Even the most inexperienced adventurists in the United Kingdom have heard of Dartmoor; stretching out across the large rural county of Devon, this National Park hosts some of the best hiking and wild-camping that the British Isles has to offer. At just under one-thousand square kilometres, the barren plains of this historical moorland are a perfect place for introverted solo-hikers like myself to escape to and unwind for a few days. Getting lost in-between the millennia-old cairns and the gentle woodland on its borders sometimes feels more like home than home. It’s just such a pity that, despite my adoration for this place, I only intend to return once more.
I, myself, have been too many times to count. It started about five years ago with a spontaneous two-day hike from one side of Dartmoor to the other. I lugged my heavy budget-backpack and hardly-broken-in boots across mile after mile of mildly undulating moorland, and I fell in love with the place overnight. Even now I can remember peering out of my tent on the crisp morning of the second day, marvelling at a blanket of mist that covered all the slopes before me from my vantage point atop Snowdon. Beside me, a cairn - a mound of rocks serving as a waypoint older than the first creature to enter this place - kept a patient watch over a view that hasn’t changed for thousands of years. Infatuation was inevitable.
Part of my obsession was for the history of the place, and of that there’s plenty. When we humans find somewhere, especially a place so desolate and blank, it’s hard not to put our mark on it over time. A navigation marker here, a rock formation there, and eventually even somewhere as rugged and otherworldly as Dartmoor can feel somewhat populated. Most of these man-made additions are harmless - simple minor alterations to the landscape that serve no purpose other than to make it somewhat less unknown, less feral. Others, however, invite something ancient and powerful that I do not wholly understand.
Being an avid adventurer and someone with a habit of collecting souvenirs, it’s not uncommon for me to steal away small scraps of history from these places for my own keeping. Since my first trip to Dartmoor five years ago I’ve amassed a fairly large collection of small rocks and stones from various cairns, tombs, and rock formations around Dartmoor, only for the purposes of having little reminders of Dartmoor around the house. Before you call me a looter, please understand that this habit is entirely harmless - there’s more than enough stones on Dartmoor to go around, and I certainly don’t disturb any such site in the process of finding a souvenir to take home.
Despite my love of Dartmoor, I shall only be returning there once more, if I even make it, and my intention is for it to be a short expedition. This is due to something - exactly what, I cannot say - that I uncovered on my most recent hike there.
~
A few weeks ago I decided to embark on a multi-day wild camp in Dartmoor. Initially it might appear strange given that we are in the midst of winter, however it’s something I’ve done a couple of times before and have been planning since summer last year - if you get the timing just right, you can stay out on the moors while it’s blanketed in snow yet remain comfortable in surprisingly mild weather. Such conditions make for a really spectacular trip. That said, this year we didn’t get the snow I’d hoped for and instead I found myself traipsing around through suitably miserable rain and fog. Still, I enjoyed myself, made the most of it, and on the morning of day three set off from my camp site towards my lunch-time waypoint, Childe’s Tomb.
‘Childe’ is a bit of a Dartmoor urban legend. In the middle of the southern half of Dartmoor, perched unassumingly on the side of a gentle slope, is a small tomb and cross made of granite. The tomb itself is of no great size or importance, and historians suggest there isn’t even anything buried there. The granite slabs that make up the tomb are no larger than six feet long, and the cross stands as many feet high. Surrounding the tomb are a number of other, similarly-cut slabs in a circle formation, all of which have been largely overrun with grass and moss as time has worn them down into the boggy peat. The legend that accompanies the tomb, should you believe the local storytellers, is that in the 11th century a man by the name of Ordulf became separated from a hunting party on the moors and, due to severe weather, died shortly after. His body was recovered by local monks and, for the purposes of inheriting Ordulf’s estate, carried back to a nearby town and buried. The tomb was erected in his memory, and the title Childe the Hunter bestowed upon the unlucky man.
At approximately 9am the already-unfavourable weather took a turn and I found myself navigating by GPS alone. Even in good visibility the moors can be difficult to traverse, but with the fog coming down as hard as it was and the rain blowing sideways I could see no more than a few metres in front of me clearly - anything beyond blurred into a uniform grey. Trusting my GPS-device, I trudged through boggy moorland gradually towards Childe’s Tomb. By 11am, the faint granite cross in the distance became vaguely traceable through the fog and grew bit by bit until I found myself within the stone-slab circle perimeter. Hungry and thirsty, and eager to get out of the rain, I pitched my small lightweight tent on the leeward side of the tomb and got inside. Within minutes I was recovering in the warm glow of my camping stove, taking whatever pleasure I could from the view of torrential rain and fog beating down on the desolate moorland I was marooned on. Childe’s Tomb waited, patiently, behind me.
After brief respite I donned my waterproof clothing again and packed away my tent. The plan was to walk south-eastwards towards Buckfastleigh, camping overnight on the way, and all going well I should have been back at my car before midday the next day. Before setting off, however, I fumbled around Childe’s Tomb looking for a small souvenir. A pebble from the floor would have sufficed but the grass around the tomb was surprisingly barren, so I began looking for something closer to the tomb itself. There, atop one of the stone slabs, a small sharp fragment of granite sat underneath the cross - which, I supposed, was where the fragment originally came from. Beneath the fragment, however, wedged between two of the tombs large granite slabs, something plastic caught my eye. I reached in and pulled out a transparent map-bag containing crumpled paper that, despite the water coating the bag’s film, I could see had been written on. In hastily scribbled pen, the uppermost sheet of paper had ‘READ ME’ inscribed on it, barely legible through the bag’s creases and condensation.
