Explore ancient churches, discover a hidden standing stone, and practice patience on a long moorland walk.

English

Liz and her sister are nearing the halfway mark of their 10-day, 110-mile trek around Dartmoor National Park in the UK. This particular day has proven to be the toughest of the entire journey, stretching on endlessly. You can follow their adventure through a series of letters Liz wrote to her sister, capturing the highs and lows of their progress.

Letters From The Moors - A Sister's Journey 06

Hello and welcome to the Dartmoor Way with me Liz Scott. I hope you enjoy my 110 mile journey around the outskirts of Dartmoor National Park in Devon in the UK. In August 2023 I completed this walk with my sister and following it I wrote a series of 10 letters to her sharing my memories and experiences. This is day six and today we walked twelve and a half miles between Chagford and Oakhampton. Dear sister, we were now on the north side of the moor and we were no longer driving home each night. We decided to book three nights in a youth hostel and the previous night had been the first of these three nights. The youth hostel was a complete surprise. I had expected it to be horrible, skanky, dirty and noisy but it was rather good. The shared kitchen, a chance to have a cup of tea, a microwave for my morning porridge, all of these seemed like unexpected luxuries. Even the bed was more comfortable than I could have ever thought possible. There were three of us walking today, you, me and Pete. Mary was going to join us for another day later on the walk. We were walking from Chagford so unsurprisingly you insisted that Pete tried a Chagford donut. I'm not sure they were quite the same as the ones from our childhood because when we used to eat Chagford donuts as a child, we were certain that they were the best jam donuts in the entire world. As I sit ready to write about day six of our walk, a flurry of recollections arise. This was a day of church stops, flying ants, rainforests, pubs with standing stones and butterflies. It was also the slowest of paces. Whilst the longest, steepest day was the day climbing up to Haytor, I think today stands out as being the hardest of all. There seemed to be lots of short, steep climbs and I seemed to be waiting and waiting. It just seemed to take forever to get to Oakhampton. Today, my patience was tested again and again. It didn't start well. Pete and I had steamed ahead up a hill chatting and talking as we did. My legs were aching and my heart pumping as we stopped at the top of the hill and watched you plod on up. As I caught my breath, I checked to see the map to see where we needed to go next. My heart gave an extra thud when I saw that we were off course. How was that possible? I checked again and realised we'd missed a sign at the bottom of the hill. I cursed myself at this waste of energy and I trotted down the hill, the same hill that you were struggling to climb, to tell you the news. We re-found the path and carried on our walk and this was the day of churches. Do you remember? The first church we came to was at Providence. What a lovely name for a hamlet, Providence. We nosed our way into the church and saw some bottles of water and biscuits that had been put out for the pilgrims. I love this gesture. What a gift for weary travellers. We soon realised that this church was one of several on the Archangel's Way, a pilgrimage trail that linked churches on Dartmoor. The next church we visited was also on this trail. It was St Mary the Virgin at Throwley. This too had refreshments for pilgrims. We explored inside the church and then cut across the graveyard and into an orchard where young apples were growing thick and hanging in clusters off the tree. We were on Dartmoor but this wasn't an open, bleak expanse. This was a rural and agricultural landscape. We passed through many meadows and today the butterflies were out in numbers. Do you remember the fields where butterflies were hanging off plants like fruit? I'd never seen so many butterflies. After hunting all week for a peacock butterfly, we now saw them to a penny along with red admirals, commers and other beauties that I didn't know their names. I always think of our brother Richard when it comes to butterflies. I know he would have loved this field. When we got to South Zeal we sat in the Oxenham Arms and had a cup of tea. The pub had thick walls, uneven floors, low ceilings and a cluster of small, darkish rooms. As you ordered a cup of tea, I went on a toilet hunt. Whilst nosing around corners of dark oak doorways to try and find the restroom, a customer, seeing me a bit lost, asked if I was looking for the standing stone. I looked at him baffled. What was he talking about? Had I heard him right? There's one in here, he said, beckoning me to look inside a room. I looked around the door and there, set into the whitewashed wall, was a standing stone. The wall had been built around it. It was part of the wall. This Granite Menhir, which is its correct name, was probably put in place four and a half thousand years ago. And then, a few thousand years later, a monastery was built around the stone, merging it into the building. We sat in that little pokey room, drinking our tea, looking at the standing stone set in the wall. I tried to imagine this stone in a landscape without houses or villages. Questions arose within me and there were no answers that truly