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12th September 2023- We are sorry but we are now fully booked until October on all our routes - please contact us for Autumn and 2024 dates

The Two Moors Way

Section 1 – Two Moors Way - Ivybridge to Holne 13.5 miles

Grade -   Strenuous Grade walking in normal conditions - this would become severe if attempted in poor weather - what these grades mean  

Ivybridge on the southern slopes of Dartmoor National Park is the official start of the Two Moors Way. For information on extending the walk by a day to a the Full Devon Coast to Coast Walk see the option on the tabs above.

Overnight stays in Ivybridge before starting your Two Moors Way walk.

Dartmoor Ponies 2 Moors Way Walk coast to coast in Devon UKYour climb this morning above Ivybridge Town thrusts you immediately onto the desolate and wild southern face of Dartmoor ascending the old cattle grazers drove road passing below the first of many rocky Tors at Western Beacon.  Here you join the high level moorland route of the stunning Redlake Tramway 700ft above the town, an industrial masterpiece constructed in 1910 to reach the Redlake China Clay works far into the interior. Littered with hut circles, standing stones, twisted rock formations and ancient cairns you encounter Dartmoor National Parks mining country where the relics and remains of china clay production and hardy tin miners’ lives loom out of the bracken and heather en route. This is open access land so walkers can either stay with the navigational security of the Tramway or strike out wild and free, walking over the cairns and Tors of Butterdon and Three Barrows following your nose and the skyline if you prefer.

 

Hangershall Rocks near IvybridgeEither way the views right along this ridge are superb stretching back over the glistening Erme Valley to the South Hams coastline in South Devon and then far beyond to the jagged Roseland Peninsular in Cornwall. Break to admire the eerie, twisted and contorted rock stack formation at Iconic Hangershell Rocks a series of flat Tor slabs balanced precariously in this splendid isolation.  The Two Moors Way route here guides you through thousands of years of man’s activities, as it reveals old hut circles and enclosures, ancient  Hobajohns Cross and then the longest boundary stone row on the moor where your walk is flanked by over 550 standing stones stretching out over 2 miles including the medieval Spurrells cross.  Over a flank of brown heather you reach the azure blue waters of old flooded clay mining pits and older abandoned tin workings emerging from the heather from a long lost time when this area was Europe’s premier source of the precious metal.  You link briefly with the Abbots Way an ancient trail used by monks and hardy packhorses that connected Buckfast Abbey and Tavistock Abbey now only the preserve of wild ponies and red deer, grazing peacefully below the buzzards and ravens.

Dartmoor Clapper Bridge 2 Moors Way Devon Walking Holidays UKHeading east off the central moor you will encounter the 19th Century Pillow Mounds of Huntington Warren a former rabbit farm and a well guarded source of fur and food for the long gone miners, any modern offspring now no doubt supporting the moors many foxes ! Then feeling miles from anywhere one of Dartmoor’s iconic old stone clapper bridges appears to take you over the gurgling Avon stream and past the spooky Huntington Cross Boundary Marker which has stood here in ghostly solitude for over 500 years. A day to remember ends by descending to the wooden footbridge at Chalk Ford before reaching habitation at last at the Villages of Scorriton and Holne along a vivid flower lined green bridleway.

Overnight stops in Scorriton and Holne on the Two Moors Way

 

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