Ancient stone circles and tumbled rocks wear cloaks of crystal
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Version 0 of 1. Snow enhances the impact of man-made features on this open landscape, high above the prevailing green of fields in the Lynher and Tamar valleys. Up here wavelets of snow engulf tufts of withered grass, and chunks of ice dangle on yellow-flowering, stunted, gorse. Footprints of walkers and their dogs weave across the smoother white ground, along sparkling paths and tracks once followed by quarry workers and miners going to work and wagons taking stone for use on lower land. Wads of snow streak the sides of standing stones in the prehistoric Hurlers circles and, close by, whitened hummocks of spoil are interspersed with old prospecting pits full of slushy water. The north-west wind blasts across from a cold haze around Brown Willy but the sheltered south face of the nearby Cheesewring quarry is snow free, as are the heaps of discarded stones around Gold Diggings on the hillside above the brown rushes of Witheybrook marsh. Yet, across the undulating moorland, overlooked by the precariously balanced tors on Stowe’s hill, mini snow drifts outline and exaggerate shadowy tool marks on almost every granite outcrop, rocky ledge and part buried boulder. For centuries lumps of moorstone were laboriously split and carted away to leave icy pools, squared-off blocks and sharp edges now colonised and softened by grey lichens and emerald mosses. Shrivelled haws and swags of bearded lichen grace the gnarled hawthorn trees, which most likely owe their germination and long-term survival to the jumble of jagged stones that crowd against fissured trunks and keep off grazing sheep. The low midday sun glints on quartz and ice crystals and casts dark shadows in the clitter of broken and tumbled rocks. The sea off the distant coast gleams golden, and the ruined mine engine houses and stacks appear as silhouettes scattered across this once industrialised land. Dark clouds encroach and snowy Dartmoor is already veiled. Back in the village of Minions snow has melted, the slush confined to road edges. Soon heavy rain will wash away all trace of white. Twitter: gdncountrydiary |