Lettaford and a walk in the East Moor area

 A pretty good weather forecast and just right for another jaunt on Dartmoor. And a wonderful time was had by all eight of us who walked. Not a wonderful set of photographs for this one as I only had my 'phone with me but there's enough to act as a record.

Dare I say that this route is one of the better ones we've done? We started at Bennett's Cross, just passed the Warren House Inn on the Tavistock to Moretonhampstead road, and headed out along the Two Moors Way, alongside Birch and Hookney Tors and across Coombe Down, to head down to West Coombe. From there we sort of contoured through a string of delightful ancient long-housed hamlets (West Coombe, Lettaford, Jurston, Lingcombe and Hurston) linked by trackways and footpaths. From Hurston, we climbed back onto the moor at Chagford Common and then returned to Bennett's Cross via the Hurston Stone Row. My GPS clocked 7.8 miles for this one and every step was enjoyable.

The line you can see is the track of the Two Moors Way as it ascends the side of Birch Tor. A rather breezy start to the walk at this point but it warmed up once we got going.

Looking southwards and a rather gloomy sky over Hamel Down and the Challacombe Valley - but we weren't heading in that direction on this occasion.

A Highland cow. These are a quite a feature of moorland grazing now as they can eek out a living on quite meagre pickings. Tourists have been known to travel miles to photograph them and, rather stupidly, have tried to pet them, with painful consequences. I keep a respectful distance from all farm animals, especially these 'muckle coos' (as they are known in their homeland).

Dropping down from Coombe Down into West Coombe with King Tor to the right. We'll have to walk up there one day as we've never done it.

Across the fields from West Coombe to Moor Gate. Was the large monolith there before the field boundary? I think it was - unless it's the biggest gate post on Dartmoor.

A rare example of a Devon/Dartmoor long-house at Lettaford. It dates from around 1500 and clearly shows the iconic configuration of domestic quarters to the left and animal quarters, downhill, to the right. The main door to the cross passage is just off centre. And there were others very similar at other places on our walk.

The small barn at the back of the long-house. Some of this dates from the 16th Century but most comes from the 18th. It is built of some fine ashlar granite blocks. This range of outbuildings of different ages reflects, most probably, the changes in agricultural practices over the years.

Lunch by the ford across the Curlicombe Brook, a tributary of the North Bovey river. Stepping stones one and a single span clapper bridge on the other so two ways to cross without getting your feet wet.

A slotted granite gate post. Pieces of wood would have been slotted in to form a barrier for livestock. The opposite post would have had a single slot to locate the cross pieces of wood. It must have taken a lot of effort to produce one of these gate posts but the raw material was to hand, labour was cheap, the skills were available and the result was good for a very long time. So, lots of advantages over making it in wood.

Heading back up onto the open moor via a pleasant footpath from Hurston. The footpath ended at the moor gate and we had to head off across this part of Chagford Down towards the general direction of where we wanted to go. The landscape means that it takes a while until you can get line-of-sight for your objective. All very reasonable if you are leading a walk but it must be a little unsettling for those following when the leader stops, ponders for a while and then seemingly meanders for a while. It's all under control and the meanders are just minor course corrections!

And this is where we came from. The Two Moors Way track can just be made out. Rather surprisingly it did not appear to be that well-trodden to me. Perhaps it's not as widely walked as I had assumed?

We walked passed a rather splendid double stone row on Hurston Ridge. It comprises some 100 medium-sized stones together with some small and large-sized stones situated on a north facing slope with extensive views. There is a cairn at one end and a blocking stone/menhir at the other. A nearby Neolithic settlement was presumably constructed at the same time.

Looking back over Chagford Down with the sun highlighted Chagford Beacon in the distance.

A timely reminder nearing the end of the walk that the landscape has been shaped by humans for many generations. Here the footpath took us through some open workings of tin mines, with a fenced-off shaft in the mid-ground. Just imagine, all of this gash would have been taken out by pick and shovel.

Everybody likes the tinkle of running water.

