#Dartmoor-if
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rachelburch.bsky.social
Although my pictures look like they’re in the wilds they’re not actually very far from country lanes and I’ve found country lanes make lovely photos in themselves.
So if you see a weird looking woman laying or kneeling by a road with a camera on western Dartmoor
That’ll be me 😃, thanks for reading.
January 13, 2026 at 7:42 PM
phoebebarnard.bsky.social
Next week, book talk with #TimLenton on #planetary #TippingPoints +his new book Positive Tipping Points: How to Fix the Climate Crisis - if you're in the Exeter, Dartmoor, Plymouth, Torquay areas.

talk: www.ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/bov...

book: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/posi...

@jamesgdyke.info
January 13, 2026 at 5:27 PM
terriwindling.bsky.social
Lottie this morning, looking out the window at the dismal Dartmoor weather and wondering if she would get a good walk today. Reader, she did.
Photograph: Lottie, a three-year-old Sprocker spaniel, sitting on an Arts-&-Crafts bed surrounded by William Morris pillows. She loves her life in a small rural village on Dartmoor (Devon, UK).
January 11, 2026 at 2:24 PM
dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social
Entry from my diary, December 2020.

(More info in the alt text about the - extremely charismatic and opinionated - river)
As I write these words, the rain has not stopped for days and the river directly outside my kitchen window is filling up again. I put my trust in what I know of the stone bridge just a little further up the hill. It’s been there for centuries, and remains in one piece. But late last week, after one particularly insane day of bucketing sky water, the river reached a new level of rage. It was hurling itself through the gap under that bridge, shrieking blue murder, as if the sea, 15 miles away, had killed its entire family and it could think of nothing but revenge. I went to sleep with its white noise all over me. At 2am, my cat Roscoe woke me up, asking to go out, but when I went downstairs and opened the back door, she reversed back into the house, terrified. She probably thought a monster was outside, and was, in a way, correct. I stood on the balcony above the water. The writhing white shapes below looked like livid swimming ghosts. In the even louder bar of howling sound, I could hear the boulders beneath the surface grinding, forced against one another, again and again, by the current. The water would need to have risen another three feet or more to reach the balcony, and I’m told it’s never got that high, but I have never felt more expendable. The force and fury of those ghosts could have obliterated anything in their path. I no longer thought Roscoe was being a wimp. I did not want her out here. It was a dark and special magic to stand above those ghosts, but very frightening. Next summer, when I sit out there with a book, with trickles and burbles and babbles below me, I will not be able to remember how it felt, just as we can never properly remember how we felt at any time in the past, how the vagaries of weather, seasons, landscapes, buildings, people, misfortunes, years, energies, shaped us at that exact moment, before the moment stretched out, blurred and was gone. All we can do is maybe write it down and try to get somewhere close. A photo I took of the river outside the house I rented on Dartmoor between Nov 2020 and Sept 2022. This was probably 3.50pm ish and the water was just getting warmed up. By evening I was genuinely scared it was going to come into the living room. The river - a small but extraordinarily opinionated one, which, a few miles downstream, flows into the more famous Dart - is called the River Mardle, which translates as River Gossip. Sometimes as I listened to it in spate on scary winter nights like this I would become convinced that I could hear all the moor's tormented dead souls yelling at me at once as they tumbled down the steep valley from the high moor, and it inevitably bullied its way into Villager, the novel I was writing at the time. I feel that, particularly, the chapter Papps Wedge (a lot of people's favourite, and without doubt the most ambitious thing I'd written at that point in my career) is saturated in its personality, even though the river in that chapter is a different river, set on a moor in an alternate dimension. The house - a narrow two bed converted barn - had rotten floorboards, a little old balcony we were convinced was going to give way beneath us every time we stepped on it, was very draughty and dark and difficult to heat. But the rent was less than a grand a month, which I think was more than worth it, just for the inspiration. I miss it a lot.
January 11, 2026 at 12:27 PM
henrieke.bsky.social
Dartmoor also had 'timber wolves', Northwestern wolves apparantly, until 2019. Here if zoos have American wolves they tend to be the (near) black or (near) white ones.
One of my books happens to show an Eastern wolf that looks a lot like the photos, and they're also often called timber wolf.
January 10, 2026 at 3:30 PM
dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social
"As I drove the moors I picked up many hitchhikers: ex-criminals, vagabonds tossed aside by society, drifters who'd seen the darkest side of life while sleeping on its damp, flea-ridden futon. They told me their stories & I felt enriched, sensed my mind opening even wider to the road & its magic."
I picked this sheep up on Dartmoor. All it did was hand me the address of a farm in the Scottish Highlands, put on the 1984 album 'Steeltown' and sit there in total silence for the next 13 hours. I was not feeling talkative that day so that was fine with me, although I was disappointed to find that I'd misremembered, and 'Steeltown' was not actually the album with the hit single 'In A Big Country' on it. This cow asked me if I could take her to Kidderminster and I told her that unfortunately I was going in the other direction. This was in fact a lie. Kidderminster was, by pure chance, exactly where I was heading: not for any official reason, but because I'd never been and had always been intrigued by what I'd find there. But I had a bag of apples on the passenger seat and couldn't be bothered with the hassle of moving them. My heart sank as this donkey sauntered over to the car and I prepared myself to politely reject his request for a lift. Thankfully, I was mistaken and he merely wanted to compliment me on my taste in music (I'd had Murray Head's 1984 hit 'One Night In Bangkok playing at the time).
January 9, 2026 at 8:00 AM
bpsmithuk.bsky.social
This lease on Dartmoor prison was signed by *the Tory Government* in 2022, who didn't care about prisoner welfare.
Radon *is* dangerous, & present in any building built above granite, but its only a problem if it builds up.
Its easy to disperse with fans.
www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
‘Catastrophic’ MoJ leasing of jail with toxic gas set to cost more than £100m
MPs criticise 10-year deal struck in ‘blind panic’ to rent Dartmoor prison, where high levels of radon had been detected
www.theguardian.com
January 7, 2026 at 11:01 AM
jessstilllife.bsky.social
Very weird but beautiful ice hair fungus, which forms from ice crystals and the fungus Exidiopsis effusa in rotting wood. You can find it if you’re lucky in Dartmoor’s damp woodlands in temperatures just above freezing
#FungiFriday #Dartmoor
January 2, 2026 at 12:09 PM
darklyadapted.bsky.social
Every time I go for a walk on #Dartmoor, I worry about the radioactivity.

