Life on Dartmoor
14.10.2010
17 °C
We only spent a day on the desolate, mist-shrouded, moors of Devon, while many have been trapped for life behind these imposing granite walls...
This is the infamous and supposedly inescapable prison at Princetown on Dartmoor. It was built in 1809 to house “Yankee” prisoners from the War of Independence in America and “Froggies” from the war with Napoleon in France.
Few men have ever escaped from this prison and those who have scaled the thirty-foot walls have been faced with miles of treacherous bogs and bone-chilling winds on the high moors. But, for us, the Devonian moors offered a starkly beautiful landscape criss-crossed by rushing brooks and meandering streams. This simple stone bridge at Postbridge has carried men and their beasts across this river since medieval times...
…while this wild pony is perfectly happy to paddle in one of the cool spring-fed ponds that dot the stony landscape.
Almost every moorland structure here is stone and most are very old. These beautiful colonnaded almshouses in Mortenhampstead were built in 1637 as a Lepers' hospital…
…and this ancient stone bridge was built long before Canada was a word.
We are now headed for Plymouth to put the locals right about the Mayflower! So much history …and so little time.
Looks like good weather follows you two everywhere. Rain on Gabriola today. Off to Vancouver for a few days to put moose in packages. This travelling back and forth over the Salish Sea is soooo discombobulating.
by R and B