The free online dictionary defines "moor" as: "a broad area of open land, often high but poorly drained, with patches of heath and peat bogs".
The "poorly drained" part certainly seems right - on the very top of a Dartmoor hill you can find yourself stumbling through a bog. There are plenty of patches of heath, though the amount of heather seems to be declining, no doubt as a result of global heating. Heather seems to prefer a cool climate. Another moorland plant is gorse, very scratchy to walk among, but redeemed in the summer by its pretty yellow flowers.
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Heather and gorse often grow together in a striking display of yellow and purple, as the photo on the left shows. |
| Probably the most characteristic feature
of Dartmoor is the tor. A typical example - Great Links Tor - is
shown on the right. Tors are rocky outcrops, generally of granite,
at the summits of otherwise grassy
hills. The rock often consists of neat horizontal layers, and it is easy to
imagine that the outcrop is the remains of an ancient fortress built by
giants. Indeed, the word "tor" is derived from an old Celtic word for "tower". (For students of modern Welsh, the word tŵr, masculine, plural tyrau, means "tower".) Some of the hillside around the tor is usually covered with bits of rock that have weathered and fallen from the main pile. It is generally better to avoid trying to walk on this material, for which the local word is clitter. Whatever the origin of that word, it sounds somehow descriptive, maybe because it is close - and indeed may be related - to "clutter". You can find more information about tors in this Wikipedia article. By the way, the little grey spike you can see just to the left of the summit in my photo of Great Links Tor is not a rock, but a triangulation stone for the Ordnance Survey, of which more below. The distant figure with a blue jacket is my wife Michiyo, who seems to have walked on a great distance! |
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I want to describe and illustrate some of my favourite Dartmoor walks, and for this some reference to maps will be necessary.
Britain has been well surveyed for at least two centuries: the Ordnance Survey is the organisation responsible for this. The word "ordnance" reveals a military origin, but this does not have much to do with the organisation's present remit. Information about the Ordnance Survey in general can be found here. The great thing from my point of view just now is that very local maps can easily be viewed online, by entering the coordinates of some place of interest. Each of the maps covering some part of the UK is identified by a two letter code: that for the region including Dartmoor is SX. To identify a particular point on a particular map a six digit number is used. Each map has a two dimensional grid superimposed, with x-coordinates (eastings) and y-coordinates (northings) as in the illustration below left:
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The point we want to identify is in the square whose western boundary
is 63, and whose southern boundary is 83. The point is about 9 tenths of
the way between the 63 line and the 64 line: call this 639. In the y
(north) direction the point is about 2 tenths of the way between 83 and 84.
Call it 832. Put the two figures together and we get 639832 as the six
digit identifying number. Eastings come before northings, or, as my
geography teacher used to say long ago, "first you go in at the door, and
then upstairs".When the particular map is identified as SX, the complete
coordinate becomes SX639832. If you now click here, the "Get-a-map" page of the Ordnance Survey site will be opened in a separate window. On the right you will see a large pink button labelled "I want to Get-a-map now!*" Click on this. A small window will open, and the words "Retrieving map" will flash until an outline of the British Isles appears. Now for a slightly tricky bit. You've got the little map of Britain now, and you should be able to close the large Ordnance Survey window, leaving just the little map and my Dartmoor page. At the top left of the map of Britain window you will see a "Search for" box with a flashing cursor. Enter "SX639832" into it, and click on the "GO" button. The Britain map will be replaced by another one, in the middle of which you will see represented two adjoining stone circles called "The Grey Wethers". With the tools shown to the left of the map, you can zoom in and out, or move in one of the compass directions shown. Even more handily, perhaps, if you set your cursor to a particular point on the map and click it, the map will be re-drawn with that point as centre. The coordinates of the central point are indicated below the map. Now you can close the "Get-a-map" window, and flip between my page describing the walks, and the Ordnance Survey map on which you can follow them, by entering coordinates, moving, or clicking to centralise. |
Google Earth now shows Dartmoor in detail, so walks can be followed there too.
Click on one for details and photos!