17th July

I've spent a bit of time this week sorting which tors and rocks were 500m or more. These are the ones we're going to try and reach over the next few weeks. There was firing at Merrivale today, so my first choice of Beardown wasn't going to work. We're saving the north west moor for our holidays in a couple of weeks.

As much of the southern moor is under 500m, there was only one more spot to cover, Hameldown. We chose to start from Widecombe in the Moor, despite it being quite a climb. 

Heading first along the valley on the road between Hameldown and Chinkwell Tor meant that we completed the more boring bit of the walk first.  This is one or the paths of the Two Moors Way, which is split in two at this point. Looking at the elevation, we climbed quite a significant way along the road, but it was steady and we had fresh legs! And we were glad of some shade as the sun was shining.

We branched off the road onto open land just before a small plantation, still gradually climbing. It was then a small dip and suddenly we found ourselves at Grimspound, where there are the remains of a late bronze age village. Better views of the village are actually from Hockney Tor to the north, or as you walk up Hameldown Tor to the south, from where the photo below is taken.

Hameldown Tor (529m) was our highest summit of the day, here it is with the triangulation point.  Here we joined the other route of the Two Moors Way and it was then quite flat between there and Hameldown Beacon Rocks (517m). Along the way we spotted some of the Duke of Somerset's boundary stones from the 1850s [J15 and K15], which include Hameldown Cross, an older cross repurposed as a boundary stone. Here's a selection including the cross:

From the Rocks the views stretch to the sea and coast of Devon and Cornwall. The sun was strong as we began our descent. On the way down we found two more tors, Stoneslade Tor (472m) pictured, and Kingshead Tor (459m).  The final distance was over 7.5 miles, and my legs were certainly complaining by the time we reached the car.  The screenshot below indicates that we'd been up and over around 950ft, certainly one of our more strenuous walks so far.