Graves, Bogs and a Load of Old Bull

For some reason I've been drawn to the western flank of Dartmoor lately and have given in to the urge even though it means a fair drive from the biscuit tin by the sea. This latest walk took me, Son the Younger and Ted out to the delightfully named Cocks Hill and back via Cudlipptown Down.

Above is the start of our route, a track leading from the idyllic village of Peter Tavy to Langstone Moor, and below the view in the opposite direction, looking out over West Devon.  The eagle-eyed might just be able to spot Brent Tor, topped by its church, on the far left.

This track leads to several landmarks.  First up, at some remove from human habitation, is this monument marking Stephens' Grave.  Having been jilted by his sweetheart, George (or possibly John) Stephens poisoned himself, and this being some 250 years ago, was buried outside of the village at the meeting of the ways so that his restless spirit wouldn't find its way back to haunt those who had done him wrong.  Strangely, this story, which is so vague and fragmentary, insists on one detail.  At the very time he was being lowered into his grave, some linen that was hanging out to bleach at Higher Godsworthy blew up into the sky and disappeared.

Like the more famous Kitty Jay, wanderers bring gifts for George - usually coins, stones, wild flowers, little crosses of rowan wood tied with red thread, etc.  This time I had a white pebble and a story for him.

Already, heart-stopping views were opening up to the south in the form of Roos and Great Staple Tor, where we'd walked a few days earlier, now spattered with sunlight and cloud, and up ahead louring Great Mis Tor.  It was sublime.

Unfortunately a ubiquity of sheep meant that Ted had to stay on the lead again.

Son the Younger asked me why some were sheared and not others, and I had no idea.  They appeared to be from the same flock, although like walked with like.  

Passing White Tor to the north, we headed for the eponymous Langstone, a menhir situated at the end of a now almost invisible stone row, and not far from the stone circle where we'd rested on our previous walk.  There were three soldiers lounging there who wanted to know what the stone was for.  Well, wouldn't we all?  Though US forces found a use for it during the war, as testified by bullet holes.

We were now striking pretty deep into this part of the moor, with the Walkham valley to our right and Tavy Cleave, which we'd explored at the beginning of June, coming into view to our left.  There is something about this sort of bleak landscape that fills me with joy, even as my companions stride out further and further ahead ... 

... that is, until a Highland bull decided that we were way too close to his harem.  I suggested to Will and Ted that we might want to detour a little, so we did - quite hastily - and eventually our outraged friend lumbered off to shout to another group of walkers.   

This is the view over to Standon Down, with distinctive Great Links Tor in the distance.  As you can see, the going was quite soft in places.

It was now time for a rest, and handily we'd reached White Barrow on the slopes of Cocks Hill, one of the boundary points of the Perambulation of 1240.  

Up ahead we could see the Lych Way leading to Beardown Tors and the unmistakeable cone of Longaford.  This is the route along which mediaeval tenants would carry the coffins of their dead, from the settlements in the middle of the moor to the Church of St Petroc at Lydford.  It is famously described as being 12 miles in fair weather and 18 in foul.

We just had ourselves to carry; even so, our route was testing.  The first thing we had to do after our rest and recuperation was to find a way across a nearby stream, which wouldn't have been at all difficult were it not for the boggy land around it.  Son the Younger tipped a boulder into this stretch and it disappeared without trace.

Fortunately, we managed to find a dry crossing point without having to walk too far out of our way, and headed north-west towards Bagga Tor.  

Here we exited the moor and walked down the lane to the hamlet of Wapsworthy, which seemed to consist mostly of ruins from various eras.  Another little rest and we rejoined the moor for a stiff climb over Cudlipptown Down, with the compensation of wonderful views north to Tavy Cleave and beyond ... 

... and, once we had struggled to the top, back over to Brent Tor and Gibbet Hill.

If you're still with me and wondering why someone's taken the trouble to quilt vast tracks of moorland, well, apparently it's down to weathering affecting the fine silty loam of this area during the Ice Age.  Whatever, it makes for pretty tricky going, particularly when you're beginning to tire.  (Looks good, though.)  

