Mahugh

07 Jan 2025 • 26 min read

Trekking in Dartmoor National Park

This is a post that originally appeared on my old website in August 2014. It's one of the posts that was too large or complicated to be migrated to my new blog platform in 2018, and I'm steadily (well, erratically) migrating those old posts manually so that they'll be on the blog going forward. I've edited it down to fit the new platform.

For two years Megan and I have been planning a vacation around walking the moors, and like any long-anticipated vacation it seemed forever in coming, and then it was over in an instant.

A Dartmoor ordnance survey map hung on our wall for several months before the trip, and we spent many evenings studying it and discussing the details of our planned route.

Jamie and Alice took us on many training treks to prepare for Dartmoor, including several 15-20 milers and one day of 28 miles.

London - August 4/5

We left Seattle on Saturday 8/3, flying to Atlanta and then on to London, where we arrived on Sunday 8/4.

Snapshots while sightseeing in London. We stayed in the Bayswater neighborhood and took long walks from there.

We were in London for Megan's birthday, and we went out for a drink at the bar of the Landmark London Hotel, which is renowned for its 5-star service. I mentioned to the doorman that we were there for Megan's birthday, and moments after we sat down the water brought us complimentary champagne and snacks, and discreetly said "happy birthday, Madame." That's how you get a reputation like theirs!

Bovey Tracey - August 6

This day was about getting in position to start the trek: a train ride from London to Exeter, then a taxi to the Riverside Inn in the village of Bovey Tracey.

Megan at Paddington Station. It felt like this is where the trek began.

En route from London to Exeter. Nice to have our friends Tom, Lizzie, and Nora sending photos of the dogs back home.

Our destination (Bovey Tracey) was 16 miles beyond Exeter, but we decided to check out a bit of Exeter while we were passing through. We visited the Cavern, a longstanding punk/alternative underground club.

Our destination for the day: the Riverside Inn in Bovey Tracey.

Sunset at Haytor

The iconic image of Dartmoor National Park is a tor – an outcropping of granite boulders at the top of a hill – and the best-known of all of Dartmoor’s 100+ tors is Haytor. We had planned to start our hiking at Haytor the following day, but conditions seemed ripe for a good sunset so we took a taxi out to Haytor just before sunset and then walked the 4 miles back to town after dark. This spontaneous decision proved to be a good one, as that evening turned out to be the only colorful sunset of our entire trip.

From the parking area we walked a few hundred feet up a steep trail to the rocks of Haytor. Sheep grazed nearby and there were cows below us in the valley.

Haytor! I had seen many photos of this place during our trip planning, and it was exciting to finally be there. A few people were hanging around and waiting for the sunset.

We started out on a trail back into town, but after it got dark we decided to walk along the main road. This was our first experience of walking a narrow Dartmoor road with no sidewalks, and the only time we walked one after dark. Back at the hotel, we had a nightcap in the bar.

Buckfastleigh - August 7

After packing, stretching, and a Full English breakfast at the Riverside inn in Bovey Tracey, we took a taxi back to Haytor to begin our Dartmoor trek.

Before leaving Haytor, we climbed to the top to check out the view.

After leaving Haytor, we were alone on the trail for a couple of miles down past Ten Commandments Tor.

We passed a few other hikers on the trail, human and canine.

It was late in the summer, but the heather and gorse was still blooming.

We used these ancient stone markers for navigation. They're all marked on the Dartmoor ordnance survey map.

Stopping for lunch on a hill near the village of Ashburton.

By mid-afternoon we had arrived in Buckfastleigh, and we stopped for a cider at the first pub we saw.

Buckfast is a small village on the River Dart, and home to Buckfast Abbey, which will celebrate its 1000 year anniversary in 2018. It’s a picturesque setting, and the Abbey Inn where we stayed has great places to sit outdoors along the river. We somehow managed to score the only room with bay windows overlooking the river, a nice touch.

Buckfastleigh is known in Scotland as the home of buckfast tonic wine, the preferred drink of young soccer hooligans. I wanted to try some, but a local bartender explained to me that it's not actually available in Buckfastleigh any longer, and is now brewed and distributed by a company in Northern Ireland.

Ivybridge - August 8

We took a quick tour of Buckfast Abbey before leaving. It's the oldest Abbey in the UK, founded in 1018.

Leaving Buckfastleigh and its many pets.