Goodbye. Thanks for visiting. See you again soon.

Are we there yet? No.

(Our recent trip to Scotland has renewed my interest in Scottish politics hence what follows....)

Fellow republicans, is it safe to come out yet? There is a rule of thumb (mine) that whenever a newspaper headline is framed as a question, the answer is invariably – No. And that is also the case with the question just posed. No, not as long as the media sees mileage in more sycophancy and mawkishness and the government sees it as a diversion from what they are getting up to.

But for now, despite the interminable post match analysis of the funeral, the Queue, Meghan Markle and the split between the Two Brothers, we can get back to real news, or at least what passes for real news in this sh*t-show of a Britain. The Prime Minister that none of us elected has started her first visit to the USA as British leader with an admission that a UK-US free trade deal isn’t going to happen any time soon — a very marked contrast to the repeated declarations of her predecessors, Boris Johnson and Theresa May, in the post-Brexit era, and the claims of the Brextremists prior to and after the EU referendum that a UK trade deal with America would be signed sealed and delivered within a few months of the UK leaving the EU. Our expectations have already fallen through the floor, yet Truss still feels she needs to manage them. There’s that confident global Britain for you.

If, as seems possible/probable, the Conservatives crash the Good Friday Agreement and spark off a trade war with the EU, there may very well be no US-UK trade deal at all. Biden has made it clear that the Good Friday Agreement must be protected and warned ahead of his 2020 election that if Brexit damaged the 1998 Good Friday Agreement he would not consent to a UK-US trade deal.

Also overlooked during the events of the past two weeks, Sunday was the eighth anniversary of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. The contrast between what Better Together promised Scotland in return for a No vote and what has actually been delivered is stark. Our friends north of the border were assured that Scotland would be a loved and respected equal partner in a voluntary union of nations, but now Liz Truss insists that the UK is not a voluntary partnership of nations, but rather ‘one great nation’. They were promised that only a No vote could guarantee Scotland’s place in the EU, yet here they are. Out in the cold, stripped of EU membership, citizenship and the freedom of movement and right to live and work in Europe has been sacrificed on the altar of the xenophobic immigrant hatred of the right wing of the Conservative Party and the Daily Mail.

Our friends were told that the devolution settlement would be safe and put beyond any Westminster meddling, but the British Government of Theresa May went to the UK Supreme Court to obtain a ruling that the Sewel Convention, that said Westminster needed the consent of Holyrood to infringe on devolved powers, had no force in law, even though it was written into the Scotland Act. Now the Conservatives are openly discussing measures to by-pass and undermine the Scottish Parliament. It’s only the threat of another independence referendum that prevents them from neutering Holyrood entirely and turning it into a toothless talking shop.

If a party or parties cannot be held to account for the promises that they made in order to win a democratic vote, then democracy is neutered and rendered impotent. The Conservatives are now openly discussing gerrymandering and undermining Holyrood in order to ensure that they can never be held to account, because they cannot win power in Scotland.

But never mind that it’s not just Scottish devolution that faces an existential threat from the most right wing Conservative government in history, but Scottish democracy itself. Just look at the flags and the parades and pageantry, bask in the British nationalist self-congratulation, and dive head first into the delusional denial that is now the UK’s understanding of itself. This is not the confident assured European democracy that Scotland was promised it could be a part of in 2014. This is a cruel and callous place which makes the poor pay so that the energy companies can rake in billions, a sclerotic polity which is well on the way to full blown authoritarianism.

It’s not safe to come out yet, and it won’t be until we find a way of escaping this madness.

Getting hot under the collar about energy price rises

Last Friday, the energy price cap rose by 80%, threatening (and this is not polemic hyperbole) unprecedented fuel poverty for millions of households, and destitution for hundreds of thousands of the poorest households who are already struggling with impossible choices between having heat and hot water in their homes or putting food on the table. Yet Friday’s devastating news was by no means the worst of it, as the energy price cap is predicted to soar by similar amounts in January and again in April. By then it is forecast that the average household could be looking at bills of £7000 a year. We are now reaching the point where, for many people, it will no longer be a question of struggling to pay their energy bills, it will simply be impossible for them to pay. If you take home the average UK annual salary of £31700, you are going to have to juggle soaring energy bills with rising costs of food and other essentials, increasing housing costs as interest rates go up, affecting mortgages, or rising rent bills. However, if you are on a minimum wage or dependent on benefits, the increase in energy bills means that you will just not have the money to pay, no matter how you budget.