And so we were almost back to the car.  Just time to collect another skull for our collection, this one a long-dead and belichened sheep.  Then it was back to the biscuit tin, with me ignoring the quick but dull route of the A30 in favour of the more picturesque road across the moor.  Which can, at times, be very slow indeed ... 

Still Sidmouth

As destinations go, Sidmouth is nothing if not a family favourite.  For my aunt and parents, it's the town of Betjeman's poem.  They love the gardens with their prize-winning floral displays, the tea shops, and the esplanade.  My father likes to sit and gaze out to sea.  Auntie Mollie and my mother particularly love the charity shops.

I like the holed stones on the beach and the fact that it's a good place to sit and dream.  Not that it's always easy to relax with the older generation about.  Can't take your eye off that Auntie of mine for one moment.

I also love Sidmouth for its red cliffs crumbling into grey seas, its dangling garden fences, trees and summer houses, and the initials carved by lovers into soft sandstone only to be erased by the attrition of wind and sea.  The elements and the passage of time respect nothing, not even love.  I wrote a poem about the Hanging Gardens of Sidmouth a few years ago.  You can read it here.  It's also in my poetry collection, Communion.

Meanwhile, the hanging gardens continue to slither over the edge onto the shore below.

On a jollier note, Sidmouth is also a grand place to buy a hat.

Plus, it's the home of the folk festival, of course, and whilst I wouldn't normally go gigging with my sons - and my sister and brother-in-law - and my septuagenarian aunt - and my octogenarian mother - and my nonagenarian father - when your nephew and niece-to-be are in the band, it's definitely A Family Thing.

 

By the time I arrived in Devon, Blackbeard's Tea Party had already completed two evening gigs, as well as a fair bit of busking in New Street.  This final afternoon gig was behind the Anchor.  It was, however, anything but sedate.  The oldies turned off their hearing aids and put a brave face on the proceedings while Ted tucked himself out of the way.

The band was very well received, as always, with lots of people dancing and singing along and buying CDs, the third one of which will be recorded in the New Year.

Despite my best efforts, I still got a lecture about safe driving from my father, who didn't believe for one instant that my pint of Cheddar Valley cider was apple juice.  Which isn't as bad, I suppose, as when my grandmother told my Uncle Meric to be careful crossing the road and he retorted 'Mother, I'm 70 years old.'

Great Mis Tor and Mystery at Merrivale

It was hot.  Too hot.  So armed with my brand new waterproof walking shoes - no, that's not right ... shod in my shoes, I drove up to Four Winds on Dartmoor with Son the Younger and Ted.  

I've long wanted to climb Great Mis Tor, having travelled past and photographed and written about it for years, and the added draw up a Tor named after the cloud that so often shrouds it would be a breeze to take edge off the muggy heat.  Four Winds ... Great Mists ... obvious, innit.


So we climbed it - and there was not a breath of wind.  If the flag had been flying, it would have clung limply to the flagpole.  (Although it was good that it wasn't, this being the edge of the Merrivale Range Danger Area.)

We mopped the sweat from our brows and surveyed the rock formations. Sometimes it's hard to remember that this isn't a massive art installation or grandiose folly, but the work of fire and molten rock hundreds of millions of years ago, with subsequent weathering by the always  - or almost always - present winds.  

Looking out over the Walkham Valley to White Tor.

In the distance and on the opposite side of the River Walkham we could see Great Staple Tor and Roos Tor, two of the highlights on our route.  To get to them we would have to descend to the bottom of the valley and find somewhere to cross - not an easy feat considering how wet this summer has been.  

It was tiring scrambling over boulders and squelching along boggy stretches of bank, and I soon discovered that my brand new waterproof walking shoes weren't waterproof at all, grr.  Ted was in his element, however, even though he had to stay on his lead as there were so many sheep about.  

Eventually we found a crossing point although half way over I had to throw the map, book and camera over onto the opposite bank so that I could balance properly.  But a Dartmoor walk isn't a Dartmoor walk unless you spend at least some of the time teetering on top of a sharp-edged boulder in the middle of a fast-flowing stream of peat-stained water.