The walk through Buckfastleigh was nice, but after that it was going to be several miles walking along a busy road, so we decided to catch a taxi to Ivybridge so that we could spend an evening walk up into the countryside on Two Moors Way instead.

Sportsmans Inn in Ivybridge, our home for the next two nights.

An evening walk through Ivybridge along the River Erme and up Two Moors Way.

From the top of the hill near Ivybridge we could see glimpses of the English Channel a few miles to the south.

A cider nightcap back at Sportsmans Inn.

Ivybridge and Two Moors Way - August 9

This was planned to be a rest day in Ivybridge, but since we hadn’t put in a full day the day before we decided to put in ten miles along Two Moors Way, including a visit to the high oak woodland of Piles Copse.

Two Moors Way, which runs coast to coast all the way across Devon, is the biggest, smoothest and busiest trail in southern Dartmoor, and we spent the next two days exploring it. It is an easy trail to walk, and for the first eight miles out of Ivybridge it’s a gentle grade wide enough that you could easily drive a car on it. The miles pass almost effortlessly, and it tracks a high ridge so you have far-reaching views most of the time, often in all directions.

Heading up to Two Moors Way in the morning, with sheep, cows, and horses nearby.

Many locals were out on a blustery Saturday afternoon.

We navigated by stone posts and stone walls when we took side trips off the main trail.

Biologists who study Dartmoor believe that it was likely covered with forests long ago, and those trees were likely covered with moss. The sheep, horses and cows that have roamed Dartmoor in recent centuries have made it impossible for such delicate forests to survive, except for three high oak woodlands where the ground is too rugged for grazing animals to get at the trees and moss, and so the ancient forests survive. the ground is typically rugged because it’s covered with large boulders. We visited two of Dartmoor's high oak woodlands on this trip, and found that moving through these forests was as much a matter of climbing as hiking. It was easy to see how this terrain is not conducive to the grazing of large four-legged animals.

On this day we visited Piles Copse, a high oak woodlands located about four miles north of Ivybridge, at the bottom of a steep hill below Two Moors Way. This one isn’t visited very often, and the trail is pretty overgrown, but we happened to meet a local man who was familiar with the route and gave us some tips.

Even with help from a local, we wandered around the hillside for a while before finding the correct path down into Piles Copse.

The sun disappeared behind clouds when we entered the woods (OMG! The hellhounds are coming!), which made it easy to do a multi-exposure collage, so I did.

Photos from our walk back down into Ivybridge.

Megan's FitBit reported 25,710 steps and 105 flights of stairs. Not bad for a rest day!

Here's a story of our stay at Sportmans Inn that I didn't include in the original blog post but I'll go ahead and share a decade later, because it was probably the most bizarre moment of the entire trip. We were awakened at 2AM by the sound of a loud and angry woman's voice coming from the sidewalk directly below our window. She was apparently on the phone, and confronting her boyfriend with the fact that she knew he had been cheating on her - with a man. That's not the bizarre part. The bizarre part was that she had planted a webcam in their apartment, and she was just getting off work (perhaps from the bar of our hotel, we weren't sure), and had just viewed video from the evening. "I know he was there this evening, I saw what you two were doing while I was at work. You promised me you weren't into that any more!" Good grief!

Two Moors Way and Abbot's Way - August 10

This day was the centerpiece of our trip, 20 miles of wandering the moors in high winds that were remnants of Hurricane Bertha, with an unexpected great dinner in the village of Scorriton before arriving at our destination, Two Bridges Hotel.

Two Moor Way was less than 2 miles from our hotel, but we had walked back and forth to it twice already so decided to take a taxi rather than walk that stretch for a fifth time. It had been raining most of the night and the ground was a wet, a hint of fun to come.

A mile up the trail, the wind and rain got intense and we put on our rain gear for the first time.

We walked through rain squalls interspersed with brief sunny spots. Cows and sheep nearby, but none of the locals who were out enjoying the moors in sunny calm weather the day before.

Smart horses taking shelter from the wind behind an ancient stone structure. We walked past many of these sorts of ruins throughout the day.

We walked for eight hours along Two Moors Way, and only saw this one other group of humans.

The sun came out around noon and it looked like the worst of the rain had passed, so we stopped for lunch and put away our rain gear.

