With the Dartmoor Walking Festival only a few months away, we met at Rowtor Car Park. There were six of us on buggies, accompanied by four walkers, two of them are Moorland Guides. We reconnoitred a route to Belstone via the Nine Maidens. This was the second WAGs reconnoitre, since the easing of the lockdown rules.
The weather was partly cloudy and dry to start, with the cloud cover increasing during the day. It was nice to get out of the north wind, when in the valleys.
We passed Moorgate Farm and East Bowden, on our way to Cullever Steps. We passed east of Scarey Tor onto Belstone Common.
We stopped at the Nine Maidens ( Nine Stones on the OS map ) where the Moorland Guides discussed the folklore of the nine maidens being turned to stone.
From the Nine Maidens we headed east into Taw valley, where we stopped for lunch, sheltered from the north wind.
After lunch we tried to access the track into Belstone from the Taw Vally, but there were too many rocks. We made our way around the northern side of Watchet Hill, to pick up the track back to Cullever Steps.
From Cullever Steps we retraced our route back to Rowtor car park. From our highest point of our route above East Bowden we had lovely views of Exmoor.
With winter erosion of the track in places, it was decided that the route is too difficult to be included in the Walking Festival. So the next reconnoitre will be a slightly different route, pass Winter Tor between the East Okement and Taw Rivers.
We all enjoyed the day, as it’s been over 12 months since some of the group have been with us. Here’s hoping Boris can keep to his dates for easing the rest of the lockdown restrictions. Going back to the difficulty of todays walk, we all went onto two wheels several times. Remarkably for me on my three wheeler, managed to stay upright and not tip right over, but it was a close thing.