This is a lie. I don't, but if you're buying a property in large parts of #ThatDevon, the presence of radon is a potential issue.
hookean.bsky.social Dr Dan Jones @hookean.bsky.social · 12d
To put these into perspective, here are 20 activities showing their equivalent radiation dose in terms of eating bananas
#iTeachPhysics
#Science 🧪
January 2, 2026 at 11:10 AM
dpadartmoor.bsky.social
If you haven't read our brilliant Wild Words #magazine yet, perhaps now is the time! It features over 50 atmospheric, exciting and inspiring pieces of #writing inspired by #Dartmoor and written by people who love this special landscape.

dartmoorpreservation.co.uk/wild-words/

Image: David Bates
January 2, 2026 at 8:30 AM
britishweather.bsky.social
Only snow in S England this morning so far is around parts of Surrey. Light snow on higher parts of Dartmoor. If you have any snow pix from in and around Britain please post on timeline especially Scotland #snow
January 2, 2026 at 7:38 AM
judew.bsky.social
Absolutely!! I would die of shame if I needed to be rescued on Dartmoor in joggers and trainers!
January 1, 2026 at 5:14 PM
hagenilda.bsky.social
If you have one New Year resolution, make it 'follow Rachel and look at her stunning pics of Dartmoor'
rachelburch.bsky.social Rachel Burch @rachelburch.bsky.social · 14d
Here are four Dartmoor paths or roads from 2025 to take us into 2026 🙂. Happy new year !
Holloway at Lettaford, sheep, Lynch common, Brentor church, and lane at Burrator. #Dartmoor #Devon #landscape #nature #photography
Four paths from winter to autumn
January 1, 2026 at 10:35 AM
dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social
As a slight deviation from typical end of year "best of" lists, here are my top four footpaths of the year.
Hell Lane, in Dorset: a fabulous holloway just west of Bridport. If you scan back to November on www.tom-cox.com you'll find some writing about this amazing place. A fabulous rocky footpath that climbs up to the southern part of Dartmoor. Much steeper than it looks. Sometimes you'll find two entirely different weather systems at the top and bottom of this. A perfect example of a spring footpath, flanked by wild garlic. The beckoning tree on the left talks, but only if it is in a good mood, and there are no tourists around. A stile, forming an interdimensional portal in a hedgerow, with Dartmoor behind it, on a perfect summer day.
December 31, 2025 at 9:22 AM
apricitymends.bsky.social
No, I’m saying nearly everyone says thanks near where I live, he was the exception, I live on the edge of Dartmoor and it’s not that bad, as soon as you hit the country everyone’s a lot more friendlier for some reason. If you meet a tractor and trailer it can be a pain in the arse.
December 30, 2025 at 8:31 AM
forestcollectiv.bsky.social
🧵/
While we're here, and its a bit of a jump - but a lot of the Hillforts around Dartmoor & Devon ended up with Norman Mottes built into them centuries later,
also - the series is just a good twixtmas watch if you're at a loose end

