God's counties all along the sea, from east to west are seven.
But the fairest of this fair galaxy
Is Devon, is Devon, glorious Devon.
The very name of Devonshire conjures up an image of good things - rich clotted cream (bad for your heart), strong 'scrumpy' cider (bad for your liver), seaside holidays (guard against sunburn and mind you don't drown) and the wild open spaces of Dartmoor (watch out for the Hound of the Baskervilles). Small wonder that those who like to live dangerously, as well as those who enjoy good old-fashioned family holidays, beautiful scenery and plenty of variety, head regularly for this historic county.
Devon offers less startling contrasts than some counties. Its appeal is more subtle - no rugged mountains, no foaming torrents, no killer waves or predatory beasts. Yet there is diversity enough in the wide moorland with its imposing granite tors, in the wooded valleys and estuaries, in the two coastlines - north and south - and the myriad hidden lanes and village. Here, you may enjoy all the fruits of a county which is well aware of its attraction to visitors, or you may seek out the quieter spots and find an England that many people imagine has disappeared. Here, you can find modern life superimposed on an older way a way that has not died but adapted. Change does come to this part of the country, but it comes more slowly. (When I first lived there, over 30 years ago, men would still stand back to allow women to board the bus first! The downside was that there were still male provinces which it was difficult, or even impossible, for women to enter.)
I first met Devon at the age of 16, when I came to Brixham for a family holiday. My feelings with the first glimpse of the good red earth were akin to those on meeting an old friend. It was like coming home after a long time away, yet I had never known until then where home really was.
Perhaps in some ways, Devon always had been my home. My grandfather was born in Branscombe and my mother had a number of relatives in Beer. I had felt an affinity with this county, even when it was no more than a name to me. That holiday, and others, intensified that feeling, and when the chance came to make Devon my real home I jumped at it.
What makes Devon so special? Is it the moor - wild, often bleak, supposedly haunted Dartmoor with its grey granite tors and swirling mists? Is it the sandy beaches and the little, rocky coves? The rolling red-ploughed hills of the South Hams, the thatched and whitewashed cob cottages, the steep valleys spread like cloth of gold with blazing gorse, the high banks of the narrow lanes, starred with primroses? Or is it the bustling holiday resorts around Torbay - Torquay itself, its sister Paignton, and the fishing village of Brixham across the bay, with the cliffs of Berry Head providing a dramatic defence against the sea?
I knew Berry Head when it was a lonely place, when you could go there and know that you were hardly likely to meet a soul and you could gaze down in solitude at the rugged limestone cliffs at the gannets and gulls, the kittiwakes and guillemots and fulmars. The birds are still there and so are the cliffs, but many more people go to Berry Head now for it is a country park, complete with cafe and visitor centre, where you can learn about the flora and fauna of the region and see the ruined Napoleonic Fort and the lighthouse which is both the highest and the shortest lighthouse in Great Britain.
Whatever it is about Devon, large numbers of people recognise it and make it their holiday destination, and Devon does its best to make their journey worthwhile. The fact that so many return again and again proves its success - but Devon doesn't really have to try anyway. It truly is 'glorious' Devon.
Dartmoor is one of Britain's National Parks, 365 square miles in area, famous for its ponies, its prison, its ancient hut circles and its stone walls. Widecombe Fair still takes place here every year, on the second Tuesday in September, and attracts vast crowds. But plenty of people go to Widecombe at other times of the year to enjoy its village green and noble church - the 'Cathedral of the Moor' - and the surrounding steep hills.
Widecombe Fair is the subject of the famous song about poor Tom Pearse, who foolishly lent his grey mare to an un-named friend so that he and seven friends (perhaps even more, if Uncle Tom Cobley 'and all' were expecting to ride the poor beast as well) could go to the fair. The mare died, and haunts the moor still, appearing 'gashly white' and 'rattlin' 'er bones'. A not unnatural death, considering the burden she bore, and the fact that all this actually took place, not at Widecombe at all, but at Spreyton, north of Dartmoor and a good twenty miles or so from Widecombe as the horse plods.
Horses, or rather ponies, feature large on Dartmoor. They live apparently quite wild, though every one of them belongs to someone, mostly commoners with grazing rights on the moor. Tough, sturdy little beasts, they can cope with most weathers though they have been known to need a little help to survive some of the fiercest of Dartmoor's winters. Help is not appreciated, however, when it comes in the form of petting and roadside feeding by visitors - not only it is a sad sight to see a pony lying dead at the side of the road, having been run down by a vehicle, but animals which live wild have to remain wild in order to survive. A pony that becomes accustomed to hanging about for titbits will forget how to forage for itself, and if it does survive the traffic may not be able to survive the winter.
