By: Blonde Two

I have mentioned in a previous blog post that Dartmoor has many gates and towns that have the title “Gateway to the Moor”.  Most of these gates are quite ordinary, designed to keep some things in, some things out and to let (just a very few) of these things swap places.  Most of them are just plain old open and shut gates, lots of them are surrounded by deep mud and a few are a bit argumentative about being closed properly (obviously we always do).

We don’t have very many “kissing” gates on Dartmoor which is a bit of a shame as kissing can be so much fun.  The family Blonde Two insist on kissing when we go through one which can make things a bit tricky if I am have got my “family head” and not my “leader head” on when we are out on expedition.  Thankfully, I haven’t kissed any unsuspecting youngsters yet.  Neither, you will be relieved to hear, have I mistakenly kissed Blonde One.

On Saturday’s Blonde Dartmoor Bimble (five hours really is more than a Bimble), we were excited to be going to find some rather interesting sounding gates.  Owley Gate, we presumed would echo to a cacophony of mysterious hooting and be surrounded by big yellow eyes, peering out from dark trees.  Whereas Ball Gate would be kind of round and friendly, in the middle of a round wall which surrounded a round field full of round boulders.

We were quite wrong (obviously this was a bit of a shock).  Owley gate was, well, just a gate into a lane, although some of the nearby cottages did have owl type names.  Ball Gate, on the other hand, was both unexpected and impressive.  The photo tells the story but we Two Blondes feel that we should award it to our Gatekeeper who is not called Ed, but who does guard our blog with honour and valour.  There you go Gatey – a Dartmoor gate to be proud of!

Ball Gate