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| Paul reading a book about Dartmoor with his sister, his dad (face hidden) and Uncle Norman at Yelverton |
This article appeared in Dartmoor News, Issue 194, April/June 2024.
It was in the spring of 1974 that my parents first took me onto Dartmoor. I am sure it would have been to the Burrator area as that was close to where we lived at Southway in Plymouth and my parents never had a car. We used to go everywhere on the bus or by cycling. Before 1974 we would often go to Plymbridge Woods. I would have never guessed that 50 years later I would still be walking over Dartmoor and leading guided walks across that bleak open moor.
On 5th April 1974 ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with their song ‘Waterloo’ and I watched it on TV. A few days later I was taken out to Burrator Reservoir, climbed Sheeps Tor and fell in love with the place. Over the next few months we went out on Sundays using the Burrator bus and visited Sheepstor village and the Deancombe Valley. When we visited Sheepstor, we would climb to the top of the tor and go on to Pixie’s Cave. My parents informed me that I should leave a coin and pin for the pixies on the shelf within the cave.
At the time there were two rooms inside and I could stand up and walk around them both. Today it is not very easy to get into the cave and there is only one small room and a little shelf because the rocks above the cave are moving down the hillside. Anyway, when I came back next time the pins and my coin were no longer there, so I believed in pixies. Well, at least I did back then.
Over the next few years my younger sister Marion and I were taken for some great adventures on the moors, visiting Cadover Bridge, Shaugh Bridge (we often cycled there), Walkhampton, Meavy, Yelverton and of course Burrator, mainly to places we could reach by bus from Plymouth or we could cycle to.
I soon starting asking questions, what is that bird, that flower, who lives there etc. I always wanted more information. I would draw maps of the areas visited and add on them which birds we saw and where.
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| 1990s, Anne, Phil, Paul, Bob, all members of the Dartmoor Wally Club handing over a cheque after doing a 50 mile (80 km) sponsored walk across Dartmoor |
So when I was in my teens, once a week in the summer months, usually on a Friday, I would cycle to school and afterwards go out to the moors for a few hours before going home. I just loved it, mum was not too worried about me being on the moors by myself, it was all part of growing up. It was during this period that I started visiting remote places many times with my mum and dad on Sundays, to places like Erme Head, Hawns and Dendles, Yealm Head and Fox Tor. It was on my first visit to Ducks Pool in 1976, in that long hot summer, that I found my first letterbox and I soon got the bug for collecting them.
When I was 16 some friends said can you take us on the moors, that was my first guided walk, then some neighbours wanted to go to Dartmoor and then other family members were keen to be guided across the moor. For the next couple of years I was visiting letterboxes at places like Crow Tor, Cranmere Pool, Cuckoo Rock, Combeshead Potato Cave and of course Fur Tor. Once I had been to these places with my dad, others wanted to be guided there as well and to other places. I first visited Cut Hill in 1980, I always remember the wet day I arrived at this bleak peat covered hill, 1980 feet above sea level. I didn’t take many photographs all those years ago so there are no photos of me leading walks in the 1970s or early 1980s.
So 50 years later I am still taking people walking on the moor, some have walked with me for over 30 years, they keep coming back for more, so I must be doing something right.