With its bracken, bogs and winds, Dartmoor can seem bleak and inhospitable, but this Devon-born historian is enchanted by the wildness
Our wildernesses require their own claims to fame to differentiate them, and thus prevent all that wind-blown swampy scrub from confusing the public. The Yorkshire moors have the Brontës; Bodmin Moor boasts the beast; Exmoor clings to Lorna Doone, and Dartmoor’s fame relies on The Hound of the Baskervilles and the prison, with Widecombe Fair, Uncle Tom Cobley and wild ponies forming the B-list.
For those of us who were brought up on Dartmoor, the reality behind both the menacing and picturesque aspects is, of course, very different. I never bothered to read about Conan Doyle’s slavering hound until I was safely residing in London, while the prison was but a hulk in the fog if you ever ventured towards Princetown, which you didn’t. My father did, however, leave the keys in the ignition of the spare old banger in case an escaped felon wanted to make a run for it instead of killing us.
Continue reading...