Dartmoor part two: Stones and soaked feet.

There have been people on Dartmoor for about as long as there have been people on these islands, and old as it is, the prison at Princetown is far from being the earliest use the Moor's granite bones had been put to. Particularly ancient, and particularly prevalent are the stone circles that pepper the Moor's three hundred and sixty odd square miles. Indeed, fourteen of the sixteen such monuments to be found in the county of Devon reside on the moor - because the huge expanse of bleak, bog ridden moorland isn't eerie enough on its own, apparently.

As we left the Dartmoor Prison Museum we set off in search of one of them, turning left out of the Museum car park and heading for the B3357, the little hamlet of Merrivale and the collection of (probably) bronze age stones that bears the same name. We had directions from our trusty copy of the English Heritage guidebook, but I have to be honest, given that most of them lie within sight of the road they were devilish difficult to find.

In fact, we drove past them at least twice, and as the weather closed in (it was the summer of 2012, closing in was pretty much all the weather did) we pulled into the expansive car park at the top of Pork hill, a couple of miles to the west of the Merrivale hamlet and had lunch. We'd toyed with the idea of finding a pub somewhere, but in the end we'd packed a picnic, and spent a relaxing hour or so munching on sandwiches and cherry tomatoes, taking in the view - which was spectacular.

The Pork Hill carpark sits, unsurprisingly at the top of Pork Hill, a long steep hill that takes the B3357 down from the high moor on the way to Tavistock (or up onto the high moor coming out of Tavistock, if you're going the other way)and commands a view out over the Tamar valley - there's even a handy plaque to show you what it is you're looking at, which is helpful. There's a lot of history around this hilltop - with hut circles and disused tin mines within easy walking distance, as well as Pew Tor, allegedly the home of the Piskie King. There are, of course, also rumours of strange occult goings on - but you get those everywhere secluded spots are mixed with ancient sites and gullable people, so it doesn't do to take such things too seriously.

Indeed, for me the biggest mystery about the place is its name. I mean, "Pork Hill"? Seriously? I'm tempted to the straightforward conclusion that it has something to do with the buying and selling of pigs, but I know enough about places names to know that that's far too obvious. I'm going to hazard a guess that "Pork" doesn't relate to anything porcine related, but is in fact a corruption of a word from an ancient British language (this close to the Tamar, possibly Cornish?).

The truth is, I don't have a clue - and research so far has turned up not a drop of information on the subject. This is interesting in itself of course - after all, wherever there is a strange place name there is generally a huge body of bearded blokes and bespectacled intellectuals*doing all kinds of arcane research. Not here it seems. What can I say? I'll keep looking into it and get back to you.

As I said, it's a large (and free) car park blessed with spectacular views. It's also a starting point for several walks of various distance and difficulty to various points of interest - I guess you could walk to Merrivale from there if you were minded to. After a largeish lunch, however, we were minded to do no such thing, and so pointed the car back in an easterly direction along the B3357.

Having checked the directions again, and knowing that the stones we were looking for were only a mile east of the hamlet we kept our eyes skinned and this time we (well, Mrs Snail - I missed it totally) caught a glimpse of a stone sticking up in an unnatural manner on the right hand side of the road. This led to a hasty three point turn (during which a car stopped and asked us the way to Tavistock - which was lucky, because we were able to say "just keep going mate, it's at the end of this road...") and a quick retracing of our steps back towards the Merrivale hamlet, where we found a small layby which we'd somehow missed on our previous drivebys.

In our defence, I have to say that there was no signage, or any indication whatsoever that there were standing stones, hut circles or anything else of interest in the vicinity. We climbed out of the car and headed off up the hill.

I'd been expecting a stone circle, probably because I'd not really been paying attention when I read the English Heritage Guide. There is a stone circle at Merrivale, it's just not the first thing you see, and you certainly can't see it from the road. The stones we'd seen driving past were actually part of one of Merrivale's two stone rows.

The first one you get to from where we'd parked is known as the "North Row" and is the shorter of the two. Essentially it's two parallel lines of smallish standing stones (most are maybe a foot or eighteen inches high, but some are taller) with a sort of tombstone sized slab which blocks off the row at the eastern end. If you follow the trail of a hundred or sixty odd stones to the west they just  sort of peter out after about a hundred and seventy or eighty meters - I'd like to be more specific but I measured the rows by pacing them out, my stride was uneven, my feet were wet and I lost count twice, so if you're looking for archaeological accuracy, you're in the wrong place!

A short hop skip and jump to the south, and running more or less parallel with the northern row is the imaginatively named "Southern Row" which is remarkably similar to its northern cousin, although presumably it has a posher accent and doesn't understand the concept of mushy peas or chips with gravy. At a (very) approximate two hundred and fifty or so metres, starting with another large stone at the eastern end, a triangular one this time, it's bigger than the north row (the flash southern bugger) and has an odd sort of mini stone circle - officially known as a "ring cairn".

Initially, as I squelched my way along the southern row through the drizzle that was now beginning to soak its way through my jacket I'd thought that this was the stone circle, but that lies a few tens of meters further southwest. Before I go there though, I passed what I took to be a damaged Cist - a sort of stone lined hole covered by a large stone cap. Here, however, the capstone is cleft rather spectacularly in twain. Whatever was in there originally is long gone, and unsurprisingly in the summer of 2012 it was filled to the brim with water.

The stone circle itself is rather small, with perhaps a dozen smallish standing stones remaining, each between a foot and a foot and a half tall arranged in a circle perhaps twenty feet across. I suspect rather a lot has been lost over the years. I'll be honest, as stone circles go, this is no Stonehenge, although there is one large, slender standing stone just outside the circle of about ten feet or so which would hold its own somewhere like Avebury. 

Thinking about Avebury and Stonehenge does, perhaps, underline the real beauty of Merrivale. the big rocks of Sailsbury Plain are undoubtedly more spectacular, but visit either of them and you'll spend as much time looking at fellow tourists as you will the stones themselves. Out in the middle of Dartmoor, in spite of the fact that I was never more than a few hundred meters from the road, we didn't see a single other living soul until we were leaving. The tranquillity was so profound you could serve it in slices, which gave us a chance to soak in the history and the atmosphere.

Of course, while we were soaking in the atmosphere our feet were busy soaking up a lot of water. I don't know if that section of Dartmoor is always so soggy, but if I ever go again I'm taking wellies. Of course the summer of 2012 was a notoriously damp one, but my trainers were so wet they took over a week to dry out properly. Still, enough of the carping. Merrivale was a fantastic experience, which left us with all the usual standing stone questions - "who built them?" "what were they for?" "how did they do it?" and so on.

We will, of course, never know - but it's always fun to speculate.

*Insert academic stereotype of your choice here...