Tor Guide

A day exploring Tors, the geological features for which Dartmoor is well known. Erosion and weathering over 280 million years has created rocky outcrops which form bizarre shapes in the landscape.

I took the Tavistock to Postbridge road and first stopped off to find Vixen Tor, featured in the main image, and in an extra (with Great Mis Tor beyond, the shape looks very different from the other angle). I chatted to two separate people on my walk, so now know that this is the only Tor not accessible to the public. The private owner has fenced it off with barbed wire. A mass protest planned earlier in the year had to be cancelled because of the bad weather. The lady I chatted to - who has visited every Tor on Dartmoor and completed the Dartmoor 365 - had trespassed to complete her challenge.

Another extra - the top of Bellever Tor, surmounted by a trig point. There were a lot of German people visiting - when I visited the visitor centre at nearby Postbridge I heard that seven out of eight of the visiting coaches so far this morning had been German, and there were guidebooks in German in the little shop. It’s all to do with the huge popularity in Germany of the TV series there adapting Rosamunde Pilcher’s stories.