When we saw this mound on the left I knew we were approaching the intersection of Two Moors Way and Abbot's Way. After a bit of looking around, we found a row of stone markers that confirmed our location. But Abbots Way sure didn't look like much of a trail. (As we later learned, it's a "bridleway," meaning suitable for horses but not ideal for walking.)

In the first mile of Abbot's Way, we had to cross water several times, and eventually got to a place where we were going to have to get soaked at least up to our knees to continue. We stopped and studied the map, and decided to backtrack to Two Moors Way and take a longer dryer route to our destination in Two Bridges. This added a few miles to our day, but we didn't want to soak our hiking boots (or risk soaking everything, if we fell while while to cross slippery stones in bare feet).

Here's the subtlety that I missed on the map: the routes with a green dashed line (such as Abbot's Way) are bridlepaths, not walking trails.

The alternative route we took included crossing a variety of streams (and a few fences), but it was all managable and we never had to do any wading.

When we saw a rainbow, it felt like a sign we were on the right path.

No longer on Two Moors Way, we came out onto a high ridge and started to see signs of civilization in the distance, and then spotted a familiar sight: Buckfast Abbey! This split shot shows our view of it from the trail (on the left) and a photo I took three days earlier when we were in Buckfastleigh (on the right).

At this point, we had reached the 20 mile mark for the day and my knees were ready for a break. So we headed down across a hillside into the nearest village, which turned out to be Scorriton.

I set my telephoto lens on the ground for a selfie on the way into Scorriton.

We found a traditional country pub in Scorriton called the Tradesman's Arms, where we enjoyed cold cider, fresh salads, and fish & chips for dinner before taking a taxi up to our hotel in Two Bridges.

What a day! Our FitBits said 46,000 steps, 264 flights of stairs, and 22 miles. After a hot shower and a glass of wine, we got a great night's sleep in our spectacular room at the Two Bridges Inn. This was the nicest room and firmest mattress of our entire trip, and it couldn't have come at a better time.

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A few video clips from this day.

Two Bridges Hotel - August 11

Two Bridges is the smallest town we stayed in, with a population of about 100, and we spent two nights at this luxurious hotel in the heart of Dartmoor, enjoying their food and drink and also taking a hike up to nearby Wistman’s Wood, another high oak woodland.

After sleeping like a rock for 7 hours, I headed out before 5:00 in the morning to snap a few photos while the full moon was setting. I was joined by the flock of white geese who are the official mascots of Two Bridges Hotel.

After a long day in the wind and rain yesterday, today was all about the comforts of civilization: spectacular meals, afternoon tea, and relaxing in the bar.

Enjoying a long hot bath. I don't normally have blue toenails, but this trip was a special occasion.

In the afternoon, we walked a mile north of Two Bridges to the second high oak woodland of our trip: Wistman's Wood. Because of its convenience to Two Bridges and the highway, Wistman's Wood is the most visited of Dartmoor's high oak woodlands, with a well-marked trail.

Exploring Wistman's Wood. We had seen a few people on the trail, but there were no other people in the woodland while we were there.

A few horses came down the hillside to join us.

There are numerous myths and legends associated with the Wistman's Wood woodlands, probably because they have a haunting other-worldly look to them. Many of the myths are associated with darkness and werewolf-like creatures that come out at night. People have reported seeing the ghost of Francis Drake leading a pack of Spectral hellhounds that terrorizes the area. We were on the lookout, but only saw grandparents with grandkids and trekking college students in the area.

I meant to go back after dark, but the cider was flowing too freely back in the pub to allow for further exploration that day.

Chagford - August 12

There were intermittent rain showers the morning we left Two Bridges, and we decided to take a taxi to Sandy Park Inn, and then hiked through pretty Teign Gorge to Fingle Bridge. Megan would have been up for another long trekking day, but my hips (both of which would up being replaced the following year) were grateful for the taxi ride.

Megan signed the guestbook, and then we took a taxi to Sandy Park Inn. Our taxi told us creepy stories of werewolves along the way, a nice touch.

After checking in to our tiny room, we went down to the pub and talked to the bartender for a while.

Sandy Park Inn was the smallest and oldest inn we visited: just three rooms total, in a building that started out as a traditional 16th century coaching inn. Despite its age, this place had the most reliable wifi and best water pressure of anywhere we stayed on the whole trip. It’s a family-owned and operated business – the daughter cooked our breakfast, her brother hauled in firewood, and the sister-in-law checked us in.