That sounds like you don't enjoy bleak places Bill. It might feel bleak if one is cold alone and lost but with all the comforts of a car and maps I rather like it. Last year we stopped at the pub where they were snowed in for about a month in 1962. The Hound of the Baskervilles was written or based there.
Bill Phillips: Dartmoor has never really been somewhere I have liked. I prefer Exmoor.
It is a bleak place but when twiddled to this magnitude small miracles can occur
Bill Phillips: It is only twiddled a little. It was rather a dull morning
Philine
Germany
27 Apr 2011, 07:51
Oh, I love the Dartmoor (seen in 2009 and 2010), and I could feel its special, a bit mysterious, even in summer some rough atmosphere, an almost magic loneliness and wideness- did you twiddle your picture? - I remember to have seen yellow patches of broom, a lot of sheep, horses, and the rocky tors..., the prison town Princetown at the horizon....
Bill Phillips: Not my favourite I confess Philine. I prefer Exmoor. The picture is slightly twiddled to compensate for it being rather a dull morning. The yellow is Gorse (Ulex europeas I think.) Broom is a closely related species as is Laburnum
This is a wonderful photograph Bill, it reminds me of The Hound Of The Baskervilles. Could you do one of your wonderful black and white conversions of this please?
Bill Phillips: This was going to be a b&w Stanley but when I did it I didn't like it! I'll have another go!
Philine
Germany
27 Apr 2011, 08:27
Yes, gorse and heather and grass, and the droppings of the Dartmoor ponies!
Dartmoor! thou wert to me, in childhood's hour,
A wild and wondrous region. Day by day
Arose upon my youthful eye they belt
Of hills mysterious, shadowy, clasping all
The green and cheerful landscape sweetly spread
Around my home; and with a stern delight
I gazed upon thee. How often on the speech
Of the half-savage peasant have I hung,
To hear of rock-crowned heights on which the cloud
For ever rests; and wilds stupendous swept
By mightiest storms; of glen, and gorge, and cliff,
Terrific, beetling o'er the stone-strewed vale;
And giant masses, by the midnight flash
Struck from the mountain's hissing brow, and hurled
Into the foaming torrent; and of forms
That rose amid the desert, rudely shaped
By Superstition's hands when time was young;
...
I thought on thy wild world, - to me a world, -
Mysterious Dartmoor, dimly seen, and prized
For being distant and untrod... (N.T.Carrington)
Bill Phillips: a fine piece of verse. The ponies have great appeal...but not their droppings
I would just like to hike the 'moors with a strong wind blowing, etc.
Bill Phillips: He had a sell off of surplus skies so i bought a job lot. The moor can be dangerous, the weather can change quite quickly and there are some treacherous parts.
Philine
Germany
27 Apr 2011, 10:19
Like Chad - we had a wonderful lunch in a rustic, old- fashioned pub ( I can very recommend) next to the old Clapper Bridge/Postbridge: I ate Shepherd's pie and Bread Butter cake! Yes, Jamaica Inn is told to be too touristic, sadly!
Bill Phillips: I went there many years ago with my parents and it was like stepping into the pages of the book. Some years later I took Angela and the girls when they were children and could not believe what they had done to the place. There was a pay and display car park! They had ruined the place. I will never go again
I don't know Dartmoor apart from one very short coach ride through part of it many years ago, but I do like your photo Bill, it gives a feeling of the bleakness it is famous for.
Bill Phillips: It does do bleak very well but, to be fair there are some very pretty parts too
I guess I've read too many Moor based novels, Bill, but this image makes me wonder how many poor souls have perished while roaming this desolate landscape.
Bill Phillips: Quite a few over the years Beverly and a number of youngsters have come to grief on the ten tors challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Tors
That sky makes it almost claustrophobic, Bill, in spite of the space!
Bill Phillips: It can feel very threatening Tom. I would not wander around on Dartmoor unless I was properly kitted out and with somebody who knew what they were doing
It's not somewhere I'm very familiar - far too many grockles head that way for my liking! In fine weatehr such as here I'm sure it can be appealing in some way. I do recall havinga rather pleasant cream tea in Widecombe-in-the-Moor in the 1960s.
Bill Phillips: In true Devonian fashion they don't like the grockles but are happy enough to take their money.
In my childhood we lived in a house on the Exeter by-pass in the days before the M5. It used to be nose to tail with stationary traffic in the summer.