This is a truly terrifying development for millions of people, yet the so-called ‘leaders’ of the British Government were nowhere to be seen when the news broke. No British Government minister was roused from his or her slumber to make the rounds of the TV studios and provide even a modicum of reassurance to worried and frightened people left to deal with the consequences of the meltdown of an energy policy which is the brainchild of that government whose leaders were last seen sunning themselves on a Greek beach.

We did, however, get a statement from the acting, or rather play-acting, Chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, saying that people needed to look at reducing their energy consumption. Glossing over the fact that this is pretty rich coming from a man who attempted to claim the heating costs for his stables on his parliamentary expenses (Zahawi’s horses will be warmer this winter than millions of families), it was a gob-smackingly arrogant statement which effectively tried to shift the responsibility for the catastrophic failure of the Conservatives’ energy policy on to those who are suffering because of Tory mismanagement.

According to Dr Sean Field, Research Fellow at the Centre for Energy Ethics at the University of St Andrews: “To put it bluntly – there is corporate responsibility in this, but this has been a catastrophic failure of political policy in the UK for the last 15 years.”

What all the various crises besetting the British state have in common is that they are the result of decades of British governments prioritising short term private profit making over the longer term public good - the promotion of capitalist policies over socialist policies which are for the benefit of the people - you and me. The crisis in England’s water supply is due in part to private companies which preferred to cream off profits rather than invest in fixing leaks and building reservoirs to store the winter rains. Problems have been ignored for decades. Even now the Conservatives prefer to pander to the fossil fuel companies rather than fund the transition to renewable energy and funding the insulation of the housing stock or other long term solutions to the energy crisis. Liz Truss talks about abolishing the Green Levy on fuel bills and her party wants to prohibit on-shore wind farms, because, apparently, those are the problem, not the profiteering of the oil and gas giants.

Remember that the Conservatives permitted the energy companies to give up on gas storage facilities, meaning that the UK is hugely dependent on ‘just-in-time’ gas supplies from Europe to meet domestic needs. This deprived the UK of the ability to store large quantities of gas when the international market price was low and leaves the UK more vulnerable to large rises in prices on the international markets. We got into this position due to a combination of corporate greed and UK government failure. While the international wholesale price of gas was low, it was more profitable for the energy companies to buy on the international markets than to invest in maintaining and repairing the storage facilities which existed at the time and the Conservative Government refused to grant a subsidy to help with the maintenance and repair costs of the existing gas storage facilities. The companies then announced that it was not cost effective to keep the storage facilities open and decided to close them down. The Conservative government compounded its sins by allowing them to do so.

We are now seeing those same companies reporting record profits while the Conservative wring their hands and bleat that “there’s a war on” even as they refuse to impose a windfall tax on the energy companies that could go a long way towards funding a freezing of the energy price cap. In this crisis, as always, the priority of the Conservatives is to protect the profiteering of the wealthy while ordinary people are forced to choose between freezing or starving. This is a catastrophic political and moral failure, the blame for which lies squarely at the door of the Conservative party.

Even now, the Conservatives remain missing in action, more concerned about their internal party politics than the disaster facing millions. Neither of the two leadership contenders have said what they intend to do to deal with a crisis of their own party’s making. Truss’s camp has hinted that if she becomes Prime Minister she is considering cutting VAT by 5% across the board. However VAT accounts for less than 5% of the typical energy bill so a VAT cut would do little to reduce energy bills to an affordable level.

