Dartmeet

Where the Darts Meet

You arrive down Dartmeet Hill, which is steep and winding enough to have a reputation, and stop at a wooded river junction full of granite boulders. This is where the East Dart and West Dart meet to become the River Dart, the river that gave Dartmoor its name. Two miles of "Double Dart" run from here before it becomes the proper River Dart. People come to paddle, picnic and take photographs, and there is a car park beside the water.

There are two bridges. The road bridge, two semi-circular arches spanning about thirty feet each, was built in 1792 for the toll road between Ashburton and Two Bridges. Next to it are the granite spans of the old clapper bridge, laid without mortar on natural boulder piers, which Historic England dates to the seventeenth century or earlier. The East Dart flooded in the 1820s and washed part of it away; the Dartmoor Preservation Association rebuilt it in 1888.

Moorland Inns and Riverside Tea

Dartmeet is a beauty spot rather than a village, so it has no pub of its own. The nearest are the Forest Inn at Hexworthy, about a mile and a half west and long used by walkers, anglers and canoeists, and the thirteenth-century Tavistock Inn at Poundsgate, east on the B3357. The Devil is said to have stopped at the Tavistock for a drink before riding on to Widecombe on the day of the Great Thunderstorm of 1638.

For food there is Badger's Holt, a wooden tea room with large windows over the East Dart, beside the car park. It does cream teas — scones with jam and cream, with coconut cream as the vegan alternative — from a seasonal homemade menu, and it once advertised itself as "the most famous tea-rooms on the moor." The building was two cottages, then a fishing lodge. Peacocks and goats wander the grounds, which children tend to notice before the scones arrive.

Pixies and River Crossings

Up the hill sits Pixieland, a wooden cabin that calls itself "the home of the Dartmoor pixie and Dartmoor's most famous gift shop" and sells pixie souvenirs.

The walking is the main reason to stay. A 6.7-mile circuit takes in the Dart Gorge and Combestone Tor; a shorter National Park version runs about 3.5 miles and crosses the rivers on three sets of stepping stones. The Sherberton stepping stones, reached across the moor, sweep over the West Dart where it meets the Swincombe and are reckoned the finest in the National Park — not passable in high water. The north bank leads into the gorge, with Combestone, Bench and Sharp Tors nearby.

Brimpts Farm and Moorland Links

Brimpts Farm, a Duchy of Cornwall tenant farm since 1307 and one of Dartmoor's Ancient Tenements, has camping, ark-shaped pods that sleep four, a self-guided tin-mine trail and organised gorge scrambling and kayaking.

There is no railway; the nearest mainline stations are Newton Abbot and Plymouth, and a seasonal moorland bus links Dartmeet toward Princetown, six miles west.

The Coffin Stone

Halfway up Dartmeet Hill is the Coffin Stone, a granite slab split in two, where bearers rested coffins on the funeral route to Widecombe. Well-liked people had their initials carved into it. Legend says a wicked man's coffin, resting there, was struck by a thunderbolt that split the stone. The upper half still carries nine crosses and a few sets of carved initials.