Photography

We parked at the viewpoint a couple of miles West of Merrivale, on the Western edge of Dartmoor, and struck off North towards Cox Tor.

Cox Tor was a quick and easy peak, and pretty soon we're up high.

Straight away we're greeted by a couple of Dartmoor's wild ponies.

There are loads of them up here, and they're pretty friendly.

A couple of minutes more, and we're on top of Cox Tor.

From Cox Tor, we headed East, towards the nearby peak of the Great Staple Tor, the middle peak in a short ridge.

The rock formations on the top of Great Staple Tor gave it its name.

From Great Staple Tor, we headed North along the ridge to Roos Tor. Just beyond Roos Tor lies the Merrivale firing range, which the army use to practice on at certain times. On top of Roos Tor is one of the warning posts - currently off, meaning it's safe.

I'm left wondering if the ponies take notice of the firing range warnings.

Roos Tor is encircled with standing stones, engraved with the letter B. I've no idea what it means.

After Roos Tor, we continue North onto the large high flat area of moorland.

The striped poles mark the start of the firing range, but on this occasion it's not being used, so we can enter it. Great Mis Tor, the highest peak in this part of Dartmoor is behind, and we decide to add that to our walk. However, rather than head directly for it, which would require us to lose a lot of height into the valley and then climb up again, we decide to walk around the short river on the open moorland to keep the height.

A bit further into the moor and there's a stone circle, where we stopped for lunch.

Then it's more open moorland, and not a single soul in sight.

We came across a few of these craters, and wondered if they were the result of the army firing practices.

One of the tributaries which leads into the river between Roos Tor and Great Mis Tor starts at this spring, but it's all dried up.

Much of the moorland is very much the same up here, though the landscape certainly doesn't make this walk boring. There's the occasional boggy pool too, and we saw a dragonfly on one.

Without much of a path to follow, despite the map indicating a bridleway, we navigated from the nearby peaks and valleys. We hugged the high edge of the valley and curved around the North side of Great Mis Tor, its peak in view here.

When we judged that we wouldn't have to lose a lot of height, we dropped down and crossed the river, then began the ascent up Great Mis Tor.

As we approach the summit of our fourth peak, we leave the firing range area, indicated by the striped poles again.

The top of Great Mis Tor has some pretty interesting rock formations too.

Now we could look West at the peaks we'd already climbed. Middle Staple Tor (which we didn't go up) is on the left, followed by Great Staple Tor, Cox Tor behind and Roos Tor on the right.

Looking South, we can see the village of Merrivale.

We begin our descent, and cross a stile into an area with more ponies.

There are quite a lot of old settlements dotted across Dartmoor, it seems. Here we could see the remains of a wall.

As we get lower, we get a better view of Merrivale, with its quarry. Once we reach the village, we just had to follow the road for a mile or two back West.

And eventually we arrive back at the car. What a great peaceful walk.