Walking on Dartmoor. Earle John
Cranmere the next best-known box is at Duck's Pool on the south moor which was placed there in 1938 in memory of William Crossing, writer of many books about Dartmoor, the most outstanding of which is his Guide to Dartmoor. By the 1970s there were some 15 boxes and the position of some were even marked on the one-inch maps of this period.
You are now probably wondering how the name letterbox arose. It developed from the idea that when you visited a box you left a letter already stamped and addressed ready for the next person who came there to collect and post in a conventional letterbox. The interesting thing was to see how long it was before your letter came back to you. In the early days of the 1950s when I walked on the moors it would often be weeks, especially in wintertime. As most of the boxes had their own specially made rubber stamp your letter would come back with a most unusual postmark! Sadly vandals and pilferers have been responsible for this custom no longer being a sensible or even a possible thing to do.
Since the 1970s some people would argue that the Dartmoor letterboxes have got out of control. There is no law to stop anybody who wishes from establishing their own letterbox and while there are some excellent ones with beautifully made rubber stamps, there have been, at times, over 1000 boxes scattered around the moor but many of these new boxes only stay out for a few weeks.
As I mentioned earlier a great many of the popular, well-known boxes are visited by vandals and have their rubber stamps stolen and the books defaced. It is no wonder that there is an air of secrecy about the location of many of the new boxes, to be divulged only to genuine box hunters.
Taken by and large there are probably about 450 boxes now on Dartmoor and a club has been formed called the ‘100 Club’ whose members are keen letterbox hunters who have found and recorded over a hundred boxes.
Climbing on Dartmoor
Wherever there is a climb or an outcrop of rock sooner or later man will want to climb it! Dartmoor is no exception and there is reference to climbing on the tors in a book called Climbing in the British Isles by the famous father of British climbing, Haskett Smith, published in 1894. In spite of this book there is no more recorded information about rock climbing routes on and around Dartmoor until 1935 when climbers tackled the great granite cliff of the Dewerstone and put up what are still considered the classic routes of the area: ‘Climbers Club Ordinary’ and ‘Climbers Club Direct’, both over 50m (160ft).
Buckfast Abbey, on the Abbot's Way
It was not until after the Second World War that there was an enormous increase in activity with climbers both on Dartmoor itself and at the Dewerstone. Mention must be made of one man, Admiral Keith Lawder, who pioneered a lot of the routes himself and whose infectious enthusiasm encouraged many young climbers to develop the area, and then documented all the new routes in the first professionally produced guidebook.
Both in the 1960s and 1970s there was another surge in climbing on the moors and many new routes were added and increasing numbers of people came to Devon to climb, not to mention a strong local climbing group and the instructors at what was then the Outward Bound School at Ashburton.
So as you will have gathered there is plenty of excellent climbing to be had on a great many tors from short ‘bouldering’ problems to longer routes of 100 feet and at all standards, while the Dewerstone offers a whole range of climbs in a magnificent setting high above the River Plym.
For those of you who are interested there is a guidebook entitled South Devon and Dartmoor, a Climber's Guide by Nick White, which covers all the climbing in those moorland areas and supersedes the previous guides published by the Royal Navy Ski Mountaineering Club and Cordee.
Walking on Dartmoor
Unlike many upland areas it is, of course, possible to walk anywhere you like on Dartmoor because of the character of the countryside. You do not have to follow ridges or valleys as you do in mountainous regions. You can choose a point and then walk more or less straight there, avoiding the bogs of course!
There are tracks marked on the maps of Dartmoor but to be honest they are really not much use except for a few like the Sandy Way and the early parts of the Abbots Way. The others are not always in the position marked and in any case they soon peter out and with the maze of animal tracks on the moor it is hard to decide which is the actual path. So on the whole it is better to ignore them because one always assumes that the paths are going to where you want them to go and very often they do not!
There is no reason why you should not plan your own walks to go to areas you wish to visit and places that interest you but I have outlined in this Guide some walks that I hope will take you to some of the exciting locations Dartmoor can offer you.
Both on my suggested walks and the ones you may plan yourself you might like to work on the formula known as Naismith's Rule for finding out how long it is going to take you. Naismith was a Scottish climber who in 1892 suggested that people walk at 3mph and that they had to add half an hour for every 1000ft they climbed (5km/h plus half an hour for every 300m of ascent). This really is only a starting point because in bad weather, or if you are unfit or carrying a load, or if the terrain is difficult you must take all or some of these into consideration and it is important for you to work out your own rule accordingly.
Dartmoor view with Great Mis Tor beyond
Dartmoor is deceptive country for walking. Because it is not a true mountainous region and looks like a rolling, undulating landscape, many people think they will be able to keep up with Naismith's fastest timings. This is just not possible because much of the walking on Dartmoor will take you over tussocks of grass, heather, bracken in the summer months, peat hags, marshy areas, gorse bushes, rocky slopes all within a few miles of each other. It is also impossible to get into that slow, rhythmical, steady stride that will keep you going all day and that is so important for easy walking. All the same try to keep a steady pace and with luck you may be able to average just over 3km/h (2mph). You should allow at least 10 minutes every hour to rest and look around and certainly more if you wish to stop and explore some of the points of interest I shall mention.
Avoid the really swampy areas (they are well marked on the maps) and also avoid the large clitters unless you have to thread your way through to get to a tor. The higher parts of the moor are not necessarily the driest but they may be better than the stream valleys.
So plan your route. Work out how long it is going to take you. Check the weather by telephoning for a forecast before you set out and then keep a ‘weather eye out’, as they say, while you are walking.
Check to see if there is any firing on the ranges, if you are going onto the North Moor, by looking in the local papers, post offices or telephoning if you have any doubts. Watch out for the red flags flying during the day and the red lamps at night on several high points on the edge of the ranges. Remember that it is dangerous to pass the line of red and white posts marking the boundaries of the ranges when there is firing in progress. (An address for information about firing on the Dartmoor ranges is given in Appendix B.)
Solo walking is a most exhilarating and worthwhile thing to do but it has its dangers. Ideally your party should be three in number, from a safety point of view, so that in the event of an accident one of you can go for help while the other stays with the injured person. I hope it will never happen to you, but if you do find yourself in trouble on Dartmoor with an injured person, or one of your party is suffering from hypothermia, or if somebody is lost you may have to call out the Dartmoor Rescue Group. To do this either ring 999 and ask to be put in touch with the police or go to the nearest police station and they will call out the rescue team. This is the normal procedure in all mountainous areas when you need to mount a rescue operation.
Some advice that I most certainly would not give for people walking in the mountains in other parts of Britain but that on Dartmoor would be quite safe, is to follow a stream or river down if you are really badly lost. It will take you off the moor to civilisation and probably a telephone.
Finally,