Dartmoor

It was a good start to a week's holiday in Devon to be greeted by the words "Spring must have arrived - the first foal has been seen on the moors yesterday."

 Dartmoor is a land of contrasts it can be so beautiful and also very bleak even on the same day  - this is due to what sort of weather it is receiving. It's is also one of the rare places these days where you can walk without sight of any road or habitation for mile on mile.

 The textures and the colour of the moor vary too with hard grey granite tors and leats. (man-made water channels.)

The air is very pure and there is an abundance of lichens and mosses growing everywhere.

 The trees stand alone either having survived the battering of the winds, or grow in plantations ,or are over-hanging the streams covered in lichen and moss.

It is a land that can steal part of your heart  and this has happened to all of our family. It was not always the case with me - the first time I met it was on honeymoon. We drove across the moor to Princetown on a wet, grey day. The bleak Napoleonic prison there reflected the grey landscape.

Luckily this was not to be my lasting impression. We discovered a fantastic holiday cottage nineteen years ago, close to the moors and have in the 15 subsequent visits explored more and more of Dartmoor and discovered why this is such a special place to be.

It was Tavi 's first visit, we watched to see his reaction. It was good to see that he loves it too!

We were lucky with the weather and Dartmoor wasn't lost in fog until this morning when we were returning home.

Thank you very much for all the comments that were left on my last post so many of you are waiting for spring too - for those lighter evenings and plants and seeds emerging. Some of the things you were waiting for made me smile too including a grandchild, and the ironing fairy- I think some of us maybe be waiting longer than others!

 Sarah x