Walking on Dartmoor. Earle John

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      Clapper Bridge over Dean Burn, Walk 6

      You can now orientate your map using the compass. The top of the map is always true north and for all intents and purposes the easting grid lines point to true north.

      First place your compass on the map with the rotating capsule turned so that the north arrow on the compass card or dial is in its correct position at 0 (or 360) degrees, and with the whole compass pointing to the top of the map (north). You can use the grid lines to help you do this. Slowly rotate the map, and yourself if needs be, keeping the compass firmly in place pointing to the top of the map (north) until the compass needle itself swings and points to magnetic north which is just 2.75 degrees in 2002, to the west of true north, in other words 357.25 degrees. Your map is now set and you should be able to identify features.

      This last operation mentioned that the compass needle points to what is called magnetic north, located to the north of Hudson Bay in Canada, rather than true north and this must always be taken into consideration when navigating and especially in the next stage of compass work. By the way this magnetic variation decreases 0.50 degrees every four years.

      There will be occasions where the moor is featureless or you are in thick mist or even at night when you will not be able to navigate visually either by lining up features or walking towards known points identified both on the map and on the ground. It is then that you will have to rely on your compass by taking and using compass bearings. To do this place the edge of the clear protractor part of your compass along what is called the line or direction of travel; in other words from where you are to where you want to go.

      Now turn the capsule until N (north), usually shown by an arrow engraved in the bottom of the dial, points to the true north (the top of the map). Once again the parallel grid lines will help you do this. Pick up the compass and ADD, by gently rotating the capsule, what is called the magnetic variation (the difference between magnetic north and true north) which as I mentioned is 2.75 degrees in 2002. (This does decrease over the years and you should check with your map which will give the information.)

      Now hold the compass in front of you and turn you body until the red (north) end of the swinging compass needle points to the north on the compass dial: this is the arrow engraved on the bottom of the capsule. The larger direction- of-travel arrow on the front, longer end of the compass, will now point at where you wish to go. Choose a landmark or a feature on this line (not a sheep or a cow!) within the limits of the visibility and walk to it without looking at the compass except perhaps for a brief check. When you arrive choose another new landmark and repeat the procedure until you arrive at your destination.

      With this brief information you should be able to find your way around on Dartmoor but navigation is a fascinating subject and well worth following up and it is just as well to have more than one person in your party who is competent with a map and compass.

      One final bit of advice. I should get a good large, waterproof, clear plastic map case or cover for your map, or spray it with one of the waterproofing fluids that are available. Wet, windy days on Dartmoor can quickly destroy a map!

Dartmoor letterboxes

      This unique curiosity, found in no other moorland or mountainous region, was more or less started in the last century by a man called James Perrott whose grave you will find in the churchyard at Chagford.

      James Perrott was known as the Dartmoor Guide and he used to take his clients to the remote and barren areas known as Cranmere Pool in the heart of the north moor. (There is yet another Dartmoor legend about Benjie Gear, by the way, associated with Cranmere Pool.) To record this achievement the walkers used to leave their visiting cards in a pickle jar that Perrott had left there in a small cairn that he built in 1854.

      When you consider the costumes of those Victorian times, especially for the ladies, and the fact that there was no military road from Okehampton to within a mile of the Pool, as there is today, the walk of over seven miles over difficult moorland was certainly something worth recording.

      Fifty-one years later, two keen moorland walkers placed a visitor's book there so that people could sign their names when they arrived at the desolate spot. By 1908 the numbers visiting Cranmere each year had risen to over 1700. The most famous person to sign his name at Cranmere was perhaps the late Duke of Windsor who, when he was the Prince of Wales, visited the box in 1921. The next letterbox to be established on Dartmoor was in 1894 at Belstone Tor.

      After Cranmere the next best-known box is at Duck's Pool on the south moor which was placed there in 1938 in memory of William Crossing, writer of many books about Dartmoor, the most outstanding of which is his Guide to Dartmoor. By the 1970s there were some 15 boxes and the position of some were even marked on the one-inch maps of this period.

      You are now probably wondering how the name letterbox arose. It developed from the idea that when you visited a box you left a letter already stamped and addressed ready for the next person who came there to collect and post in a conventional letterbox. The interesting thing was to see how long it was before your letter came back to you. In the early days of the 1950s when I walked on the moors it would often be weeks, especially in wintertime. As most of the boxes had their own specially made rubber stamp your letter would come back with a most unusual postmark! Sadly vandals and pilferers have been responsible for this custom no longer being a sensible or even a possible thing to do.

      Since the 1970s some people would argue that the Dartmoor letterboxes have got out of control. There is no law to stop anybody who wishes from establishing their own letterbox and while there are some excellent ones with beautifully made rubber stamps, there have been, at times, over 1000 boxes scattered around the moor but many of these new boxes only stay out for a few weeks.

      As I mentioned earlier a great many of the popular, well-known boxes are visited by vandals and have their rubber stamps stolen and the books defaced. It is no wonder that there is an air of secrecy about the location of many of the new boxes, to be divulged only to genuine box hunters.

      Taken by and large there are probably about 450 boxes now on Dartmoor and a club has been formed called the ‘100 Club’ whose members are keen letterbox hunters who have found and recorded over a hundred boxes.

Climbing on Dartmoor

      Wherever there is a climb or an outcrop of rock sooner or later man will want to climb it! Dartmoor is no exception and there is reference to climbing on the tors in a book called Climbing in the British Isles by the famous father of British climbing, Haskett Smith, published in 1894. In spite of this book there is no more recorded information about rock climbing routes on and around Dartmoor until 1935 when climbers tackled the great granite cliff of the Dewerstone and put up what are still considered the classic routes of the area: ‘Climbers Club Ordinary’ and ‘Climbers Club Direct’, both over 50m (160ft).