Dartmoor

Dartmoor is an area of
moorland in Devon. Roughly
here. It covers around 954
square kilometres, and became
a national park in 1951.
Nowadays it is very popular
with tourists who want to
come and see this wild and
interesting landscape.

Geographical features
The Dartmoor area includes
the largest area of granite in Britain, covering over 625 square
kilometres at the surface. This granite
landscape means that some very impressive features form,
such as the tors that Dartmoor is so famous for. These are
outcrops of granite that usually occur on the top of hills, such
as Haytor (pictured below), and are very popular with visiting
tourists.. These form
when weaker places
in the granite are
weathered
chemically, then as
the other rocks
around the granite
are eroded down,
the stronger areas of
granite are left
protruding from the
lowered surface of
the hill. In Dartmoor,
the tors are the focus
point of the annual ‘ten tors’ hike, where teams of 6 people are
required to visit ten tors in sequence.

Another feature of the granite landscape in Dartmoor is bogs.

Because granite is impermeable (it doesn’t let water through),
any places where rain falls and there is no incline so that water
would run off the water collects. And, because most of
Dartmoor is
covered with
peat, the water
spreads out very
slowly, meaning
that pockets of
very wet soil
form called bogs.
The largest of
these can be up
to 12ft across,
and as you can
see from the
picture, they can
be quite difficult
to see from a
distance, so they
can cause problems for hikers.

Land uses in Dartmoor

The main land uses in Dartmoor are:

 Sheep farming – Sheep are adapt well to tough

environments where food isn’t so luscious as in normal
fields, so in Dartmoor they can be farmed on land that
would otherwise be useless.
 Quarrying – Because granite is a very hard rock it is a very
useful building material, as well as being used for many
other things, meaning that it is worth quite a lot.
 Tourism and recreation – Dartmoor is home to many
impressive sites that people come to see or to do other
activities on, such as rock climbing on the tors or hiking on
the moors.
 MOD – Because of the inhospitable terrain in Dartmoor,
the MOD use it to train soldiers. Also, because the moors
are quite barren, they make good firing ranges, and
because it is a sparsely populated area there are less
people to annoy with load bangs.
 HM Prison – Along the same lines as the MOD, there is a
prison on Dartmoor, as if any prisoners escaped they
would be very far from anywhere, and in a very tough
climate. Now, it is only home to the more ‘tame’ prisoners
who are unlikely to attempt escape.
 Reservoirs – Again,
because granite is
impermeable, Dartmoor
is an ideal site for many
reservoirs, and now
provides water for most
of the South West. Also,
because of the quarrying
there, building materials
for a dam would not have
to be shipped in from
very far away.

By Jake Herbert 10JG