P stone at SX 52981 76929,  bearing a "P" at SX 5297 7693, on the corner of enclosed land, taken to be a Peter Tavy parish boundary stone. An online photo.  A sunny weather photograph of the stone can be seen on an earlier walk: 23 May 2012 (nearly halfway down the page).

Looking in a north-easterly direction at Wedlake ..... approximately in the centre of the photograph ..... from the Longstone Moor track ..... there are old tin workings in this area - Wedlake Bottom / Roos Tor Bottom .....

Zoomed view to Higher Godsworthy.

A water feature, sort of .....

Looking back at Roos Tor Bottom .....

Junction between a substantial water-carrying ditch and the track to Wedlake .....

Old wheel ruts indicating that this water feature is an old track.

The photographs following are of features described by J. Butler (1991), Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities  II, The North. 31.7 Roos tor north west, pages 86-87, this being a settlement of 73 hut circles - one of the largest settlements on Dartmoor.

Somewhere up there is a reave, running up to Roos Tor.

In this area runs the Great Western Reave, runs 10 km (6 miles) from White Tor, over nearby Roos Tor, to Sharpitor.  Also: Heritage Gateway reference.

A large hut circle with others behind and right.

Very large hut circle with sub-dividing walls, near the centre of the settlement.  This is probably the one recorded by GPS as being at SX 53927 77149 (I didn't make a note as to which circle this was but ......).

Hut circle.

Three guesses .....

Drain that runs through the settlement

Another circle - there are 73 to choose from (apparently). 

Old slit trenches from WW2 .....

Mortar pit and slit trench (SX 54340 77342) from WW2 .....

Another mortar pit .....

A larger gun pit at SX 54436 77275, from WW2.

A Duke of Bedford marker stone, at SX 54441 76705, one of thirteen erected in 1890, emphasising the ring of flat bisected circle marks (adjacent to each erect marker stone, to mark the limit of Roos Tor, from which granite was not to be taken by moor stone workers .....

The old marker from 1847 .....

The 1847 and 1890 markers together.

Roos Tor, SX 543 766, elevation 454 metres (1489 feet) - shrouded in mist .....

Roos Tor .....

Conquered!

An unidentified globular lichen (looked as though it could be easily picked off the rocks), not crustose (crustose means that you can't remove it without damage), presumed to be foliose although it is not very "leaf-like", pale grey to green in colour. That's all he wrote - I didn't look at the under surface for colour ......

The lichen appears to have Cladonia-like fruiting structures, but nothing like pixies matches. 

Another set of quarrying markers, at SX 54378 76736 ("Bedford stone 2" on the map) ....

Medieval tin workers pits close to Roos Tor (south-west) .....

Another view of the tinners' pits.

A paved section of the Quarryman's Path, built to anable workers from Peter Tavy to walk to work at Merrivale Quarry.

Walk details

MAP: Red = GPS satellite track of the walk.

© Crown copyright and database rights 2012  Ordnance Survey Licence number 100047373
Also, Copyright © 2005, Memory-Map Europe, with permission.

This walk was accessed from Tavistock by following the road to Two Bridges and turning left at the white road sign post directing to Higher Godsworthy,  This is 1.1 km (� mile) from the A386 road from Tavistock to Okehampton.  There is roadside (on the moor) parking marked by the yellow cross.

Statistics
Distance - 5.25 km / 3.26 miles.
 

All photographs on this web site are copyright ©2007-2016 Keith Ryan.
All rights reserved - please email for permissions

Sister web sites
Dartmoor Tick Watch
The Cornish Pasty - The Compleat Pastypaedia