By: Blonde Two

Have a look at this little patch of OL28.Map Yar Tor Area

You are looking at perhaps two kilometres of Dartmoor; a well known section that is intersected by (very lovely) roads.

So a very small percent of Dartmoor’s total acreage, and nothing too wild; but look again, how many delights can you see in just this tiny section?

I counted four sets of hut circles, two cairns, one cist, one stone row, one clapper bridge, one field system, one coffin stone, two tors, three hills and one farmstead. And that is just the things that are marked on the map!

We Blondes have found most of the above before both in the daylight and at night; but for some reason, I have never checked out the farmstead before. Yesterday, my Blonde Business Missions complete, I was sitting in the sunshine on the top of Sharp Tor when my landscape admirations caused me to notice a very distinct shape of rocks. Being Blonde, I had my map with me and did a quick bit of aligning (easy when you can see a reservoir, two other tors and a road!) I think it was the fact that the rock-shaping was marked as ‘farmstead’ and not ‘hut circle’ that made me want to go and investigate.Farm Enclosure Sharp Tor

Can you see it in the middle of this picture? You will notice that it is currently surrounded by bracken, you will not notice (because of the bracken) that it is only fifty metres away from the road.

I had to do a little bit of bracken fighting to get there (I have a feeling there was a path that I wasn’t on; but it was well worth it. It is a very solid-feeling structure made of large rocks, that you could imagine as an animal pound; smaller but similar to the one at Dunnabridge. If you look back at the map photo, you will see it just marked as a little circle to the right of the Yar Tor car park.Farm Enclosure Sharp Tor2

A little Dartmoor exploration and a little Dartmoor find; but fascinating and satisfying nonetheless. That’s what makes Dartmoor so endlessly entertaining, even Blondes won’t ever run out of things to find!