satisfied my curiosity. Why had this standing stone been put there? What had it looked like? Was it a way marker? A place of ritual? It was hard to compute the significance of this monument to the people who had placed it there. I mused on why the monks had then built a monastery with a standing stone in the wall. Was it maybe just very practical? Maybe it's easy to build a wall and have a standing stone as part of the framework. Or maybe it was more significant. Maybe this was a holy or sacred place. Maybe this was a merging of the pagan and the Christian. Many churches have roof bosses with carvings of the Three Hairs or the Green Man. The Green Man is a strongly pagan symbol that somehow weaves its way into the structure of churches. Maybe this was a way of bringing people together, of linking the old religion and the new. The standing stone had merged into a monastery and the monastery had then become a manor house and the manor house had shifted now to become a pub. It had morphed many times in the past. I wonder what the future held for this building and this standing stone. Before we left South Seal, we took a look around the church, another one on the Archangel's Way, and then we headed back onto our pilgrimage, which was taking us ever closer to Oakhampton. It was a long, slow climb up to Bellstone. You continued to trudge slowly, one step at a time, and I was no longer on my own in the lead. Pete easily kept pace and could probably go much faster than me. We chatted and natted as we waited for you at the top of the hills. We waited and waited and waited again. It reminded me of when my beloved Dog Buzz was young and athletic. It was then he who used to power on ahead of me and wait for me to catch up with him. He's now an old man, but I smiled fondly, thinking of those walks we used to take. In Bellstone, I found it rather satisfying to see the telegraph office with a bright red phone box, now a defibrillator, outside. How strange to see the phone box. It was impossible to explain to Pete how, during our childhood, this had been the only way to contact people when you were out and about. I cast my mind back to being a child and wondered what I would have made of mobile phones and GPS maps and all the stuff we now take for granted. As we headed up onto the open moor above Bellstone, it became hot and humid. I noticed some French tourists twitching as they hurried through a five-bar gate, leaving the moor behind them. The women were flicking their coiffed hair in an overly agitated way, brushing off insects. I guessed they were city dwellers, unused to the countryside, and internally I tutted at their city ways. I didn't realize that they were fleeing a swarm of insects that we were now unwittingly heading into. As we left the road and went through the gate up onto the moor, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by flying ants. There were thousands and thousands and thousands. They were everywhere. There were some jaw-dropping views towards North Devon, but I had no time to look. I just wanted to walk smartly through this cloud of glistening white wings, keeping my mouth shut and my head down. I was so glad for my hat. They clustered around us, crawling on our arms and legs and flying up in clouds. I breathed through my nose and brushed them off. It felt like they were everywhere. There was no escape. What a relief to climb down the hill to the East Oakmont River and away from those flying ants. The final part of our walk today took us once again into rainforest territory. The temperate rainforest seemed to be a signature part of my day-to-day. Thanks to reading Guy Shrubsoul's book, my eyes have been opened to the mossy greenery of trees and damp river valleys with ferns growing from their branches. These woods are as beautiful as any building you might enter, and they had an air that was thick with sacredness. The trees were my cathedrals, their trunks were grander than marble columns, and their bark more beautiful than intricate carvings. It was a joy to spend the last few miles walking in temperate rainforest territory, following a lively river down to the town. I was so relieved when we climbed the final hill up to the youth hostel in O'Campton. I waited patiently for you again at the top and realized that the day had taken much, much longer than I'd realized. I was hungry and I wanted to get some food, but first I needed you to drive me back to Chagford to retrieve my car. Each day we were leaving a car at the beginning of the walk, which we then needed to collect at the end of the day. I was so keen to get to the car. I wanted to relax and enjoy the evening, and my heart sank when you announced in your I-will-not-be-hurried style that you first wanted to get a coffee. I don't know if you realize, but I nearly burst into tears. I didn't want to wait any more. This was my patience stretched to its absolute limit. I just wanted to get something to eat and to unwind. This was probably the lowest point of the whole ten days. How strange to realize that it wasn't the walking that I found so hard. It was the waiting and the waiting and the waiting. However, eventually it ended up with being a great lesson. It was a reminder that life only goes at the pace it goes, regardless of whether I think it should go faster. I waited for you to drink your coffee, and then we headed off to get the car. We had passed the halfway mark of our walk.