DARTMOOR: The best way to see the country of the high moorland is, I am now convinced, from horseback. A docile eight-year-old mare carried me for three hours over Holne Moor and along the thickly wooded valley of the Dart and provided a morning of great delight. Early in the ride, descending from the moor to the river valley, we started a buzzard from the heather. The bird rose into the air and crossed the valley in gracious soaring and gliding. The silhouette of the buzzard is particularly appropriate to its function as a bird of prey – a menacing dark brown shape with broad wings upturned at the tips. Its loud mewing call which echoed in the confined valley was an eerie warning to small creatures on the ground.
On the moor again after a steep climb from the valley we found groups of wild ponies. June is a time when most of the mares have foals with them and as they apparently resent the approach of mounted horses it was wise to give them a wide berth. Skirting Venford Reservoir surrounded by its coniferous soil-holding belt, we climbed to 1,300 feet to see a fine panorama of the tors of Dartmoor spreading to north and east. Holne Moor is crossed by a regular line of upright granite blocks spaced at 200 yard intervals and augmented by occasional ancient Celtic crosses. The origin of these markers, which seem to fit with a direct line between Buckfastleigh and Tavistock, is obscure, but local legend believes them to mark a monastic route between medieval foundations at these two centres. On lower ground as we returned to the stables the hedgerows were rich in birdlife. Chaffinches and bullfinches abounded: I have never before heard such an assembly of cuckoos as the wooded combes of the moor hold this summer.
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