A reduction in VAT is effectively a tax cut for the better off. If you wanted to put more money into the hands of the sort of people who have high levels of discretionary spending, and the higher the discretionary spending the more money they’d get, then cutting VAT by 5% is what you’d do. It will do almost nothing to help make energy more affordable. To save £1,300 from a 5% cut in VAT, you’d have spend £31,200 a year on stuff that incurs VAT at 20%. There is no VAT on food or children’s clothing. VAT is not normally charged on rent or mortgage payments. A cut in VAT does nothing to help those who can only afford the essentials, yet this is her big idea, her ‘nuclear option’. It’s only nuclear in the sense that it will not solve the problem and will leave devastation in its wake. Truss’s resistance to offering targeted support for vulnerable groups is terrifying and unforgivable. Public anxiety is now raw, the fear is naked.

Adam Scorer, chief executive of National Energy Action, a campaign group, told the financial news site Money Week that cutting VAT will do little to give consumers respite from soaring energy bills because VAT accounts for only a minor proportion of the overall bill. The only realistic solution, in order to prevent millions from being unable to heat their homes is a freeze on the energy price cap ,funded by taxes on the energy companies, as called for by the Scottish First Minister and Keir Starmer of the Labour party. Ideally the energy companies should be nationalised But only the British Government has the legal power and the financial authority to do so and the Conservatives won’t go there. They will protect their corporate donors no matter how many elderly or disabled people die of hypothermia this winter.

The whole debacle is a problem that can only be solved by government. But Truss won’t let humanity get between her and a burning ambition that makes her pander to the worst right wing excesses of the Conservative party. She is going to be a far worse Prime Minister than even Boris Johnson. The only question is how much damage she will do before she, in her turn, is finally forced from office. And she will be, she will be. 

A Dartmoor day and Shavercombe

 A glorious day for a walk on Dartmoor. Starting and ending at the well known ‘honeypot’ of Cadover Bridge. A bit of warm weather and the Janners stream out from Plymouth to picnic, swim in the Plym and enjoy the sun. The crowds can be a little off-putting but, walk a few yards from the parking areas, they disappear.

A little longer than anticipated, the walk ended up being 8.7 miles. The route was quite straightforward - up the south bank of the Plym and back along the north bank. But that simple description doesn’t do credit to the scenery and the history we walked through.

The River Plym, our companion for almost all of the walk. For most of its length in these parts, it has been subject to many diversions as the old tin miners used the flowing waters to wash unwanted ‘overlode’ away to reveal the metal-bearing rocks they were interested in. There is lots of evidence of these activities along our entire route and one can’t help wondering what the river bed would have looked like without this human intervention.

Yes, there is a path there somewhere. Good walking practice at this time of year is always to check your body for ticks if you’ve walked through areas of ferns. There seems to be a lot of the little buggers around this year.

What better spot for our mid-morning stop for tea and/or coffee? Not something that we can usually do.

Looking across the Plym to Ditsworthy Warren, one of the last places on Dartmoor to actively farm rabbits. It was a farm until around 1947 and is now used occasionally by the army for troops on manoeuvres. It featured in the film ‘War Horse’ and has gained a certain notoriety because of this. 

Looking slightly to the east of Didsworthy Warren, the bulk of Sheepstor is visible and the Tor with the point to the right is Sharpitor, which rises above Burrator reservoir. For most of the year, walking straight ahead from this point would result in wet feet as the valley bottom is somewhat boggy.

A Wheatear, looking quite plump, which is good as it will soon be migrating to overwinter in Central Africa.

The Shavercombe Brook waterfall at the top of the eponymous combe. A great place to stop for lunch as it is one of those spots with a ‘special indescribable feeling’. 

Looking back into Shavercombe. It’s a unique spot on Dartmoor and, despite being clearly marked on maps, it is actually quite difficult to locate. Maybe that’s why it’s relatively unvisited.

The Plym looking rather underwhelming after all the recent dry weather. At this point, it is usually impossible to cross without wading through a thigh-deep torrent. Not to be attempted by the sensible and certainly not by a rather ungainly septuagenarian. Septuagenarian? Gosh, that’s a sobering thought.

