In and around Holne Moor

Early in the morning, spiders' webs were to be seen all over the roadside gorse bushes. Far more striking for real, very Halloween-full, than I managed to capture in this snap, rather later in the morning.

One of the little canals, properly leats, built into hillsides on Dartmoor. We did not get around to finding out whether it was to do with providing water for the livestock or water for the mines, these last being scattered all over these moors in days gone by.

In any event, not fit for human consumption, at least not from below this bridge on the road to Hexworthy. I was reminded of the Outward Bound rule, no drinking below the sheep line, this from the days when there were plenty of unpleasant parasitic worms about. Dark talk from parents and medical people about tainted pork. From which I associate to the Middle Eastern aversion to same.

A view of part of Coombestone Tor, looking out over some branch of the Dart Valley below.

With this snap from the Ordnance Survey 3-D feature, showing off one of the various things that they can do better than Google, with the aerial photograph of the same bit of moor from these last being very hard to read. The Tor in question being the white spot in the middle.

A not very safe looking bit of rock on the top of Coombestone Tor. And getting this far was about as far as my weak head for heights would take me.

Later in the day we made it to Ashburton, for the first time in the course of our holiday. To wonder how these statues survived the attentions of the Puritans. Access to the interior, where we might have found out, denied, as there was a rehearsal for a wedding in progress.

There was also a great deal of yew in the church yard, including a handsome if rather forbidding avenue from the street gate to the main entrance - with the yews illustrated here being around the back. Was there some pagan survival with pull on the parochial church council, a possibility suggested by a number of murder dramas on ITV3, the script writers for which seem to have a penchant for dodgy goings on in and around churches?