Dartmoor can seem a desolate, isolated spot, a landscape where no human can be encountered for miles. A region that inspired The Hound of the Baskervilles and various gothic tales. But strangely this bleak and empty moorland was once occupied by people of bronze age and neolithic times, as evidenced by the stone rows we encountered on our 12-mile walk on on Ugborough Moor.
We parked near Ivybridge as the car park at Harford was closed for some unknown reason. We then hiked up to the Three Barrows trig point (364m). We could see belted Galloway cows chewing grass and skylarks soaring as well as a herd of ponies - they were Dartmoor ponies.
On our way to Spurrell's Cross and Piles Hill, we walked alongside a row of old stones. According to Andy Burnham, in his book, The Old Stones, the row is "an avenue of stones running for almost 0.6 miles east-west over the ridge of Piles Hill. At 310m east of Piles Hill runs the Glasscombe Corner row, which is a double row in part." He suggests that although their purpose is 'enigmatic', many rows are 'associated with funerary monuments'.
The granite Spurrell's Cross is believed to date back to medieval times. This mutilated cross was restored and given a new shaft by the Dartmoor Preservation Society in the 1930s, although it is still missing an arm. According to Divine Dartmoor Walks, the cross is 'at the crossroads of an ancient east-west track between Exeter and Plymouth, and the north-south Blackwood path once used by peat cutters'. I have also read that it is located on the Monks' route from Buckfast Abbey to Plympton Priory. There are many crosses dotted around Dartmoor, some were markers of medieval routes between abbeys while others were navigational guides.
We also saw these curious stones, it had a look of an abstract art piece entitled Mother and Child (or it may have just been two upright stones standing next to each other).
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