Dave, Ivy, May, Seon & CJ, we all go to Dart Moor
I only slept like 3 hours this morning cos I was awaken at 8.30am by Wai Kyan’s phonecall from Florence. I tried to force myself to sleep again but can’t do much as I was already wide-awake. Our programme this morning is to have a short visit to the moorlands of Devon from Plymouth to Princetown, then from Princetown to Lydford, Lydford to North Brent, followed by North Brent to Tavistock and lastly Tavistock back to Plymouth.
Cheeky pony.
Moor’s Easter rambler featuring Dave The Pathfinder, CJ The Crackerjack,
Ivy The Ponytamer, May The Eww-I-Hate-Animals, Seon the Viewfinder,
& Wai Kyan The Pony-ass-phobic aka Pony Ass Harasser :)
We rendezvoused at PCQ. There we meet up with Seon’s crew in his black Ford Focus with our 3-crew VWG Tauran. Dave lead the way up to Princetown in the heartland of the moors. It was cloudy all along the journey as we reached the edge of the moors, it gets abit drizzly but doesn’t affect our driving vision at all.
Gloomy A386 – heading towards Yelverton.
The edge of the moorlands, somewhere near Princetown.
At first, we decided to stop at Princetown but we couldn’t find any parking space in that hamlet as we were quite surprised that the thronging visitors to Princetown has occupied all of the spaces. We decided abandon the plan of stopping in Princetown & headed to Lydford. On the way there, we stopped by at Whitchurch Common (in map) which is part of the moors.
Our stop – Aqueduct parking in Whitchurch Common
We had a short walk around it & try approaching ponies, & guess what, we realised that Ponies do have lotsa attitudes. Eventually, we get to approach some ponies without them running beserk. I tried to approach multi-colored ponies for fun such as black, whites & browns ones, & I found out the black one are the tamest among all, the white one tame but kinda cautious about our intentions & the brown ones are totally unapproachable. And here are the pony sessions that we all had;
Ponyland in Whitchurch Common, which is uncommon for us.
A black one – just so tame.
Nyum nyum I’m gonna get omnivorous with these.
Here ponie ponie *rubs rubs*
I wish the white one were Unicorns.
Whitey diggin on biscuits.
Cheeky fella.
So he can be touched well, after a few offerings.
Our continued towards Lydford, which is a villlage located between Okehampton in the north & Tavistock in the south just off A386 to the west. Based on the source from lydford.co.uk; “The historical importance of Lydford is that it is the exact site of an Anglo-Saxon town (“Hlidan”) set up in about 890 AD by Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, as one of his strategic, militarised centres to defend his country from the Vikings, who were making frequent violent raids from Denmark, and also from the Cornish, on the other side of the nearby River Tamar. In the subsequent Anglo-Saxon period, Lydford became an important coin-minting town, producing the famous Lydford Silver Pennies. The present village still retains the road-ways of Saxon Lydford. Of particular interest are the Anglo-Saxon defensive earth-work wall, the very fine St.Petrock’s Church, the Norman Castle and the deep and beautiful Lydford Gorge of the River Lyd. The massive and spectacular granite viaduct in Lydford of the former Exeter-Plymouth railway line is also very worth seeing. Including its associated nearby homes and farms, Lydford has a present population of several hundreds.”
A local pub in Lydford.
Local signboard to the main attractions.
Lydford castle – used to be a fort at wartime & dungeon during peacetime.
Lydford castle – the official NT tourist sign
Lydford church – still in active service. Don’t believe it? see the next pic.
Medieval church in active service – proof? Look at Queen E’s pic.
Goin’ to the gorge.
That was ‘gorgeous’! Reminds me of Kuala Woh.
The treks around the gorges.
Too bad though we are running out of time to go in plus the weather condition does put abit of worries on pursuing the trail in the gorge. We only took shots from the bridge and hastily hike back to the car park. The next stop was the medieval church uphill in Brent Tor located few miles southward of North Brentor. Located near a ‘Y’ junction between North Brentor, South Brentor & Longcross.
The church stands near the summit of the Tor, and is very difficult of approach. It forms a landmark for vessels entering the harbour of Plymouth, and is said to have been founded as a monument of gratitude by a merchant who had escaped from shipwreck. It is dedicated to St. Michael as he was the savior of the survived merchant. Legend says that during the construction of this church, the Devil was pissed, & hurled down the construction material down the Tor. So, the merchant appealed to the patron saint for help. St. Michael answered his prayers by appearing on the church site & when the Devil come again to sabotage, he was met with a resistance by St.Michael himself by pelting the Devil with rocks & the Devil eventually tripped & fell off the Tor when he was trying to escape the sudden assualt. More info of the legend can be seen here .
Tourist map at the car park.
St.Michael Church of Brent Tor. Was believed that it can be seen
from the Bristol & English Channel too.
Feel gothickie? Medieval headstones that is.
Catacomb. Reminds me of the Diablo game. Ewww…eerie!
The inside of the church.
Peak of the Tor, outside the church.
We left the place around 2.45pm and travel to Tavistock for late lunch & some shopping for the PCQ crew cos they are gonna cook dinner for tonite. Arrived at Tavistock around 3.15pm. Luckily the only store that was open for an Easter Sunday was Coop. We grab stuffs there as fast as we could & proceeded to ‘hunt’ for a pub for lunch. To our disappointment, most pubs are closed at that time & even though there were some that was still open, they don’t serve food anymore. The only option we got is to have a quickie (even not to my favor), McDonald’s. *sigh*
One of Tavistock’s high street.
Look at the time. You know what time it is?
Starving bastards. :P
I arrived home and immediately have a nap until dinner, oh yes..dinner in PCQ. DAMN TIRED!
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