Some of our group standing next to the largest monolith/menhir in the early Bronze Age Drizzlecombe complex. It's about 15 feet high and is a hefty chunk of granite. Cairns, cists, stone rows, hut circles, monoliths - this area has them all. Of course, back when they were first erected, it is highly likely that the area was still afforested and they were built in clearing or, perhaps, on the edge of the trees. For anyone tempted to visit Drizzlecombe, be aware that access can be very boggy for most of the year and the route would have to be chosen carefully. Mrs P and I have tried to reach them several times from the Didsworthy Warren direction and have given up when faced with having to leap streams and wade through sphagnum bogs. Approaching from the north via the Eylesbarrow Mine area is probably the best bet when the conditions are against you and you want to keep your feet dry.

Two shots of the largest stone row at Drizzlecombe. No-one really knows what they were built for and the usual tropes are 'ceremonial' or 'processional'. Who knows? But it's always struck me that, for the typical double stone row, the space between the stones is rather narrow. So, the procession must have been in single file only! Whatever the reasons, it clearly took purpose, organisation and leadership to build these rows and were not insignificant undertakings.

We are looking here from Didsworthy Warren across the Plym to the slopes of Hen Tor. There are markings of the boundaries of a medieval field system but also, if you look closely, two elongated mounds. These are the remains of the rabbit warrens that the warriners of Ditsworthy looked after. The rocky terrain of Dartmoor is not the natural habitat for rabbits so we don’t see them as often as you might expect. There are hares around as well and they are even rarer to see.

Ditsworthy Warren house. It dates from the early 1800s and is a good spot to include in a circular walk. In the winter months, when the leaves are off the trees, it can look pretty bleak.

And this is what a little post-editing in Photoshop can do. Certainly makes for a more dramatic shot but not particularly realistic. A few tweaks and the blue sky becomes quite menacing.

The Plym, again, with the Warren in the distance. Someone has taken the effort to build a small dam, maybe to hold enough water back to make a paddling pool. Once the river is back in full spate, the stones will be washed away. Which is a good thing because such obstacles can stop small fish migrating up to the headwaters of the river to spawn.

Little Trowlesworthy Tor to the left and Great Trowleswothy Tor to the right. Well worth visiting for the remains of quarries, worked pink granite and the plethora of archaeological artefacts covering a couple of millennia. But not today!

Walking back along the north bank of the Plym. Can you spot Mrs P pushing her way through the ferns? Give it another two or three weeks and the ferns will be turning brown and dying back. The path becomes more obvious when this happens and remains so until the new growth starts next year.

The sound of the gentle tinkling of the Shavercombe Brook. Close your eyes and imagine that you are sitting nearby and this is the only sound you can hear.

Or, perhaps, the accompanying mewing of buzzards circling above. It’s the time of year when the parents  stop feeding the young and they have to start fending for themselves. I think it takes a while for the young to accept the new reality of independent living. Does that sound familiar?

Having had the political equivalent of a major p*ss up in the pub with Boris Johnson trashing the venue in the inimitable Bullingdon style and expecting the little people to clean the mess up, the Tories have now staggered home, still not ready to face the aftermath or deal with the consequences of their bad behaviour. With the likely election of Liz Truss by party members, a woman who was memorably described by former Conservative MP Matthew Parris as a balloon of vast ambition perched on a pin head, what the Conservatives are now doing is deciding that they fancy something to eat after all the booze and have put the chip-pan on - and fallen asleep.  Let’s face it, on her record it’s clear that Truss has no principles or ideology. For her it is whatever gives her power or gets her noticed. Every day is a new day for Truss and what she said yesterday has no bearing on today. A lot like her predecessor as leader.

The Truss campaign is far ahead of Sunak in all the polls of Conservative party members that have been published. Most polls have given her a lead in excess of 30%. There are only two weeks remaining in a contest that seems to have dragged on forever. Most of those eligible to vote will have already done so, and at this point it is vanishingly unlikely that Sunak could catch up, even in the implausible event that all those who are still to vote cast their vote for him.

