This is a walk in an area that doesn’t get nearly enough pages on websites. I’ve said it before that if the tors, inside the square mile of Shaptor Woods, were out on Dartmoor proper, then you would have thousands of visitors flocking there. They are stupendous. So much so that a new book has now been written about them “East Dartmoor’s Lesser Known Tors and Rocks”. These ones in Shaptor Woods form a huge part of these lesser known rock piles, and it can easily be argued that the largest tors on Dartmoor are here on this eastern side. Tors such as Shaptor Rock and Rooks Hole Tor are absolutely huge and are made up of many massive piles of rocks. Others like Bearacleave Middle Tor (or just Bearacleave Tor on my list) or Sonny Copse Tor tumble down the hills for a hundred metres or more, each rock in the piles seem easily larger than a transit van. The nature of these piles make walking in the area a little tricky and it can be difficult to stitch together a walk which picks them off, there is a good path through Great Rock Wood, which only needs to be left briefly to join another path into Easterndown Copse. The same rule applies for Shaptor Woods, a path leads you in from the northeast, but then you leave it to pick off 3 tors, before joining again near Pixey Copse Tor, leaving again for another 3 tors before you walk a fair distance to John Cann’s Lane. That said you could easily just stick to the main paths and still bag 10 tors here and only leave the path by 20 or 30 metres at most. For us we wanted to see more of each of the tors and followed the piles downhill at times to find more and more outcrops, all in all we hit 18 tors in a fabulous days exploring. This has to be a must visit for any Dartmoor walker.

Start – Hennock parking

Route – Twizzle Tree Tor – Great Rock Copse Tor – Great Rock – Easterndown Copse Tor – Beadon Brook Bridge – Beadon Lane – Beadon Rock – Bowden Lane – Bowden Tor – Rock Copse Tor – Shaptor Rock – Lower Shaptor – Sonny Copse Tor – Pixey Copse Tor – Rooks Hole Tor – Stonelands Stack – Middle Stonelands Tor – John Canns Lane – Stonelands Tor – John Cann’s Rocks – Bearacleave Tor – Stonelands Waste Tor – Five Lanes – Hennock

Distance – 7.5 miles    Start time – 10am   Time taken – 6hrs  Highest Point – Shaptor Rock 259 metres

Weather – Sunshine piercing the canopy and big white clouds