Dartmoor photos II

We stepped onto the moor, on the trackway which led to Sandy Hole Pass, and although we had planned to go that far, as it turned out, we didn't as my husband had disturbed an old ankle injury when out running last week, and clambering over the rockier parts of this route did it no favours.  Anyway, this is the little streamlet which joins the East Dart just above the bridge at Postbridge.

It looks clear enough to drink doesn't it?  But possibly contaminated with liver fluke from the sheep and you never know if there's a dead sheep higher up!  Good for spotting baby trout though.

Rowan trees dot the moor though I think the berries will soon be gone from this one.  We were heading across the field to the gateway at the bottom of that little bit of woodland to the right.

To the left behind the Rowan tree in the photo above, this row of beech trees have grown many a long year.  There will be a gap in the middle now though as several were uprooted in a recent gale, and there was the angry buzz of a chainsaw cutting them up.

Just through the gateway onto the moor, the path passes close to the river, where it chuckles over the stones.

The view upstream from the same spot.

The path ahead - surprisingly dry, although there are always boggy bits to watch out for.

We used to fish for trout here, many years ago now, when my husband and I were first "an item".  We used to go down to the moor with our friend Stu, who was a keen and able fly fisherman and he and K used to hunt for trout.  I say "hunt", as the least shadow or heavy footfall will alert the fish and they will be gone like little arrows.  There is nothing quite so good as eating river-fed wild trout, cooked in foil in the embers of a fire made from dead gorse twigs picked a stone's throw away, and with just ten minutes between catching and eating.  They are SO sweet and we have never eaten supermarket/farmed trout since then.

I can't tell you how peaceful it was, with just the occasional chack of a Stonechat giving a warning.

I was sure that this was where we used to camp, but my husband tells me it was further back - we checked it out on our return journey and he was probably right.

Below: this was the spot.

The river, tawny from peat, as it flows downstream over the granite boulders.

A quiet spot to sit, back near the little gateway.  I picked up a small granite pebble near here - it had a band of charcoal coloured rock striating it.  It sits beside the computer now, a little piece of Dartmoor.  A bit like the bag of earth that Alex Haley's Kunta Kinte wore around his neck in the 1970s tv series, "Roots".  It's my connection with where I come from.

Wild Stonecrop growing between the boulders in a drystone wall.  There are many drystone walls across the moor.

Finally back to Postbridge, and then lunch in the East Dart Hotel close by.

Some final photos tomorrow.

The Hairy Hands

Halloween deserves a spooky story, and the spookiest I know is this one, of the Hairy Hands, which manifested themselves along a stretch of the Postbridge road on Dartmoor, near the Powder Mills. Before our children came along, my husband and I used to camp on the moor near Postbridge, up along the West Dart. It was a lovely spot to camp, not quite so much fun getting back to it across the moor after our evening meal and a few beers at the pub, as you could scarcely see where to put your feet, even with a torch.

Anyway, I always used to frighten myself silly that if I got up to answer a call of nature in the small hours, I might meet up with the Hairy Hands. I developed a long-distance bladder because my fear usually kept me in my sleeping bag!

The stretch of the B3212 where the Hairy Hands were "seen" is between Postbridge and Two Bridges. In the dreaming golden years before the start of World War I, a number of very strange incidents occured along this stretch of the road, mostly near to a farm known as Archerton. People on bicycles reported having the handlebars wrenched from their grip so they ended up in a heap in a ditch, and driven ponies went out of control with similar results. Worse still, a local man, Dr Helby from Princetown, was taking his two children for a ride in the sidecar of his motorbike and sidecar, and it veered out of control, killing the Dr but fortunately his children survived. Not long after, a similar accident happened when an Army officer was riding his motorbike along this same stretch of road. He was badly injured but lived to tell the tale - and what a tale he told - a pair of "large, muscular hairy hands closed over his own and forced him off the road."

This made front page news and soon the Daily Mail had reporters investigating the story, although a subsequent enquiry decided that the road had an adverse camber and so road repairs were carried out to remedy this.

The story had died down by the mid-1920s, when a lady who was parked at the side of this stretch of road in her caravan, saw a huge hairy hand crawling up the outside of her caravan window. Terrified, she made the sign of the cross and the hand disappeared . . .

The photograph at the top shows the first bit of intake land we would walk along to get to our campsite, which was beyond the furthest trees.