The National Trust park covers an area of 365 sq miles (945 sq km). The wild and mist-sodden open moorland of Dartmoor's bleak and isolated heart provided the eerie background for Conan Doyle's thriller, "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1902). Here at Princetown, surrounded by gaunt weathered outcrops of granite tors, is Britain's most secure prison. Also dotting the landscape are scores of prehistoric remains which have survived because of the durability of granite. Elsewhere the mood is very different. Streams tumble through wooded and boulder-strewn ravines forming pretty cascades and waterfalls, and cosy thatched cottages nestle in the sheltered valleys around the margins of the moor offering cream teas and warming fires to weary walkers. (The view from my bedroom window stretches for miles across the open moors.)

Buckland in the Moor; thatched, stone-built cottages perch on slopes above the River Dart. There are no numbers on the church clock, instead letters spell out MY DEAR MOTHER - a memorial placed there by a local landowner, William Whitley, in the late 1920's.

Just up the road from Buckland in the Moor is the famous village of Widecombe in the Moor. Famous, that is, for Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all! (Widecombe Fair). The fair is still held on the second Tuesday in September and a plaque on the village green commemorates the song.

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