Moor from the UK
May 11, 2018
To start with I have to apologise for the tardiness between posts (mainly) because of connectivity issues. To compensate I have included more photos than I normally would. Since the last update we have left the bucolic surroundings of East Anglia and made the trek down to the equally bucolic county of Devon in the south west of England. The highlight for us was revisiting, after twenty years, beautiful, bleak Dartmoor with its ponies and sheep on a wild and desolate landscape, stone bridges over burbling streams, quiet villages amidst rolling fields, stone age archeological sites and a variety of rocky outcrops called Tors.
Being based in Plymouth for a week was very convenient for multiple trips to the moor and it’s surrounding environment which make up the National Park of the same name - another one that includes farmland and many villages within its bounds, as well as the ubiquitous church, in this case the small but spectacularly situated Brentor Church on top of Brent Tor that is delightfully photogenic from many different angles as can hopefully be seen from the many pictures included.
The weather was mostly very obliging with only one day completely fogged in in the morning and drizzly rain for the rest of the day, but mostly lovely spring weather. And apart from a short side trip to the quaint, a bit too famous and overly visited fishing village of Polperro in Cornwall …
we visited a number of spots spread over the moor including a couple of ancient and not so antient sites with stone age village ruins, a bridge made using stone slabs called a post bridge as well as Dartmeet, which, as the name suggests, is where the East and West Dart Rivers meet.
Next and last stop was Salisbury with it’s cathedral (with the second tallest spire in Europe apparently) and the surrounding area which includes the well known giant figure of a horse cut into the chalk hills in Pewsey Downs.
And of course you don’t go to Salisbury without visiting what would have to be the most famous Neolithic monument in the world, in this case at dawn till after sunrise when there are no people (except a solitary guard) and the light and atmosphere were fortunately for us, fabulous.
On publishing this we will have already left the UK, but it has taken longer than usual to post (apart from the aforementioned internet problem) due to the larger number of photos that needed sorting, processing and culling (there are still way too many from the same areas so I hope they’re not too repetitious to look at). Anyway, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it! And if you still haven’t had enough, remember there are usually extra pics in the Recent gallery. Hopefully the next update from some exotic location won’t take so long, but until then …