its here >>>
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvmu...
So why are there no Hillforts on Dartmoor ?
YouTube video by Forest Archaic Collective
www.youtube.com
December 29, 2025 at 8:24 AM
dpadartmoor.bsky.social
If you aren't able to get to the moor physically at the moment, we will be sharing some more of our fantastic Wild Words recordings between now and the new year.

Here's 'Wistman's Wood' by Jan Gayton, read by Nick Pannell:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTEK...

#dartmoor #natureconnection #wistmanswood
Wild Words: Wistman's Wood by Jan Gayton read by Nick Pannell
YouTube video by Dartmoor Preservation Association
www.youtube.com
December 27, 2025 at 11:25 PM
garybrannan.bsky.social
Tales of Old Dartmoor, if memory serves
December 27, 2025 at 8:51 PM
lomelindi12.bsky.social
I’m in Tavistock with aunt, so not fully Dartmoor kitted up as I would be if hiking
December 27, 2025 at 12:21 PM
catframpton.bsky.social
It’s easy to push them aside if the mild air barely stirs, and the midges dance in the low winter sun. Or when the solid rain drums down. But this year was different. Fierce icy and wild wind, throwing itself over the hills, racing by, then quiet, then back again and again. Unsettling weather.
⬇️
A sketch of the wild weather on Dartmoor
December 26, 2025 at 9:35 PM
lomelindi12.bsky.social
There’s a #Dartmoor feed here - we’d all be happy to make suggestions if you give us an idea of the kind of visit you want ie general walking, hiking, prehistoric sites, etc
December 26, 2025 at 3:45 PM
williamnb.bsky.social
I go out on Dartmoor a lot, sometimes in crappy weather. I *always* know what the forecast is, and base my decisions, and often my routes, on that.
Accidents can and do happen: on a solo hike, you can slip and break your ankle.
Barring something like that, I'd be mortified if I had to get rescued.
December 26, 2025 at 11:17 AM
jacobitebyname.bsky.social
Have you ever tasted wreckfish? 'Cherne' in Portuguese. First time I had it in UK was at Two Bridges hotel on Dartmoor, was stunned, it's like swordfish PLUS. Since found it at a fabulous PT restaurant in Vauxhall. If you ever see it on a menu, just order it. You won't regret. Fabulous.
December 21, 2025 at 10:43 PM
dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social
Happy tenth anniversary to the time an entire flock of sheep spontaneously decided to follow me down to lower ground from the top of the high moor, as if I was their new duffle-coated leader and saviour.
Me, holding a Devon walking guide, and a shitload of sheep, near Grimspound, Dartmoor.
December 21, 2025 at 8:38 AM
catzzzuk.bsky.social
2017: Wistman's Wood, Dartmoor. This is as far as we made it. With energy sapped by a double wammy of a flu, we turned back.
Walk up to Wistman's Wood. Trees and moss covered rock fence to the left. Entrance leading to ... we weren't sure. Misty morning on Dartmoor with Chris wondering if we should turn left or right to make it to Wistman's Wood. We turned around.
December 16, 2025 at 1:30 PM