Princetown - Swincombe Rocks - Abbot's Way - Princetown

Dave Pawley

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Princetown - Conchies Road - Crock of Gold - Royal Tor -Swincombe Rocks - Foxtor Mire - Whiteworks - Abbot's Way

This is an excellent walk to the east of Princetown. There are several places where you will want to stop and spend some time reflecting on the recent industrial and Bronze Age history. Once out onto the moor, you will cross the Dartmoor leat not once but twice and when you leave Bull Park you are out onto some very wild moorland indeed. Yet there is a partly granite-chipped road leading straight across the moor for three miles or more before it abruptly ends in the middle of nowhere. During the wars some conscientious objectors were imprisoned and those sent to Princetown were given the task of breaking down lumps of granite and building this road leading to nowhere. Hard labour was certainly what they had. To this day the gravelled road is named after them: 'Conchies Road'. I imagine the road ended when the war ended.
You visit the Crock of Gold kistvaen, one of the best preserved kistvaens (Bronze Age grave) on the moor. Whether the robbers did find a crock of gold is not known, but it makes a good story. You then leave the track and make your way over Royal Tor across desolate moorland, until you reach the Swincombe and the Shortest Stone Row on Dartmoor, with a strange mini-reservoir just beyond. Then it is back to near Foxtor Mire and the huge tin mining area at Whiteworks. From Whiteworks you walk across to the track of the Abbots Way, a route for the abbots travelling from Buckfast Abbey across to Tavistock Abbey, quite a walk for them.
Should you need to do so, you can reduce this walk to one of about 5.5 miles by taking the right fork just beyond Bull Park and taking a short cut across to join the Abbots Way to the north of Whiteworks. It is nice to have an escape route in the event of bad weather and this short cut offers just that.

England - South West England - Devon - Dartmoor

Features

Ancient Monument, Birds, Butterflies, Cafe, Food Shop, Gift Shop, Great Views, Hills or Fells, Industrial Archaeology, Moor, Museum, Pub, Public Transport, Restaurant, Tea Shop, Toilets