Truss is so confident that the campaign is as good as over that her team have released details of who she is likely to appoint to her cabinet, so we have some idea of the mess that awaits us. An awful lot of barrels had to be scraped through to get to this lot. Kwasi Kwarteng, Suella Braverman, James Cleverly, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Kemi Badenoch will take key roles in the new cabinet under Liz Truss, according to a report in the Times. All of them are on the far right of a Conservative party that has moved increasingly to the right over the past decade. The far right John Redwood is tipped for a senior post under Kwarteng, the likely new Chancellor of the Exchequer. Kwarteng was one of the authors of the infamous Britannia Unchained polemic. Redwood is currently demanding that state regulation of water and energy companies be scrapped. Just imagine what these companies will do if they don’t face even minimal constraints. The privatised water companies in England are already pumping untreated sewage into the sea, Britain is literally sitting in a sea of shit. Meanwhile the energy companies are enjoying soaring profits as domestic energy bills go through the roof.

To a man and woman, this lot are demented pseudo-libertarian nutters who believe that the problems of the British economy are largely due to working class people not working hard enough. Their answer to the cost of living crisis is tax cuts. How can tax cuts for people who don’t pay tax help people who don’t earn enough to pay tax? They can’t, it’s nonsense. Tax cuts put money in the pockets of the better off. Hundreds of thousands won’t be able to afford their energy bills and we are facing a real threat of black outs during the coming winter. The Conservatives promised that their Brexit would deliver sunlit uplands but what they are delivering is unlit slumplands.

Like May and Johnson before her, Truss has no intention of governing in the interests of the UK as a whole. And is most certainly not interested in any idea of reconciliation with that half of the UK that voted remain, or the half of Scotland that wants independence. Truss intends to bludgeon the opposition into obedience. The European Research Group is now in charge. With Braverman as Home Secretary and Rees-Mogg as Levelling-up Secretary, it can indeed be even worse than the unholy trilogy that was Johnson, Patel and Gove. We are about to experience an even deeper dive into the stinkpit of unthinking Tory bigotry. Truss promises a disunited Kingdom weighed down by the hateful uselessness and vindictiveness of what it pleases itself to call a government.

Suella Braverman is tipped as the next Home Secretary, a woman who makes the current incumbent seem reasonable and empathetic by comparison. And you thought Priti Patel was terrifying. Braverman wants to dump the ECHR, she is heavily involved with Freeports and Charter Cities that will be sold off to private firms who will be able make up their own rules and will not be bound by rules on holiday or sick pay, minimum wages, or the right to unionisation.

Jacob Rees Mogg is likely to be appointed Minister for Levelling Up. That sounds like a joke, and indeed it is, although Truss is apparently deadly serious about it. That’s the Rees Mogg who said that he would not serve in any government except Boris Johnson’s. He has also changed his mind about there having to be a General Election if Johnson was deposed as leader and replaced with someone else. See, you ARE allowed to change your mind from a previously espoused political position. But not you Scotland, not you.

Rees-Mogg, who questioned the common sense of those who were killed in Grenfell, is now to be put in charge of the department managing the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission. It is difficult to imagine a more perfect image of this entire chip pan fire of a government than a performative fake aristocrat in a Victorian frock coat being given the job of improving regional inequality. The idea of Rees-Mogg being in charge of levelling up is as bizarre as putting George Michael in charge of driving lessons. Still, as far as Truss is concerned, Rees-Mogg will be ideal for the job since we all know that to this Conservative party ‘levelling up’ means withdrawing much needed funding from deprived inner city areas and giving it to leafy Tory districts like Tonbridge Wells.

It’s only going to get worse in Liz Truss’s Great British chip pan fire. Buckle up. We are in for a bumpy ride. We should all be afraid, very afraid. We deserve better than this shitshow.

A walk on Bodmin East Moor - away from the madding crowds.