There is talk now of fencing Dartmoor, to prevent such tragedies. This suggestion has resulted in much controversy - the charm of Dartmoor undoubtedly lies in its wildness and many people believe fencing would destroy that, as they think it has destroyed the character of the New Forest in Hampshire. There, a similar situation prevailed - wide tracts of untamed land inhabited by ponies and deer, with a few roads passing through. Traffic became heavier, the roads were widened and ponies began to die. Fences were then built along the lengths of the roads to keep the ponies in.
This takes the responsibility away from the motorists. Cars can be driven at speed without the fear of running into a large animal. But the wilderness has gone. It is no different, driving through fenced moorland, from driving through fenced farmland. Already, there are stretches which are fenced and perhaps always have been. The delight of crossing Dartmoor is in crossing those parts which retain their wildness - yes, even the kind of wildness which allows sheep and ponies to amble slowly across the road in front of you - where you feel you can just stop and walk away from the road. You may not wish to do this - but the psychological effect of unfenced space is of immeasurable value.
So what is the answer? A speed limit of 40 miles per hour has been suggested. This finds favour with some, but there are objectors on both sides. To a number of people, a speed limit would be an infringement of their own liberty. To others, it is simply not low enough. 40 miles an hour, they say, is still too fast on much of the moor. Fenced or not, the roads and terrain should be respected for their own sake.
It is not as if many people need to cross Dartmoor simply as a route from one side to the other. The two main cities of Devon - Exeter and Plymouth - are within easy, fast driving of each other by roads which go both north and south of Dartmoor. If you drive across Dartmoor, it is either because you wish to - and are by implication prepared to accept its risks - or because you wish to reach somewhere on the Moor. And your journey will not be a long one, in either case. Dartmoor is the largest wilderness left in England, but it is still no more than an hour's drive from edge to edge.
Small though that may seem to visitors familiar with the vast open spaces of America and Australia or even to the wildernesses of smaller countries like Austria or Iceland, there is still plenty to delight the eye and the senses on Dartmoor, and you can spend much longer than an hour in discovering it all. Whether you travel on foot or (slowly!) by car, you will find interest around every corner, enough to keep you absorbed for a day, a week, a month - or a lifetime.
The largest community actually within Dartmoor itself is Princetown, founded at the end of the eighteenth century by Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt whose ambition it was to transform the 'useless wastes' of Dartmoor into a grain-growing prairie. He called it Princetown after his patron the Prince of Wales (who, as Duke of Cornwall, owned most of Dartmoor) but his ambitions came to nothing. Instead, seeking a way to maintain the community he had started, he initiated the building of Dartmoor Prison, originally intended to house Napoleonic prisoners-of-war but used later - as it still is - for civilian prisoners.
Perhaps because of its position, high in the middle of the bleakest part of the Moor, swept by winds and often shrouded in mist, Dartmoor Prison has acquired a sinister reputation second to none in Britain. For a long time, travellers across the Moor would come across working parties of convicts, dressed in prison blue and even chained together, working at stone-breaking in nearby quarries, and escapes were frequent. It was common twenty or thirty years ago, when I was travelling regularly across the Moor, to find the roads blocked by police hunting for an absconding prisoner. And because Dartmoor Prison was used predominantly for dangerous criminals, this was always a rather frightening event - although we soon got used to it and just took more care until the absentee was retrieved. At one time, escapes grew so frequent that questions were asked, and it was said that the prison was in a poor state and that 'prisoners had only to lean against the walls to get out'. Now the prison has been refurbished and the prisoners themselves are different - fewer dangerous criminals and more 'white-collar' crimes or, as someone told me recently, local farmers who have crossed the law in some way and whose help in keeping the prison farms going is invaluable!
The stories of escaping prisoners make entertaining reading - after the event. I recall one who, escaping during the Christmas holidays, holed up in the local primary school for a few days while police blocked the roads, searched the Moor and finally gave up until someone noticed smoke issuing from the school chimney. And was this the same man, or another, equally impudent, who on another occasion got a lift to Plymouth, where he spent the entire day in one of the big stores with a stolen cheque-book, fitting himself out with new clothes and having his hair done before spending the night with a local prostitute - who shopped him next morning!
