Bellever Tor is a helluva tor

The local poet Paul Mann wrote the words of today's title in his poem - The Ballad of Bellever Tor. The first verse goes:

Bellever Tor is a helluva tor,  

It’s a rip-snortin’, ca-vortin’ swell-of-a-tor

And if, as I live, I heard tell-of-a-tor

The words I inferred would be “Bellever Tor”.

Well, Bellever Tor which is the centre of Dartmoor was also the centre of our day today.

Morning

Having got up at 5.30am (a real lie-in for me when on holiday) I uploaded last night's photos and began yesterday's blog posts. Drew got up around 7am and after breakfast and ablutions we headed out at 10am.

Planning for Dartmoor  

For no reason that I can determine Drew has been obsessing about Dartmoor since we started the journey on Thursday - perhaps it is the only place in Devon he has heard of? [Co-pilot's note: As slander, dear readers, a defamatory slander!! I do like open moor land, as others may remember from our visits to Bodmin Moor and the Yorkshire Moors in the past. AND I had also heard of Exeter] Anyway, this obsession has crept into my mind, so for our first touring day we decided Dartmoor is where we would go.

I had seen the Dartmoor National Park website, so before heading off I looked for some suggestions of what to do on Dartmoor. The website provides a series of downloadable audio walks (with transcript and maps). So taking advantage of the wi-fi at our accommodation I downloaded them ready for the journey.  

Travelling to Dartmoor

Having made our decision about our planned walk we left Exmouth for Dartmoor at 10am. There was a route via the M5/A30 which bypasses parts of the moor, but we opted for the more traditional route along the B3212 which took us through villages with quaint names like Doccombe, Batworthy and MoretonHampstead (marked as M'Hampstead on most of the signs given the length of the name). 

The undulating road was easy driving, for most of the journey we were preceded by a bicycle, a tourist bus and a Belgian Motorhome. 

Dartmoor National Park

We entered the Moor and were warned about lazy sheep on the road:

But in fact, the only things lying down we saw were a herd of Long Horn cattle.

Postbridge

We arrived at the Postbridge National Park Visitor's Centre at 11.15am. 

Where we parked the car and used the facilities. Having left a glorious Exmouth in bright sun it soon became clear that the Moor has a different climate - we should have guessed! There was now a light but persistent drizzle, that was like a low-lying fog. So, we also decided to buy a Mac in a Sac each. Drew's in yellow, mine in blue.

Bellever Walking Tour

With our new macs we headed out on the first stage of the tour - you can follow the full tour in the transcript or in the audio files (note the pods are in a zipped file which will need to be unzipped to use).

The wide path soon became something a little narrower and was to the left, so we both began the 'Time Warp' from the Rocky Horror show - only singing the words, not doing the actions - when a perplexed women appeared among the trees beside us - she was picking herbs and mosses, so didn't seem to disturbed by random singers. 

This took us to Kraps Ring a circular area made up of granite boulders which were orignally a Bronze Age Village of about 15 houses where people would have been living in around 1,500 BCE. There is also evidence (the circle) of a wall around the village.

Moving away from Kraps Ring and further up the hill we come to what archaeologists believe is the Chief's house overlooking the village.

There are also a series of burial mounds, most of which are now only small humps with more wildflowers growing than on surrounding land. 

From here we climbed Lakehead Hill where there is a more substantial buriel area and a kistvaen (stone chest) and markers. While people may have been shorter 3,500 years ago, they clearly would have had to be squeezed in to be buried here. 

We leave the hill and walk down a path, ready for our next climb up Bellever Tor. As we do so the audio tells us that this area sees a lot of Dartmoor Ponies, but that they are often scared of humans, so can be as elusive as Bear's in Alaska - at the moment the audio says this a Spring of Ponies (yes spring is the right word, I looked it up while writing the blog having wondered out loud about it as we walked.) appear and begin to get closer to us. All the pictures are on Flickr in addition to this one here:

The Path to the Tor become steeper

But it is worth the effort to get up there as the Tor is an amazing piece of geology as well as being the centre point of the Moor. No wonder so many spooky stories are written about these parts when these odd landscape features are so common.  

