Dartmoor CAM Walks

Previous walks Weather Links

This walk: 2012-10-17. Harrowbeer Aerodrome, pilots' memorial, Roborough Common, orange peel fungus, hawthorn berries, kerb stones, hashers' sign, Clavaria fistula yellow fungus, Walkhampton House, Great Staple Tor, Pew Tor, Great Mis Tor, pony, bomb-rolling ramps, Nostoc commune.

Walk details below - Information about the route etc.

Link to Google Satellite view of the area

Previous walk in this area - 1st July 2009

RAF Harrowbeer display board located a few yards from the car park, which lays just off the right edge of this photograph. A memorial to the personnel who served here can be seen just beyond the display board (see the third photograph below) .....

Display board - the stationed opened 15 August 1941. Debris from the Plymouth blitz was used to level the ground. It closed in 1945. After a failed proposal that this became Plymouth Airport, the buildings were finally demolished in 1961. Click the photograph to see a larger version.

Composite map made by overlaying the map from the display board photograph above onto the 1:25k Ordnance Survey map. Any apparent discrepancy between this image and the display map above may be because the display map has North at the bottom instead of at the top of the map.

Link to a map of the old airfield.

Memorial stone. Click the photograph to see a larger version.

Standing on the ruins of an old World War 2 building on Harrowbeer Aerodrome, on Roborough Common - or should it be called Buckland Common at this end?

Aleuria_aurantia, the Orange Peel Fungus

Hawthorn berries, Crataegus monogyna .....

A closer view.

Reputedly curved granite kerb stones, possibly robbed from a leat.

General view of a track ahead.

Hashers' sign for On Home and a direction arrow in sawdust.

Possibly Fairy Club (Clavaria fistula), Clavaria cornea (browse no. 17), White Spindles (Clavaria browse no. 4) or Jelly Antler Fungus (Calocera viscosa, browse no. 30): apart from growing "on the ground", the precise substrate wasn't noticed.

Photograph of a house outside Walkhampton.

Zoomed view (from another location).

Group strolling across Roborough Common .....

As previous photograph.

Great Staple Tor (left), SX 542 760, elevation 455 metres (1492 feet), Pu or Pew Tor (centre), SX 532734, elevation 320 metres (1049 feet) and Great Mis Tor (right) SX 563 769, elevation 538 metres (1765 feet).

Its a pony!

Gathered at the old bomb-rolling ramps on the airfield where unprimed bombs were off-loaded from railway trucks ..... this is in the north-west extremity of the airfield so as to minimise the effects of any accidental blast .....

Another view of the ramp .....

As previous photograph .....

Nearby second ramp.

Something strange?

One of several temporary ponds in the area, this one at SX 5078 6826, of the sort in which the fairy shrimp (Chirocephalus diaphanus) might be found.

From the Dartmoor National Park Authority Habitat Action Plan for Freshwater .....

"The fairy shrimp Chirocephalus diaphanus is a crustacean which occurs in pools that dry up from time to time, such as rutted tracks and gateways. It can be found in a few areas along the south-western fringes of Dartmoor. It is nationally uncommon and protected under the Wildlife & Countryside Act."

Nostoc commune. a cyanobacteria that forms colonies. A common name is Witches Butter. It grows on dead wood, soil, paving slabs, brick, concrete, pebbledash - seemingly anything in our garden? It looks a little like Jew's Ear fungus but once it is established it is more widespread and convoluted, it is also a different colour.

Walk details

MAP: Red = GPS satellite track of the walk.

This walk was reached by turning off the A396 main road from Plymouth to Tavistock just before the roundabout at Yelverton and parking in a free car park marked by the yellow cross on the map. The P symbol on the map denotes a Pay & Display car park.

Statistics
Distance - 5.80 km / 3.6 miles.