By: Blonde Two
Two Blondes Walking has an affiliate advertising relationship with Ordnance Survey

As far as I know, no detainees escaped from Dartmoor Prison during 2020. However, this year Dartmoor itself has been a place of escape for even more people than ever. These people haven’t been escaping from the moor, they’ve been escaping to it.

A Dartmoor walk with a difference

With more national lockdowns in place post-Christmas, Dartmoor might be an escape too far for you. So I thought I’d bring you my very own Blonde online Dartmoor Escape room. All you need is a map (Ordnance Survey Explorer OL28 or the OSMaps app) and a bit of patience. I’ll be publishing three clues (number one is below) to take us up to New Year when hopefully you’ll have found your way to safety in a beautiful and appropriately lonely spot on Dartmoor.

Work together or work alone but whatever you do, don’t let the patrols see you, and don’t linger too long, this is an ESCAPE ROOM after all!

Clue One

You’re in a Devon riverside town. You’re confused about your journey but you know you arrived by steam train. You’re standing outside what looks like an enormous golden church.

You need to escape to Dartmoor…

You have a choice…

Follow the river or follow the road.

You choose the river and walk upstream for about an hour. Just after a weir, you come to a road.

THIS ROAD IS BUSY, STAY OFF IT!

You take a footpath that heads briefly southeast then turns southwest and uphill. Following the fingerposts, you walk past trees and across fields until you reach a quieter road.

There’s a village ahead, you decide to wait until dark to continue your journey. As you sit down you find a small wooden box. A single word, ESCAPE, is engraved on the lid. Inside the box are an Ordnance Survey map and a message:

‘Not Pyg nor Ranger, not Watkin trails,

It sounds like it but we’re not in Wales.

Find these mounds then down below,

A hole where only miners go.’

What does it mean? Is it a trap?

You decided to sleep on and settle down under a hedge for the night.

 

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