The Forest Inn...
muddy boots and dogs welcome. Can you imagine a more
welcoming invitation?
For those of you
who have found the Forest Inn, congratulations! On
a remote road off a remote road road in the middle
of the remotest part of Dartmoor, this is not the
kind of place you just stumble across. We only found
it because the landlord failed to completely conceal
a small directional sign in the ditch alongside the
slightly less remote road. We almost missed it.
This is one of
those pubs where you feel at home. The landlord promises
to get some different whiskies in for you next time.
The chef comes out to chat with you. The pub dog,
Kipper, plays fetch in the middle of the room. You
almost wish for a snowstorm to leave you all stranded
there for some extended period of time.
Standing
across the road from the Forest Inn is the Hexworthy
Cross. Because Dartmoor is dotted with hundreds of
ancient crosses and markers, your thought immediately
leap to having discovered a cross of great antiquity.
Unfortunately not. The cross is was put up in 1897
in celebration of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. It is
pretty though, made out of Dartmoor granite by the
Messrs. Duke stonemasons.
Not that there
aren't stones of some significance. Most of the stones
are waymarkers as roads were more or less nonexistent
in days gone by and when the monks from Tavistock,
Buckland or Buckfast had to move around it was good
to be reassured every once in a while that they were
indeed headed in the right direction.
These historical
monuments have been open to abuse for centuries, as
some may be a thousand years old. Many are just the
right size to make a gatepost, or a small stone bridge
over a stream. Many have been lost to such vandalism,
but good people recognize that we need to preserve
this kind of stuff and are working towards that goal.
There is a wonderful website dedicated to the Dartmoor
Crosses, and I do recommend simply browsing through
the 151 crosses they have logged there.
Today, Dartmoor
is for the most part a bleak, forbidding place. Certainly
anyone entertaining the questionable idea of hiking
across Dartmoor would be strongly advised to take
considerable precautions: the correct gear; food &
water for several days; to let people know where you
are leaving from and when you intend on arriving at
your destination; and so on. It is not terrain to
be taken lightly.
However, in prehistoric
times, 30,000 years ago or so, Dartmoor was relatively
well-populated and had a much more benign environment
in between occasional advancements of ice sheets.
Indeed, Dartmoor has the single-highest concentration
of pre-historic remains in all of Europe, 2,500 artifacts
and counting. These would include stone circles, hut
circles, villages, barrows, tumps and the mysterious
stone rows.
More people lived
on Dartmoor in BC than in AD. There was a big old
cataclysm around 9,000BC that dramatically changed
Dartmoor and gave rise to the peat-bog moors we see
today. The cataclysm, whatever that may have been,
wreaked rather large amounts of havoc, changing the
position of the poles, flooding the North Sea Plains
and sinking the North Atlantic land mass.
All in all, Dartmoor
is a fascinating, little-visited place, a kind of
wilderness in the middle of a densely-populated country.
It is different to almost everywhere else in the country,
and should be experienced. Just watch out for the
puma.