That these escapes actually took place, I know. There were others less amusing. One man went to ground in the home of an acquaintance of mine while they were away on holiday. He later left the house (and was captured while trying to evade police over the Calstock railway viaduct) but only after ransacking the entire place, slashing and destroying clothes and property, and leaving filth and havoc in every room. Months later, my friends were still coming across evidence of the days and nights he spent wreaking vengeance on society in their home, and it never felt like home to them again.
Two other escapes come to mind. One was that of two prisoners who escaped together, made their way to Burrator, and then came to blows. One ended in the reservoir while the other made off; the drowned body was discovered months later when a drought reduced the level of the water.
The other I recall because I was stranded in a broken-down car at midnight one night, on one of the bridges across the Tamar - a common place to find road-blocks. I walked to a house where I was able to telephone for help, but had to wait in the car for an hour before rescue came. Meanwhile, I heard on the car radio that a gentleman who went by the name of the 'Mad Axeman' was on the loose that night, and that it had only recently been decided to abandon some of the road blocks. A long, dark hour... (I believe the Mad Axeman, whose name I have forgotten, made it to London where he either murdered someone or was murdered himself , having been 'sprung' for just that reason.)
It might be supposed that such an establishment, with such stories surrounding it like the fog that so often swirls against its walls, might deter visitors - but instead, Dartmoor Prison has acquired a romantic image that brings them in increasing numbers. Coaches make for Princetown, slowing down to give passengers a glimpse of its walls, and one might almost expect to find a chain-gang, clothed in broad-arrows, shuffling along the roads as part of the scenery, rather like the lone bagpiper one comes across occasionally in Scotland. There seems to be a strange, compelling attraction in staring at the grim fortress with its high grey walls, knowing that human beings are incarcerated inside; yet it must be an attraction that comes entirely from its position on Dartmoor, for who goes to gaze at Wormwood Scrubs or Pentonville with such fascination?
However, there is these days more to see at Princetown than its prison. For lovers of old railways, here is one of the oldest - the Plymouth and Dartmoor Railway, built in the 1820s as a horse-drawn tramway to haul granite from nearby quarries and later converted to a standard gauge railway, so giving Princetown, despite its isolation, excellent communications. There is a good Visitors' Centre, giving information about the Moor, its topography and history, and there are plenty of shops, cafes and restaurants for browsing and refreshment.
Tavistock is my favourite of all the little towns that sit on the fringes of the Moor. I lived here for several years and, of a county that has always felt like my natural home, this always seem to me to be the heart. And in the thirty years that I have known it, it hasn't really changed. A little larger, with a few new shops opened and a few old ones closed, but essentially the same. The school my children attended is now a doctors' surgery and health centre, the large cafe in the middle a branch of a bank, and the swings and roundabouts and old steam roller gone from the Meadows. But Creber's, the famous delicatessen, is still there, the river Tavy and the Morwellham canal still border the Meadows, where you can walk or sit, play tennis or putt, and the tower of St Eustachius' church still maintains a calm, benign watch over the main square and the statue of the Duke of Bedford, who owned so much land and property around here.
'Tis just a month come Friday next, Bill Champernowne and me,
Us went across the old Dartymoor, the Goozey Vair to see,
Us made usselves right vitty,
Us shaved and grazed our hair,
And off us went in our Zunday best, behind Bill's old grey mare.
Us smelt the zage and onions all the way from Whitchurch Down,
And didn't us have a blow-out when us put up in the town,
And there us met Ned Hannaford, Jan Steer and Nicky Square,
I think that all the world must be
At Tavistock Goozey Vair.
Once a year Bedford Square turns itself into a fairground for the traditional Tavistock Goose (or Goosey) Fair. So crowded that it is difficult to recognise where you are, the square is filled with stalls and cheapjacks and there are plenty of rides as well. Cars and coaches arrive from miles around - grey mares seem to have had their day as far as going to fairs is concerned, or perhaps they've dug in their hooves and refused, and who can blame them? - and it is a feature of the fair that you will indeed meet the same people, probably in just the same spots, as you met last year. Goose figures large on the menus in hotels and restaurants, though less so in the fair itself. But you will find cattle and sheep being driven through the streets still, and although the second Wednesday in October is the main day, there is real dealing going on during the rest of the week at the cattle market. The pony sales are held close to St John's Day, a couple of weeks earlier.
Tavistock has ancient roots. There is little left of the large Benedictine abbey which once held so much power in the area, but you can find a few ruins in the churchyard and, if you walk down from the bridge to the Meadows, along the banks of the river. Across the moor from Tavistock are the row of old crosses which mark the way to Buckfast; the first is on Whitchurch Down, on the golf course.
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