Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

Travel Special – Devon: Bleak beauty

Jeremy Clarke on the lonely magnificence of Dartmoor

issue 28 April 2012

I overheard the following inter-cubicle exchange in a mixed changing room recently. ‘So where do you live?’ ‘We live on Dartmoor.’ ‘Dartmoor! How lovely!’ ‘Well, yes, it is amazing. But we’ve had quite enough of it now and we’re moving back down to the coast. In the two years we’ve lived up there, we’ve had enough rain and fog to last us a lifetime.’

I smiled as I stuck my right leg through the wrong hole of my swimming shorts. Very wet, Dartmoor is. In fact sodden might be a better word. It rains for days on end. The 365sq mile plateau is the first port of call for rain blowing in off the Atlantic. Seventy inches of rainfall spread over 200 days of the year is not unusual.

And she’s right about the fog, too.

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