This spring, I had a trip to Dartmoor to go walking and completing a few letterboxing trails. (I covered my walk around Sourton Tor a few weeks ago here: Walking Sourton Tor in Dartmoor - Jenikya's Blog.) One of the walks was located around the vicinity of Little Links Tor. The trail stuck to the lower areas of the tor and did not go all the way to the top of the tors. Walking this area was difficult as there were several boggy areas. The walk started at a public car park behind Okehampton Inn near Sourton. We walked down the trail and crossed a stone bridge in the stream.
The start of our walk...Arms Tor in the distance on the left
The trail took us around the west of Arms Tor, where we saw a railway bridge walkway (though we did not go too close to this). We also passed over a settlement of some sort, where we saw manmade mounds of dirt and a lot of large stones. Some of these had been half-buried by vegetation.
Settlement
We also came across a couple of natural springs near the settlement, and the water looked quite deep. A lot of the area coming off of the tors was boggy, and we sometimes walked around as much of this as possible, though this was difficult to do. We were not wearing our walking boots as our feet had blisters from wearing them the previous day.
This may be Arms Tor
We travelled between Arms Tor and Great Nodden, a very large loaf-shaped brown hill that pokes up from the land. In the photograph below, Great Nodden is on the left. We are fairly high up on Arms Tor in this photograph.
Great Nodden from Arms Tor
Of course, we were hunting letterboxes. We had a charity letterboxing trail. The stamps were all designed as sheep.
Letterboxing stamp
A spring and Great Nodden
One of the areas around the tor (Arms Tor) had a spring, and I did not notice that the spring had carved out a large passage hidden underneath rock and clitter. My foot fell all the way down to solid ground. It was as deep as my thigh. Luckily, I did not get hurt. Now I know why people use walking sticks.
Views over Dartmoor
The views from the tor were pretty.
More views of Dartmoor
On one stop for the letterbox clue, we were not too far from Dartmoor ponies. They were a few hundred yards away, but it was still a little too close for my liking. We tried to hurry as they seemed to be a little curious. I suspect that they were hungry and wanted food, but something did not seem quite right. We then saw one pony run and attack another one. We moved on pretty quickly after that. After we were on our way, I looked back and the pony was sniffing the ground where we had sat to press the stamp in our book. I think that the pony was hungry and wanted to fight or warn off the other one. However, the pony would have been disappointed as we did not eat anything or leave any food.
Dartmoor ponies
Great Nodden and a spring
We have another trail that goes around the top of the tors here, but we did not get to complete it as we wanted to get going as we had to go to work the next day. I plan on going back to Dartmoor before autumn to complete a couple other trails. I am hoping that the bogs dry up a little bit; this was not my favourite place to walk as there are so many bogs.
Tor
On the way out, I took a photograph of Widgery Cross on the top of Brat Tor.
Widgery Cross on Brat Tor
We were lucky with the weather on Dartmoor again, and I am hoping that we choose a good long weekend next time we venture over to the area to complete some additional walking trails.
Leave a comment