Dartmoor is the largest and wildest open moorland in Southern England, famous for its rugged landscape of granite tors. It is a very special place and one to which we keep returning, each time getting to know it and love it a little bit more. We had never been on the moor in the depths of February before, though, as we were last week.

We were staying for a week at Sanders, a Devonshire longhouse that was built around 1500 and has been saved by the Landmark Trust who bought it in 1976. The Trust buys imperilled, historically-interesting buildings and sympathetically restores them to retain as many of their significant features as possible, whilst also converting them into holiday accommodation. The rental income then goes towards funding the ongoing maintenance of the two hundred buildings that are now under their care.

Sanders îs part of the ancient hamlet of Lettaford, situated in a sheltered hollow on the north east side of the moor and still only consisting of three farmhouses and their attendant buildings grouped around a green. There is also a converted chapel, which is a Landmark as well and in which we stayed a couple of years ago.

We were amused to see that the weather forecast was predicting rain for every hour of every day for the week of our stay. This unfortunately did prove to be mostly accurate, particularly in the first half of the week. In fact Dartmoor has been experiencing exceptionally high rainfall recently with an almost unbelievable 4.76 metres having fallen at White Barrow in 2026 so far. But there were some parts of our week that were dry and we were anyway well equipped for adverse weather – we ended up having a wonderful time exploring the wild and deserted moor in wintertime.

All the mosses and lichens of Dartmoor look at their very best in wet conditions and I only wish that we knew a bit more about them:

Fungus thrives in the mild, wet climate as well:

One day we did a circular walk starting from the Meldon reservoir in the northwest of the moor. After all that rain., the water was dramatically overtopping the dam:

As we climbed into the hills beyond the reservoir, it was not actually raining but there was a strong, cold wind blowing. We came upon a group of really lovely Dartmoor ponies, backed into a gorse bush for shelter. They all looked very similar with their beautiful blonde manes, tubby torsos and short legs and I presume that they were a family group:

As we approached the summit of Black Tor, we were excited to find some clumps of frogspawn:

But this was just the start. As we continued to climb, there were many hundreds of balls of spawn all over the wet flanks of the tor and we stopped remarking on them after a while.

There must be a huge population of frogs living on this exposed, high altitude hillside.

There was a satisfying amount of horizontally-weathered granite at the top of Black Tor:

It was at the summit of Black tor that we got the first view of our main objective of the day – Black-a-Tor copse, tucked away below the tor and beside the West Okement river:

There are three fragments of high-altitude, ancient oak woodland remaining on Dartmoor. Wistman’s Wood near Two Bridges is the best known and most accessible and I have visited it several times in the past, including going on a field trip there in 1979, back when I was a botany student at Exeter University. But I had never before been to either of the other two woods: Black-a-Tor Copse and Piles Copse.

Black-a-Tor Copse is the largest of the three fragments at 29 acres, and sits 380 metres above sea level. The pedunculate oaks have grown through large granite boulders to create a woodland which is nationally important for rare lichens and mosses. The horsehair lichen, Bryoria smithii, only grows in Britain here and at Wistman’s Wood.

We didn’t see any horsehair lichen or any of the other rare lichens, but then we didn’t really know what we were looking for. There was a lot of beard lichen though:

The wood reaches down to the river:

You are requested to keep to the path that runs through the wood to keep damage of this fragile ecosystem to a minimum:

Natural England’s website also says that twenty species of breeding bird have been recorded at the wood. We would like to return to Black-a-Tor copse when the trees are in leaf, the birds are nesting and we know a bit more about the lichens that we might expect to see there.

On another day we walked in the Teign valley which is one of the few remaining places where our British native daffodil still grows wild. In two or three weeks there will be a wonderful display along the banks of the river, but we were a bit too early this time. We did manage to find one or two that were just coming out though:

On a visit in March 2020, the valley was filled with flowering native daffodils:

We did a circular walk starting at a pub in the middle of nowhere, the Fingle Bridge Inn:

Even though it has rained so much on Dartmoor this January, the river levels this winter have apparently only reached the lower terrace of the pub. Last winter some tables were washed away on the upper terrace from behind the fence.

Fingle Bridge is a 17th century granite packhorse bridge that crosses the Teign at the pub:

There is a photo on the wall of the pub that shows the river in a much less forgiving mood:

Looking down into the Teign valley from the grounds of Castle Drogo:

There was an opportunity to photograph some more Dartmoor ponies on this walk, although these ones had more sensible hairstyles:

We went off the moor one day to the village of Buckland Monachorum just to the west. The Garden House has a wonderful garden that we had visited before, but now in February it was holding its annual snowdrop festival.

Nearly 400 snowdrop varieties grow in the garden and I now have two new favourites: Treasure Island and Fieldgate Primrose Legacy

How wonderful to have so many snowdrops that you can afford to pick them and put them in a vase:

Lionel and Katharine Fortescue bought the house and ten acres of grounds in the summer of 1945 and spent the next forty years transforming it into an absolutely glorious garden. They set up a trust which has continued to care for the garden after their deaths in the 1980s

We went to this garden in June about ten years ago and were amazed at the beauty of the flower meadow there. But even in February the garden was well worth a visit:

We might have been off the moor but the lichens were flourishing here as well:

And the frogs were churring away and laying spawn in one of the many ponds in the garden:

There was a yellow warning for rain on the Monday of our week on Dartmoor and we decided to walk to find an old clapper bridge near Two Bridges before the weather got too bad:

There are still around two hundred clapper bridges on Dartmoor. These ancient, stone-slab structures were built to allow packhorses, farmers and miners to cross Dartmoor’s rivers and streams. Over the course the week we also saw the 13th century clapper bridge over the East Dart at Postbridge…

… and another clapper bridge over the East Dart just as it joins the West Dart at Dartsmeet:

Having successfully found the Two Bridges clapper bridge, the rain still wasn’t too heavy so we went to St Raphael’s Chapel at Huccaby which is famous locally for its snowdrop display in February:

We then went to one of our favourite pubs for lunch – the Warren House Inn, which stands isolated and remote in the middle of the moor. It has no mains services of any sort and was built in 1845 to service the local tin mining industry which has now all gone.

After lunch it was raining very hard but we popped into Chagford on the way back and were considerably cheered to see the crocus display in the church graveyard there:

We were actually in the West Country for a very particular reason. Our daughter now lives in Perranporth in Cornwall with her family and she has just had a baby daughter whom we were very keen to meet. We travelled off the moor to Cornwall at the beginning of the week and then again at the end to make the acquaintance of our new granddaughter to whom I dedicate this post:

Welcome to the World, baby Isla!