I spend as much time as I can on Dartmoor. It's never enough due to other commitments, so when I get up there it is always a treat. What do I like about it...?

...it is convenient. Always on the horizon from my town (if you are in the right place), I can get to its outskirts within 20 minutes.

...other than a few very minor roads, little more than farm tracks, around its edges, there are really only two roads, crossing around the centre, on the whole moor.
It is an amazing experience to walk only a short distance to find all traffic sounds have disappeared to be replaced by the sound of the ever-present wind blowing through the grass and around the tors and the singing of the skylarks. It is, for me, a spiritual experience. I get a real sense of my insignificance in the face of a much larger reality while, at the same time, my place as part of a greater, interlinked whole.

...the air is clean. As some of the highest land in the south-west, it gets the full blast of the prevailing winds without any polluting filter between itself and the Atlantic. So pure is the air, after a while walking on the moor and you feel positively light-headed.

...it offers as easy or as hard walking as you feel like doing. A gentle stroll, with minimal exertion or a testing up hill and down dale hike, with a real sense of achievement, it's up to you.

...despite the wilderness, isolation and often testing conditions, it would be wrong to think things up there haven't changed since time began. It is a heavily man-affected landscape. Woodlands have cleared and replanted with the uniform, sterile, coniferous plantations. Everywhere you can see evidence of past habitation and, from the density of remains in some places, quite populous habitation.

...as would be expected in such an ancient landscape, legends abound. I have recently found this website, which contains a wealth of material on such matters.

One such legend-laced place is Wistman's Wood, one of the few remaining pieces of the ancient oak woodland that used to cover the whole of the moor. It is a reasonably gentle walk of a bit over a mile from the centre of the moor at Two Bridges. One visit a year or two ago elicited this...

In Wistman's Wood

O'er Wistman's Wood,
Littaford Tor:
Granite watchman
Where buzzards soar

In Wistman's Wood
The fairies play
'Neath stunted trees
On boulders grey.

In Wistman's Wood
An old witch tells
Her granddaughter
Of age-old spells.

In Wistman's Wood
In twisted oaks
A monkey climbs
While telling jokes

In Wistman's Wood
The veil is thin
The Otherworld
Is clearly seen

With tor above, river below,
Old trees within and nacreous glow,
In Wistman's Wood the elements...
...Of life are all in evidence.