Tag: Exploring

Exploring Belstone

Exploring Belstone

Wanting to explore more and get to see our new surroundings we headed out to Dartmoor. This time to a place called Belstone to get on to Dartmoor. This area like many, has a few Tors on it. One called Belstone Tor.

So, I had the intention of trying to find it. We did however have the weather against us, with just an hour or 2 between the rain. Approaching Okehampton we get the amazing views of Dartmoor in front of us and we noticed it has snow! Ok, it was patchy and higher than we were probably going to get, but it was still snow!

Now, I obviously don’t know this area at all at the moment, so starting out with one idea of going to the Tor and actually getting to it, or indeed finding it is really by luck, but it didn’t really matter. As sooner as you step on the moor, it is instantly amazing!


So we just followed the first ‘path’ we found an headed off in that direction.


Quite quickly the views open up and you can see for miles into the distance. We headed in the general direction of what looks like a mountain range and what was one of the highpoints in southern england.


Wanting really to find the Tor, we passed a couple walking. Infact the only other couple walking that day that we passed. They said head straight along this path until you find something that looks like a wall, a fallen wall, more like a pile of rocks and go right following it.

Hmm, we either didn’t walk far enough to find the ‘wall’, or couldn’t work out what was rocks and what was wall…


So we admired the views and I took a couple of Vertorama shots. This is like a Panorama photo, but vertical instead of horizontal.


Now snowing a bit and fighting with the water on the lens we turned around and headed back to the car admitting defeat and decided we needed a slightly better day to find this Tor. As usual though, stormy days make for a really great photos. They can be a bit of an exposure nightmare with blown skies and dark foregrounds, but you can try and get a medium and then edit later, thank to the power of shooting Raw.


The snow also added to the impact of the shots and it not something I normally get to photograph much. But living this close to 3 moors really gives me a better chance to see it and photograph it!


Next time I’ll give it another try to find the Tor and maybe do a little more research as to where it is, but the main thing was to get out, get a walk and hopefully get some great photos.