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STEPS OVER THE DART

Admire the seasonal colours with Chris Logan along one of Dartmoor’s most beautiful trails

Crossing of the Dart

Choose a fine day for this walk to ensure water does not flood your boots as you cross stepping-stones over the East and West Dart rivers. But as the Dart gently murmurs between the stones under your feet don’t be fooled into underestimating its power. After heavy rain the swollen torrents make the stones impassable, and the river has acquired a cruel reputation from the superstitious belief that its waters take a life every year, reflected in the ancient rhyme:

River of Dart, O river of Dart,
Every year thou claimest a heart.

Take the longer route and you will climb to the top of Bellever Tor, a magical place of high piles of flat boulders crowning the surrounding forest. As you climb spare a thought for poor Tom White of Postbridge who, every evening after work, would cross the tor on his way to Huccaby Farm to visit a dairymaid he was courting. One night he was returning through the rocks in the early hours of the morning when he suddenly found himself surrounded by a large gathering of pixies who forced him to dance with them until daybreak, then left him lying exhausted on the turf. He was so terrified that he never visited the girl again – and it would be most unkind of you to even think there could be any other reason for his misfortune!

Descend from Bellever Tor into the valley of the West Dart and visit the Judge’s Chair, a seat canopied by a huge slab of stone that some say may have been used for meetings on Crockern Tor of the Stannary Parliament. For the 400 years before tin production declined in the early 18th century, representatives from each of the four stannary districts would meet on Crockern Tor to dispense justice and make laws.

Below Dunnabridge cross the beautiful East Dart river over Sherberton Steps, a long row of stepping-stones beneath a line of majestic Scots pines, one of the most beautiful areas of Dartmoor, to reach Sherberton and Hexworthy. These are tin-working areas, and as you climb the narrow road you will pass the remains of the 19th-century Gobbett Mine. The gert with a granite portal was adapted to carry a water pipe from Swincombe to Venford Reservoir, and nearby were adits, shafts, workshops and 7m-diameter wheels for pumping and crushing ore. Higher up the road, below the track that sweeps round the slope, are the remains of much older tin works.

As you descend the road to Hexworthy Bridge, that probably replaced a clapper bridge destroyed in 18th-century flooding, you will pass Jolly Lane Cot. Gone are the days when planning permission would be granted if your home could be built and a fire lit in the hearth in a single day! Built in 1835, Jolly Lane Cot was the last to be acquired in this manner.