Dartmoor walk

Good walk on Sunday up on the moor (well a bit of it).  Parked up at Belstone (I used to love this place as a child as one of my favorite films when I was little was based there) and then walked down to the bottom of the East Okement Valley (you have to go under the A30, which is very noisy and really rather horrible, but once you get into the Valley you soon loose the sound of the road!).  The valley is lovely with the Okement running through it, burbling and bubbling over the rocks, forming deep pools and waterfalls.  There was hardly a soul about, a very magical place.

Eventually you come up onto the moor and we managed to leave the path and go straight up (for me) a rather steep hill; we did discover that of course there is a path which is not quite so steep!  We lunched in the shadow of Scary and Belstone Tors at the Nine Maidens (a stone ring); and then walked (I staggered as I have rubbish socks and had sore feet) back down to Belstone and a well deserved beer in the pub there.  I have attached a link to a rather nice descripton of the nine maidens and the folklaw attached to them.  http://www.devonperspectives.co.uk/belstone_ninemaidens.html

Belstone is probably our nearest access point to the moor and there is lots of walks you can do from there.  You do need to be fairly careful as there is a military firing range close by, but you can check the firing schedule on-line so you know which bits you can access and which bits you can't.  They don't seem to fire much on this bit of the moor anyway.  Seems like we have quite a few walks to do up there now which will be lovely.

Oh yes, nearly forgot.  As we were on our walk we noticed a sign saying 'Permissive Path', it of course means a path that a landowner can close if he wants to.  I must admit having visions of walking down the path and finding lots of 'liberal' activities going on! (permissive society!?). :)