Looking down from Lynch Tor, I see the valley spread below, lush, green and beckoning us onward. Legs tired, water running low, and still a fair way to walk. The map shows a well-defined path leading down a valley between two ridges, and seeing the same on the ground we take it. Some way down the path, the next turn per the map just isn’t there and so we improvise. In a rapidly escalating instance of muddled thinking we try to fight our way down through the fields where the path should be. Cows block our route – my 11 year old companion is frightened of the lumbering beasts which are many times his size. Field boundaries on the so-called path have no crossing points and we are eventually coralled in the corner of one field by the bovine hoard.

My water is exhausted, the demands of liquid to lubricate the brain to navigate our way out of this fix having taken their toll. I have to broach the boy’s supplies, or we won’t get out of this mess. Miraculously, his Camelbak is still well-topped up – the boy is a camel himself. We battle back through the field to a recognised path and my brain now better oiled scrutinizes the map once more. Suddenly it comes to me what has happened – we wanted a path heading down into the valley with a ridge to the right, and seeing one we took it. Unfortunately, it was one ridge too early. We’re in the wrong valley. White Tor, now correctly identified as such, looks down on us seemingly mocking our derisory efforts to find our way off the moor. A decision is made to correct the situation by climbing the Tor. We stumble our way up as the sky begins to weary of supporting the sun. We barely pause at the top before we head down, finding the security of the path very quickly. But it’s the path to Cudlipptown we’ve hit and we find ourselves on a road there soon after. A slow sunset trudge along the lanes to Peter Tavy and the campsite ensues. Darkness is closing in and mountain rescue are close to being called as we make it back to the camp site. My several calls and texts back to base have either gone ignored or undelivered. Hot sweet tea is the order of the day as I try to make sense of what happened. Blame is set fair and square on the Harvey’s Dartmoor map for not showing field boundaries. Of course, whilst the lack of detail just when we needed it didn’t help, the real fault is in not reading the terrain, not judging distances properly, and simply seeing what I expected to see. Even so, I’ve never used a Harvey’s map for critical navigation since. And that evil Dartmoor, lying there looking so innocent, but really just lying in wait to catch you out…

That of course was a tale from my first foray into walking on Dartmoor in 2008. Things have changed since then. For one, I’ve done a lot more hillwalking, I’ve developed better skills, and gained more confidence. I’ve also been back to the Moor (you may have noticed), and the old fear of the place has long since vanished. Dartmoor is not the evil malicious trap that I perhaps once thought it is. Sure, what looks like a benign rolling landscape can catch you out if you are foolhardy, or if it’s in one of it’s dark moods, but it’s not lying there with the express intent to ambush me.

A few recent walks have taken me close to White Tor, but it has remained a disturbing memory of the past. Today though is time to confront my nemesis…

Continue reading “A Nemesis and the Noble and Ancient Art of Tor-sitting”