I could see the paper inside had already become somewhat damp so, not wanting to saturate it further, I put the map bag into my waterproof trousers pocket, along with the granite fragment, and went about navigating my way through the fog south-eastwards.
~
I never did sleep on the moors that night.
In-fact, by 1am I was back at my car, breathless, drenched, and in a state of panic I’d never thought possible.
The rain and fog remained steadfast in its commitment to drive away any semblance of keeping one’s bearings and, guided only by GPS-device and the occasional cairn, I walked for what felt like hours. Not before long I could sense the sun going down, somewhere far beyond the clouds that hid it from my view, and I donned my head-torch with a plan to make camp by the next waypoint. As I began up a slight incline towards the summit of Ryder’s Hill, I suddenly became aware of the fact that I was no longer alone.
No sighting had spurred this sensation; no noise had alarmed me. The moors were, to an observer beyond me, as barren and lonely as they were a few minutes prior, but I came to an alert standstill, unable to move further, stuck with the knowledge that something now followed me.
I hesitated, listening out for a noise other than rain falling on my hood, morbidly hoping to hear my stalker before turning around and facing them. No such noise came, and I turned sheepishly only to find no other follower than the fog itself. I doubled around again, this time certain I would lock eyes with another traveller of this barren land appearing through the mist, but again I was met with emptiness alone. For some time I stood under the rain and the dimming light, puzzled as to why I suddenly felt so harassed, and eventually assigned my madness to an empty stomach and kept walking up the slope, planning a hearty meal once camp had been made at the summit.
Atop Ryder’s Hill sits a cairn, about twelve feet wide and as tall as me. It serves as a waypoint on the moors akin to a lighthouse at sea when the visibility is good, but when shrouded in the thick fog of that evening it didn’t appear to me until I crept over the brow of the hill. As I did, something moved beyond the cairn - something black, about the size of a large dog, that moved close to the ground as I came into view.
I stopped, again suffocated by the sensation of no longer being alone. I stared at the edge of the cairn where I had seen the creature retreat from my view, sickened by the realisation that it now hid behind the rocks waiting for me. I stayed motionless for minutes, listening through the wind against the rocks for the noise of the creature shuffling about. Silence greeted me again.
I can’t say how many times I circled the cairn in the rain, looking for the creature. In my more confident moments I told myself it was a stray dog, perhaps lost by its owner in the fog earlier that day, but the image of it slinking away behind the cairn as I came over the brow of the hill quickly removed such delusions. No creature I’ve ever seen has moved in such a way - despite appearing to hide, the movement struck me as predatory in nature, as of it only hid for the purpose of luring me in. Circle after circle of the cairn with no trace of a stray dog or otherwise convinced me that the cold and dehydration may be playing roles in this, and I quickly pitched my tent, unable to stop checking over my shoulder as I did so.
By the time the tent was pitched and my dinner cooking, the grey fog that had surrounded me during the day had turned to the black shroud of a winter’s night. I was tired, wet, cold, and hungry, and by all means had forgotten about the papers I found at Childe’s Tomb earlier that day. I ate my food, enjoying the warmth of my tent, assigning the creature I’d seen to nothing more than an exhaustion-induced hallucination. After eating I cleaned my cookware and laid out my sleeping bag, but stopped when interrupted by the sound of rocks tumbling down the cairn nearby.
My torch came to light immediately and within seconds I had donned myself in waterproofs and my boots. I left the tent into the cold, wet air and, terrified of what I might find, directed the beam of my flashlight through the rain to the cairn only a few feet away.
As my light passed over one side of the cairn, something shifted beyond the rocks and the fog. The light caught a brief glimpse of something devilish - black, matted fur, four legs, and an eye moving through the fog. It was larger than it seemed before, somewhere between a dog and a small horse, but it’s legs were short and it travelled low to the ground. I snatched a sighting of the beast for only a moment before it darted behind the cairn, and I heard more rocks tumbling.
Overtaken by fear, I turned and ran. My torch lit up specs of rain as it swung quickly back and forth as I sprinted down Ryder’s Hill. I tripped once, twice, maybe three times over mounds of peat and rocks on the way down. Whether the beast pursued me or not, I don’t know, as I daren’t look back. I ran until I reached the bottom of the hill and my body commanded me to stop and breathe. Quiet - just the rain. Darkness all around.
Unable to muster the strength to climb the hill again, and terrified of whatever beast awaited me up there, I knew I had no choice but to walk through the night. Exhausted, delirious, and in panic I trekked for hours through the darkness until I could make out the lights of Buckfastleigh in the distance. I reached my car at 1am, knowing that something followed me there. I drove home immediately.
~
The next day, after a sleepless night, I recalled finding the papers at Childe’s Tomb. I cancelled the half-complete wash cycle of the washing machine, opened the door and pulled out my waterproof trousers, and retrieved the map bag from the pocket. Water had seeped into the bag and the papers were more saturated than before, but I pulled them out and laid them on my kitchen table. The writing was still legible.
READ ME it said on one sheet, scribbled in large, capital letters. I turned it over, peeling it off the sheet below it. The writing was still readable.
BEW-RE TH- CROSS -F THIS TOMB. IT IS GU-ARD-D. The scribbled writing took up the entire page.
The sheet below it was scribbled in similar writing.
CHILDE’S BEAST PROTECTS TH-S SITE.
I turned the second sheet over.
DISTURB THIS TOMB AT YOUR PERIL.