Dartmoor walks this way | News

Heather, gorse and more

September 19

Autumn is approaching which means that the Dartmoor hills are gradually turning purple and yellow as heather and gorse come into full bloom. It’s a magical combination of colours which can’t fail to lift the spirits when viewed in the gentle sunlight this time of the year often brings. There’s always a slight melancholy feel to the end of summer, but the wonderful colours that nature lays out for us make up for it.

One of my favourite gentle walks is particularly colourful at almost all times of year. The higher part that goes over Corndon Tor is glorious at the moment, while the lower part along the West Webburn features some of the best arrays of flowers I’ve come across on the moor. In spring there are bluebells and in early summer carpets of orchids. As summer progresses, wild flowers generally begin to fade, with just the occasional foxglove putting up a final spike of blossom, but when I did this walk recently, in the company of a botanist, we still had plenty to look at. Bright yellow monkey flowers (brought to the UK from Alaska in 1812 as a garden flower and now flourishing by streams in the wild), thickets of hemp agrimony, exotic looking ferns, grassland dotted with the subtle blue of devilsbit scabious and above it the intense red of rowanberries.

For many people, Dartmoor is about rocks, ponies and wild open spaces and the tiny little heathland blossoms barely feature. But in fact, if you know where to look, it offers an amazing variety of habitats and flora amongst its rocks, marshes, meadows, woods and heath. And the more you walk in it, the more you see.

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