Dartmoor CAM

This walk: 2009-7-9. Bellever Forest, timber, Bellever tor, trig point, dry stone walls, Laughter Tor, cairn & cist (x2), cist, marker stone of forgotten significance, clapper bridge.

This walk completed a quest to see the cists located to the south/south-west of the forest that was cut short on 18 Sept. 2008.

Walk details below - Information about the route etc.

Setting off through the forest, passing a wall of cut timber.

A view of the standing timber ..... very shady and contrasty for photography.

Looking north up to Bellever Tor with its "trig", trigonometrical-triangulation point, see later below. SX 644 674, elevation 429 metres (1407 feet).

Looking eastwards to Laughter Tor, SX 652 756, elevation 420 metres (1377 feet).

An old sheep hole in the wall, probably to allow sheep to pass from one field to another.

Looking north with Bellever Tor at the right and the edge of the forest at the left.

Looking back from approx. SX 63868 75485, at the wall we walked around, having not found the permitted path.

Cairn & Cist at SX 63583 75472 � 5 metres, very overgrown with little sign of the cairn .....

.... another view.

Cairn & Cist at SX 63892 75872 � 5 metres. A few upright stones of a retaining cairn/circle can be seen in the background but the whole area is very overgrown with Molinia caerulea, purple moor grass.

..... another view.

The well-formed cist at SX 63918 76068 � 5 metres, a difficult object to find but it is there!

Dry stone wall as seen in many parts of the moor, the large stone must have been difficult to manoeuvre .....

Approaching Bellever Tor from the south, almost time for lunch .....

Bellever Tor, a view of the summit.

A view north from the top of Bellever Tor, looking towards Postbridge.

That smile of satisfaction, having made it to the top .....

As in previous photo.

A Bellever Tor rock pile.

The almost white stones exposed at the edge of the Settlement & Field System as marked on the map where our track deviated to see it a little way north of the tor, as seen in the map below. I learned later that these stones were part of the recently uncovered settlement walls.

Another view of the stones.

A view up the track we had descended through the strange landscape of a felled area, presenting a whole new habitat for wildlife, somewhere between the "405" spot height and the edge of the forest near Bellever village.

"C" or County stone at the roadside close to the bridge over the East River Dart, near the entrance into Bellever Forest: signifying a County stone, about 100 metres (meant to be 100 yards) from the bridge. These date possibly from the 1600's when the County took responsibility for maintaining bridges and the roads approaching from 100 yards in each direction. The concept dates from Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries, when the Statute of Bridges was introduced in 1581. The Dartmoor C stones are listed on Legendary Dartmoor - The County Stones. "The act required that for every bridge the road over it and for 300 ft on either side should be similarly maintained (Source: Legendary Dartmoor, but my underlining - Ed).

The old clapper bridge at Bellever.

..... another view.

Looking north from the road bridge towards Poatbridge.

Walk details

MAP: Red = GPS satellite track of the walk.

Access to this walk was from the B3212 road through Postbridge to Bellever village and parking in the forest at the P symbol/yellow cross on the map.

Statistics
Distance - 9.06 km / 5.6 miles.
Start 10.30 am, Finish 2.20 pm, Duration 3 hr 50 min.
Moving average 3.6 kph / 2.24 mph; Overall average 2.4 kph / 1.49 mph.