Another dry day without the recent high spots and Bodmin East Moor was the target for our walk today. A select band of only five of us this time but, what we lacked in quantity, was more than made up in quality. The rest of our usual walkers missed a good one but one that wouldn’t need much arm twisting to do again. This part of Bodmin Moor is definitely off the beaten track and sees very few visitors. In fact, we've never come across anyone else on our walks and today was no exception. Bodmin Moor vs Dartmoor? Both but it depends where and when you go.

We started out in a lay-by adjacent to the Bastreet Water Treatment Works (our water comes from there) and then dropped down along the lane to Tolcarne. From there we skirted the edge of the moor and ascended Fox Tor. After finding our way to the Nine Stones Circle we walked over the ridge back to the cars. It was just under 7 miles and a good varied route to take whatever the weather.

The view from our starting point - open moorland with a generous covering of gorse and ferns. If the navigation worked out correctly, we'd come down from this ridge at the end of our walk.

A leafy lane leading up onto the moor. Originally it probably took cattle up from nearby Tolcarne Farm for grazing.

The flower spike of Umbilicus Rupestris - Navelwort or Pennywort. The young leaves make a tasty and crispy snack when you are walking along. 

Clitters cottage - definitely off-grid. Not abandoned and still used occasionally by the owners.

The porch is constructed of some very impressive slate slabs.

Slates so unique that the owners improvised when it came to fitting shelves for wellies etc. Suspend them from the rafters on lengths of baler twine.

This pair of Tilley Lamps seemed natural subjects for a monochrome shot. I remember my paternal grandmother using these when I first visited her original bungalow in Woodingdean, outside of Brighton.

Some deciduous leafy shade.

Some coniferous needley shade.

The River Lynher at Trevague Ford. The clapper bridge is a two-slab construction and dates from the 19th Century, so mo particular antiquity there. Once upon a time, there was a large mill nearby and, so my sources told me, even a village green. All very quiet now and rather nicely isolated. At this time of the year, the ford is easily walked through. If you want to read more about the course of the Lynher, you can no better than head for the Blog of our friend and neighbour, Mary Atkinson. You can find it at: https://maryatkinsonwildonline.blogspot.com/2021/04/cornish-rivers-1-lynher-in-spring.html

'X' does indeed mark the spot where we were heading - Fox Tor standing at 323 metres (1060 feet). It’s all uphill from here!

This year has not been a good year for butterflies and we came across comparatively few on our way around. Here's a Red Admiral and a Meadow Brown enjoying the sun.

Approaching the trig point on the summit of Fox Tor. Not a particularly slog to get up here, more of a steady incline with a steep bit at the end.

But it’s worth the effort for the panoramic views. Fox Tor is the 10765th highest 'peak' in the British Isles  and is the 1539th highest in England. Hardly vertiginous. Whilst dealing with numbers, this trig point is documented as the 812th most visited in the UK.

And we are heading to that ridge in the distance but not by the direct route as this would take us through some very marshy ground. Been there, done that, got the wet socks. For most of the year, the area is one large bog and must be treated with care. In the ‘wet’ season (most of the year, really), following well defined animal tracks is generally a good idea. And avoid any areas of Cotton Grass as this likes getting its roots wet.

I'm not great at identifying orchids but I think both of these are Heath Spotted Orchids. We hit a patch when there were lots of these but they were the only ones we came across.

The Nine Stones circle is the smallest of its kind on Bodmin Moor. It was heavily restored in 1889, when only two stones remained erect whilst the others were recumbent. Who knows how accurate the reconstruction was but I always think it looks rather eerie in its isolated position. Usually, it’s standing in the middle of a pool of water as it’s so damp up here. Nowadays the stones function as a series of rubbing posts for cattle - a modern use for a Bronze Age monument.

The East Moor is well used for grazing by the local farmers and there are usually lots of sheep, cattle and horses to be seen.  Cows and their calves are generally to be approached with an appropriate level of caution.

On the ridge before dropping back down to the car. A little hazy in the distance but that's where Plymouth Sound can just be made out.