DARTMOOR’S TEN TORS – IN MINIATURE
Moor, in any order. The optimum route, the organisers suggested, was around 55 miles.
That first ‘ Ten Tors Expedition’ attracted 200 participants. Today, such is its popularity that its numbers have to be limited to 2400. There are multiple routes, divided into Bronze (35 miles), Silver (45 miles) and Gold (55 miles). It’s the ultimate endurance walk for young people in the UK. It is, by any reckoning, a classic.
But it’s not really a Country Walking sort of walk. So we wondered if we could create our own Ten Tors. The Ten Tors with a Twist.
With our other twisty walks this issue, the focus is on making the classic walk more of a challenge. Scrambling up waterfalls into secret places; staying out in haunted places after dark. This one isn’t. In this case, the twist makes the classic idea easier.
The real Ten Tors has to be completed in under two days; ours can be done in the passing of five hours. It’s 8 ½ miles, as opposed to 35-plus. But it takes in ten tors, it shows Dartmoor off at its most beautiful, and it passes some of the most famous tors, as well as some of the most poetically named.
It still takes a bit of grit and gumption: this being Dartmoor, there is a fair bit of upping and downing. And for the daring, at least two of the tors offer the chance of airy rock-hopping and even a careful scramble. But best of all, you have time to enjoy each tor without feeling like you need to rush off to the next one in order to beat those upstarts from St Torquil’s Academy who are hot on your heels.
So here, then, are your ten tors: Hay Tor, Saddle Tor, Rippon Tor, Pil Tor, Top Tor, Bell Tor, Chinkwell Tor, Honeybag Tor, Hound Tor and Smallacombe Rocks.
(Yes, pedants, I can hear you yelling that Hay Tor is technically called ‘Haytor Rocks’ and that ‘Smallacombe Rocks’ doesn’t feature the word ‘tor’. But then, the real Ten Tors frequently does the same thing. In the geological sense at least, every landmark on this walk is a tor, if not by name.)
So, by the right; quiiiick… stroll.
It all starts at Hay Tor, and if you happen to do this walk on a balmy weekend, you might wonder if the rest of the planet has decided to do it with you.
Close to multiple car parks and an easy climb, Haytor Rocks can be very very popular. And justly so; the two enormous outcrops that make up the summit are an adventurer’s paradise, so much so that parts of them have Victorian iron rungs fitted to them in order to make them more accessible.
But Hay Tor is a prime example of what we on CW call the Six Minute Rule. Head off the tor away from the car parks, keep walking for six minutes, and watch what happens. The crowds fall away; the picnickers and coach-trippers recede into the distance, noise abates, and Dartmoor becomes properly Dartmoor.
It’s still quite a busy place in terms of traffic, due to the latticework of roads that criss-crosses this eastern reach of the Moor between Widecombe and Haytor Vale. But as you progress over Saddle Tor and on to Rippon Tor, actual bipedal lifeforms become a lot rarer. Quadrupeds are far more common now; namely, ponies. Hither and yon they gather and chomp, utterly unfazed by the passing walker. Their favourite game is a sort of equine knockdown ginger, where they stand invitingly on the horizon, tempting you and your camera closer and closer, then pelting off just as you’ve assembled the perfect composition. They aren’t afraid of you. They do it for kicks.
Rippon Tor is a lonesome beast, flanked by a lone hawthorn in its outer boundary wall and topped by a lot of rubble that includes some Iron Age cairns. But it offers a spectacular view back towards Haytor Rocks – a view that fully justifies the longish, slowish climb. Then come Pil and Top in quick succession, followed by a bit of a stretch to the next mini-massif. The sequential trio of Bell, Chinkwell and Honeybag, together with the extra outcrop of Bonehill Rocks, are all part of Bonehill Down. From here there’s a fine panorama down
“The crowds fall away; the picnickers and coach-trippers recede into the distance, and
Dartmoor becomes properly Dartmoor.”
into the heavenly hamlet of Widecombe-in-theMoor, and across to the great bulk of Hamel Down.
A big hole in the Access Land necessitates a bit of a trudge at this point, as you skirt the perimeter of privately-owned Hedge Down and make for Hound Tor.
Hound Tor is beloved of scramblers and rock climbers thanks to its 40-foot high turrets, and was named for its apparent resemblance to a row of canine heads when seen from the north. Automatically the modern visitor wants to associate it with a certain Sherlock Holmes yarn, but in fact the tor most likely to have inspired the Baskerville-baiting action is Bellever Tor, a few miles to the west. That’ll have to wait for another Mini Ten Tors. Like Conan Doyle himself, we’re always up for a sequel.
Heading east on the home stretch, the route descends to the astonishingly well preserved remains of a medieval settlement, one of hundreds you can find across the Moor. This, though, must have been a real des res, sequestered in a gorgeous, woody hollow flanked by Hound Tor on one side and the splendid bastion of Greator Rocks on the other. (A scramble up onto the latter gives you an eleventh tor, if you fancy it.) The settlement was known as Hundatora at the time of the Norman invasion, proving that the tor’s association with ‘hund’ or ‘hound’ goes back 950 years at the very least.
A bit of a climb takes you out of the hollow and up to Smallacombe Rocks, the final outcrop of scattered rock on our Tiny Ten Tors, before following a medieval trackway back along the flank of Haytor Rocks and back to the busy buzzyness of the Haytor visitor centre.
I confess that, having passed the maximum age of 19 some time ago and not being schooled in the south west, I have not done the ‘actual’ Ten Tors. But it has always struck me that those brave souls who do take it on must reach a point where another tor is just another tor. An extra pile of rocks that must be negotiated and overcome, on the way to setting a decent time and beating St Torquil’s. And that’s a shame, because each of the thousands of tors across the Moor have their own character – or at the very least, their own attractions, be it a fabulous view, ancient historical hangover or scrambly rockface.
Isolating ten of them and linking them in a fantastic day walk shows that variety to its fullest, and throws in all the challenge and adventure that a ‘country walker’ (whatever one of them might be) could want.
And as I mentioned earlier, there being so many to choose from, a sequel is always on the cards. We’ve chosen these ten because they are pretty special and the loop is sweet and logical. But you might just get the bug for this malarkey, just like I have.
#Walk1000Tors? Now there’s an idea.