Cattle, sheep and wild ponies wander into Belstone over the cattle grid and stand about on the green as though they pay rates. This is the northern edge of Dartmoor, a thousand feet up, and the moor doesn't so much stop at the village as walk into it. The green — Great Green — has a set of old stocks and a small pound, the enclosure where stray animals were once shut up until someone claimed them. William Brock kept the pound for many years, until he died in 1913.
The village shop disappeared a long time ago, and the Post Office now turns up two mornings a week. That leaves the Tors Inn as the only commercial premises in Belstone, which puts a certain amount of pressure on it to be good. It is. TripAdvisor has it as "the best pub in Devon," and the kitchen has, in its own words, a passion for smoked-slow-and-low dishes. Sunday roasts come with Yorkshire puddings and cauliflower cheese. The meat is free-range and local, the fish comes up from Brixham, and the eggs, the pub says, are from across the road. The beer, ale and cider are all made in Devon by micro-breweries; someone in the reviews singles out one called Avocet.
The beer garden looks out over open moor towards Cosdon Hill, and the pub itself sits next to the church, which makes it the obvious place to start or finish a walk. It's booked out on busy Sundays, so ring ahead. It closes Mondays for food after five.
St Mary the Virgin stands beside it, a small, solid granite building with a fifteenth-century tower. Set into the south wall is an incised granite ring-cross, a Chi-Rho dated somewhere between the seventh and ninth centuries and only rediscovered in 1861 — evidence that people were worshipping on this spot long before the Normans arrived. The bells are older than most things you'll stand near: the peal dates from 1751. A parish record from 1848 notes Harriet Endacott, aged fifteen, "Killed by lightening on her way home after 5 o'clock on 22nd of Sept." Her tombstone is still there.
Domesday has the place as Bellestam, valued at thirty shillings a year, with eight villagers, five smallholders, four slaves, forty sheep and ten goats. The sheep, at least, are still in evidence.
The walking is the reason most people come. From the village you climb onto Belstone Common to Belstone Tor, past the Nine Maidens, a Bronze Age circle of sixteen or so stones that folklore says were maidens turned to rock for dancing on the Sabbath, and which are meant to dance again at noon. Irishman's Wall runs over a kilometre across the ridge — "the most famous wall on the moor." Cosdon Hill rises to the south. Belstone is also a popular starting point for Ten Tors training, which tells you what kind of walking this is.
Okehampton and its station are three miles off, reached by minor roads from the A30; the Dartline 66 bus drops you at Tongue End Cross. The old red telephone box on the green no longer takes calls. It holds a defibrillator now.