What I was looking forward to as a breezy saunter along the ridge to Roos Tor turned out to be more of a tortuous hobble over bog and choppy grass, with sweat stinging my eyes.  It was good to come across the neolithic Langstone Moor Stone Circle and rest for a while.  Not that there is much of it left intact, US servicemen having used the stones for target practice during World War II.  Oh well, I suppose it makes a change from Victorian farmers pinching them for gateposts.

Meanwhile, the views - sunsplash and shadow - were just majestic.   On the slopes of Great Mis Tor, there was a shadow shaped like a cow.

My favourite sort of days on Dartmoor are ones where there is an interplay of shadow and cloud.  Yesterday was perfect - apart from the humidity.  This the view from Roos Tor ... 

... and this from the giant doorjambs of Great Staple Tor.

Often in walking books, pictures of the author's dog feature and if it's a border collie, it will almost always be posing on a picturesque bit of rock.  They have such a sense of occasion and Ted is no exception.   

In fact, he can't stop grinning for the camera.  

Between Great and Middle Staple Tors, there was a herd of wild ponies, with which Ted coped very well.  

The prospect of refreshment in the Dartmoor Inn put a spring in our step as we descended from Middle Staple Tor to Merrivale Quarry, which was the last Dartmoor quarry to close in 1997.  Like all the other disused quarried on the moor, the workings are now flooded.

It was a relief to dive into a pint of cider and a bowl of ice cream on a pub bench bearing the imprint of generations of quarrymen's bottoms.  Would have stayed there in the cool of the bar a lot longer, but there was still a mile to walk back to the car.  

Although we were knackered, we opted to detour through the complex of stone rows, circles, cairns, cists and standing stones.  This area is also called the Plague Market, because it's where moorfolk and townfolk would swap goods and money in times of plague.  

Looking back towards Middle Staple Tor, Great Staple Tor and Roos Tor.

Son the Younger and Ted trying to see if there are any bodies remaining in this cist.  

One last look back at the stone rows.  I'm not one for orbs and all, but given the lack of dust in the air, I am left wondering what this strange misty sphere is nestling in the top of one stone ...

Unnatural – Natural History

The summer exhibition at the RWA this year is Unnatural - Natural History, billed as ‘an artistic exploration of an alternative world where the dominant species are not human and natural objects are metamorphosed into unexpected and unnatural forms’.

It was the express intention of the curators, Coates & Scarry, to ‘create a stir’ and to prompt discussion about what is and isn’t natural.  I’m always wary of exhibitions that set out to manipulate so visceral an emotion, as often what disturbs us at the deepest level is peculiar to us. I remember taking my elder daughter to see an exhibition of art by William Blake in what was then the Tate Gallery in 2000.  She was 12 years old and had such bad dreams that night that she woke up screaming and was sick.  Clearly the visionary artist and poet had made an unexpectedly profound impression!

Upon climbing the stairs to the exhibition, we were confronted by two installations by Kate MccGwire.  The sculpture, Wrest, was indeed challenging, consisting of a thick serpentine knot covered in meticulously layered feathers which were at once creepy and familiar, as anyone familiar with the Georgian feather frieze at the National Trust's A La Ronde would attest.  Similarly, ‘Stigma II’, consisting of two feathered holes in a sheer dark surface, was the stuff of nightmares.  I was also very impressed by Angela Lizon’s ‘Come Fly with Me’, in which a beautifully depicted newborn baby is flown in a sling by a very sinister-looking Marabou stork – the ‘Undertaker Bird’.  Never mind the Masai Mara, this bird looked to be heading straight for Baba Yaga’s hut deep in the forest.      

These, along with Natalie Shau’s memento mori, ‘Vanity’, were the high points.  Elsewhere, Patrick Haines’ sculpture ‘Hermetic Bird’ and Rose Sanderson’s ‘Starling’ were covetable but hardly alarming, and the rest of the exhibits were at best insufficiently innovative to provoke much of a reaction and at worst banal.  ‘Deep and meaningless,’ Dru's daughter, Katie, had pronounced and I’m afraid I have to agree.