Again more photos of the Tor and the wonderful views it provides of the surrounding countryside are on my Flickr page.

The person on the Audio Walk got really excited at this point about the Sheep Count at Laughter Tor. These walled enclosures were used instead of counting sheep. Once the Count was full you knew you had all your sheep!! I don't think this kind of Sheep Count would helping with falling asleep!!

Laughter Tor is far less impressive that Bellever Tor, but like it, gives an amazing view of all the land around. The Tor itself has a complex history which is well outlined in this piece. Though I've not found anything explaining why it is called Laughter Tor, though it may be a corruption of an old word - lough - meaning to pile up.

Our route down from Laughter Tor was along a path beside a wall which was at the edge of a steep field in which heather and pine trees (small ones) were growing. The field included some lovely wimberry bushes, as can be seen in the photo below.

We came next to Bellever Forest with its wide range of trees and wide pathways.

Once we were through the Forest, we came to the East Dart River, which (as it is accessible by car) was very busy on what was now a sunny Sunday afternoon.

I was pleased as we left the river and walked up a minor road towards Postbridge that our Macs in Sacs worked so well and we both managed to get them back into the sac, something that I thought (given my cag handedness) would have been more difficult than it was. 

The route we took, with a couple of variations when we missed a turn, is well outlined in the map below:

It was a 10km, six mile, walk and two hours and forty minutes or 15,400 steps. It was well worth the effort to see such amazing sites in this unusual landscape. 

The Trip back to Exeter

We took the same route back as we had taken out this morning. But this time managed to catch some of the feel for the major town in the area. Moretonhampstead. It looks like a busy place to live with both a food festival and a carnival in the next month. 

Most interesting of all is the Alms houses from 1637 which are near the town centre. The local history indicates that while it was rebuilt in 1637, the original building on this site, remains of which were used for the new building was a medieval hospital built in 1451.

Dinner in Exeter

Based on a recommendation of one of my friends, thank you Tim, we decided to eat this evening at Al Farid Restaurant in the centre of Exeter, which was on our way home.

Al Farid, as well as a full menu, offers the opportunity of a share Meze, which is a series of mixed dishes. We decided to go for this option.

Our choices were Hummus Beiruti, a chickpea puree with hot pepper, parsley, garlic, lemon juice and tahini; Tzatziki, which is grated cucumber mixed with yoghurt, garlic, fresh mint and dill; Batata Harra, which is new potatoes sautéed with sweet peppers, garlic, onions and spicy harissa sauce; Grilled Moroccan Sausage, served on a skewer with a sweet and spicy sauce; Aradis, a Lemongrass, garlic, coriander and harissa marinated set of grilled tiger prawns and Izmir Kofta, which are cinnamon spiced lamb meatballs slowly braised in a tomato sauce. These were served with Pita Bread and we added to the selection a Fattoush Salad, a mixed salad with olives, lemon, fresh mint and olive oil dressing and some flatbreads.

The food was cooked as well as Tim suggested that it would be, also the flavours were amazing. Drew thought the Batata Harra was his favourite as it was very spicy, he would select the Hummus and the Moroccan Sausage as numbers two and three. I loved the potatoes too but think that the juicy Tiger Prawns win for my favourite flavours, closely followed by the juicy lamb koftas (which were exactly like Albondigas, but made from lamb not pork). A thoroughly enjoyable and filling meal.

We finished with Moroccan Coffee for me and Mint Tea for Drew.

Back to Exmouth

We got back to Exmouth having done 69 miles in 2 hour 40 minutes of driving. The car was at 54% when we got back to the house at 7.15pm (an enjoyable nine hours since we were last here). So we put the car on charge and sat and relaxed until going to bed at 10.30pm.