Thursday 15th August was the date of the Chagford Show. It was a grey day and the forecast wasn’t overly encouraging. While it did rain slightly, the day was mostly cool and dry but, for August, the sun wasn’t exactly splitting the flagstones! However, we were there. Volunteers Derek Collins and Claude Williams made a…

The 42nd Dartmoor Folk Festival took place on 9th, 10th & 11th August at South Zeal, up Oakhampton way (using a spelling from the old tithe map). Dartmoor Preservation Association had its usual presence with a stall i.e. a table in the big Craft & Trade Marquee. The Festival “starts up” on the Friday evening with…

Thursday 25th July saw 18 members and friends gather behind the Plume of Feathers in Princetown on a gorgeous summer day with clear blue sky. On this day, a July record 38.1 °C temperature was recorded in Cambridge. For us, it was a relatively balmy 23°C with breezes. We were off to the mysteriously-named Crock o’…

Twenty one DPA members and friends met at Drakeford Bridge on Tuesday 25th June for a walk in the East Dartmoor National Nature Reserve (NNR) at Bovey Valley Woods, where Natural England and The Woodland Trust work together. The weather was overcast, warm and dry.     Drakeford Bridge is not easy to find for…

  On Wednesday 12th June we had the annual orchid count at Pudsham Meadows.       Twenty-two DPA and Devon Wildlife Trust Volunteers set off in pairs or small groups, each surveying one species in one of the four meadows. A total of 4184 flowers were found.     In some areas, the orchids…

Six DPA volunteers spent two days receiving an introduction to stone walling from tutor Martin Stallard                                   There  is still work to be done on this wall.  We hope to continue to use what we have learnt, both at…

On Saturday 18th May, one week early because of the DPA AGM, 17 members and friends met at Meldon Dam car park. It was a rather grey day but we were dry! The walk started with a fairly steep slope down to the woods.     On reaching the woods, just at the entry, there…

  DPA land at High House Waste, north of Cornwood, includes an area of oak woodland, with a profusion of moss and lichens on the trees and a ground layer mostly of bluebells. In 2009, naturalist John Walters found the wood had a population of a very rare beetle – the blue ground beetle. Ten…

Twenty-two DPA members and friends gathered near the Warren House Inn on Thursday 25th April to visit Hurston Ridge double stone row. The weather was not the best, in fact, it rained occasionally and there was a breeze.     The first item of interest was a WB stone near the road, seen while walking…

On Monday 25th March, twenty-nine of us met at Swallerton Gate car park for a walk to two of Dartmoor’s most well-known sites, Jay’s Grave and Bowerman’s Nose.  The weather was a little grey at first with a cold wind but during the walk the clouds became more dispersed and the sun shone, making it a very pleasant walk. The…