Dartmoor National Park!

Dartmoor

Pony in our car!

If you know us then you know we love love love the Rick Steve's guide books.  He's a corky guy from Seattle and helps American's travel through Europe on a budget and smartly. Any way, before we left the US we picked up his England book so we have slowly been marking off his suggestions throughout our stay here.   In his England book he recommends going to Dartmoor. It's the Moors of England. With free roaming sheep and ponies. And beautiful blooming heather in the summer.

So we checked it out on an all day driving tour of the area. It is amazing! Hard to get to without a car but amazing to see. I'm always wondering how in the heck this little Island has so many different looks to it? We live in swamp, Southeast England has While Cliffs, Southwest England has tropical climates, woods and mountains and a bustling city too. How does this country pack so much into one?  And now I can see why some English people never leave their country. Because they don't need too... It's all here!

stone row

Any way, back to Dartmoor!  In this national park there is tons and tons of hiking! They have Tors! Which is a Celtic word meaning hill. It's a hill that is naturally interesting to look at. Lots of rocks!  One is famous and mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes books, it's called Hound Tor. And Haytor is the most famous. From the top you can see to the coast. Absolutely amazing!

Mike is a burial site

Dartmoor is littered with little mountain towns with little interesting things in them. Lots of history. During the bronze age there were a bunch of civilizations located in Dartmoor but the climate changed and these settlements were then abandoned (probably 1200BC).  And with any Bronze age settlements comes.... STONE CIRCLES!!! (more on them in a later post). Dartmoor is littered with stone circle huts, stone ritual circles, rows of circles and burial sites.  All the things that I'm interested in on my quest to see the oldest things in human history. =)

on the bridge

In additional to Bronze age things we also saw a medieval bridge. Super neat and fun to see how stone has been used throughout history as a building material.  Oh, and the real distinctive difference between this area and the rest of England is the rows and rows of hedge (or bushes) on either side of the street. Mike is convinced that he will be making hedge where ever we live.