Dartmoor CAM

This walk: 2010-9-29. Postbridge clapper bridge, road bridge, mould stone, Kraps Ring hut circle, Lakehead Hill cairn circle, fallen willow, short stone row, cairn circle and cist, Bellever Tor, ragwort, second cairn and cist, Yellow Stag's-horn Fungus, Fly Agaric, Cep or Penny Bun Mushroom, unidentified fungus.

Walk details below - Information about the route etc.

Keith, Tim & Jess on the old clapper bridge at Postbridge - looking at the river level after heavy rain in the night.

Another view with some swirling water in the East Dart.

As previous photo ..... on 5th May, six-and-a-half slabs were dry on the left pier, only four in this photo.

The road bridge - showing fairly high water in the river.

Finding an old mould stone at SX 64810 78802 .....

Possible "M" or other engraving .....

It is a fine piece of granite .....

As previous photo.

Rain water running out of the peat layer in the forest into a gully .....

As previous photo.

A round house in the Krap's Ring settlement ..... one of nine shown in the Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities, Vol. 2, The North, by Jeremy Butler, page 49, Lakehead Hill.

A cairn circle at SX 64353 77766.

A fallen willow.

The short stone row at SX 6437 7765

Cairn circle and cist at SX 6434 7748 ..... this two circles with a cist in the centre of the far one .....

The cist .....

Inside the cist - note the reflected image - its only at high tide!

Bellever Tor .....

Zoomed view to the tor.

Ragwort, probably Common Ragwort - Senecio jacobea although Hoary, Marsh, Narrow-leaved and Oxford Ragwort have all been identified in Devon & Cornwall.

The ragwort plant.

There are two hut circles here, on behind the other in the rosette settlement (where walls are added on to enclose more land), nearest the camera may be two door posts that have fallen in against each other .....

View from the door post stones to Bellever Tor .....

Zoomed view of the track where a figure-of-eight was walked around the two circles ..... a third circle was found on the forest edge - see next photo .....

The remains of the third hut circle in this settlement.

The cairn and cist at SX 6408 7647 .....

An old photograph showing the cairn and its view to Powdermills before the area was forested .....

..... or was the photo taken from this angle?!

A slightly different view, showing the intact cap stone still in place .....

A general view of the cist - right at the forest edge.

Yellow Stag's-horn Fungus, Calocera viscosa.

General view in the mature spruce forest.

A line of Yellow Stag's-horn Fungus.

A general view along a forest road.

Fly Agaric - Amanita muscaria

A gone-over Cep, Penny Bun Mushroom, Boletus edulis. These are sponge mushrooms in that the underside of the cap is porous, like a sponge, rather than composed of gills .....

This a similar mushroom, photographed near Ludgate, Dartmoor, about three weeks previously. It was about one foot across.

The Lych Way, looking east .....

The Lych Way, looking west at SX 6413 7721. This track was a trans-moor footpath along which the dead were carried to Lydford church for burial. This ceased, in theory, in 1260 when the dead were allowed to be buried at Widicombe-in-the-Moor, although some still chose to be buried at Lydford.

Unidentified fungus.

View back along the track near the entrance to the forest at Postbridge.

MAP: Red = GPS satellite track of the walk.

This walk was approached very simply by parking in the main car park at Postbridge, ,arked by the yellow cross symbol.

Statistics
Distance - 7.44 km / 4.62 miles