In attempts to bag any list (in this case my second round of Dartmoor tors/hills and Linda picking up her first) you can end up in some spots that aren’t that great. Back in April we did a walk around Trendlebere Down and to Water Cleave Tor, which was pretty rough to say the least, and more recently a really boggy bit of scrub land around Rugglestone Rock. This was another of these walks, and number 58 on my round 2 picking up Q9, Q10 and R10 on this route. The ground in the centre of Dartmoor is as wet as I’ve ever seen it at this time of year, and I doubt it will improve before the winter storms start rolling in during October. As we set off from Whiteworks we didn’t know it would be as bad as it was, and walking alongside the Devonport Leat we followed a good path that took us to Nun’s Cross, the path continues up towards Crane Hill before petering out on that hill. We’d managed to locate the Northmore Cross, a tiny little cross set into the top of a rock on this hill, and then we headed off to Plym Ford having stopped for a coffee near the source of the River Plym. Crossing the ford we climbed to Great Gnats Head before setting off across tussocks, boggy ground, long grass and a whole lot of featureless land towards Duck’s Pool. In previous years, alongside the historic letterbox placed here, there have been small yellow rubber ducks placed under the rock but these appear to have been removed. More barren lands took us down to Black Rocks and then on to Wollake Tor, truly some very isolated spots on Dartmoor. We had found some shorter grass on the walk to Wollake Tor and this continued north towards Green Hill, before again being replaced by tussocks and soggy ground. I rebuilt the cairn on Green Hill (as I always seem to do when I come here) before we headed off north, initially planning to get Fishlake Rocks and Nakers Hill. The terrain here was unforgiving and drained our energy, I canned the idea of Fishlake Rocks pretty quickly and soon followed that by missing out Nakers Hill, as the terrain deteriorated into acres of soft horrible bouncy ground. We wanted to just be out of there so turned towards Cater’s Beam (the hill) looking for the post that marks this area. If anything the ground around the post was worse, which says a lot as we’d walked a mile or so through thousands upon thousands of bog asphodel plants, their little yellow flowers providing the only feature in this area. finally we dropped on to the lower slopes of Crane Hill and a path back to Nun’s Cross and the Leat back to the car. So a very tough walk, and one that is unlikely to make any best walks list, but one that those with a positive mindset would call “character building”. At least it gave us some tough ground which would prepare us well for our Lake District holiday.

Start – Whiteworks parking

Route – Devonport Leat – Nun’s Cross Farm – Northmore Cross – Crane Hill – Plym Ford – Great Gnats Head – Duck’s Pool – Black Rocks – Wollake Tor – Green Hill – Cater’s Beam – Whealham Bottom Cross – Devonport Leat – Whiteworks

Distance – 10 miles  Start time – 10.45am  Time taken – 5hrs 15mins  Highest Point – Green Hill 473 metres

Weather – Lots of cloud, bit of sun at Duck’s Pool but not much really. Bog factor 5