SATURDAY-Wistman's Wood

The number one place I most wanted to visit in Dartmoor (and by extension, the number one place I wanted to visit on this trip) is The Wistman's Wood. This is located about a 1.5 mile hike along the side of a very steep foothill of two tors. The elevation doesn't change much, but walking along the edge of a craggy, muddy hillside for a mile and a half is exhausting! Luckily the weather was lovely!!! Very windy and chilly and overcast. Some of my favorite things :)

This small wood is what's left of what's believed to have been a vast forest that once covered large areas of Dartmoor during the Stone Age, almost a million years ago. If you're a Tolkien fan, think Fangorn Forest.

Scientifically speaking, the Wistman's Wood contains very short oak trees that occur nowhere else in Dartmoor. There are also mosses and lichen that grow no where else in the world. It's truly a scientific wonder. Even more amazing is how little the oaks seem to grow here. Most are only 10 feet or so tall and they've been that way for centuries, possibly longer.

In 1620 Tristram Risdon wrote that the trees were "no taller than a man may touch to top with his head." In 1912 a British geological survey party tried to walk the wood, but gave up due to the dense vegetation.




I can tell you, I can't imagine any way you could walk through them. The wood has grown up amid granite boulders. If you could pass through undeterred by the moss-carpeted, slippery boulders (and undeterred by the black adders that are said to be all over the moors, but especially in the Wistman's Wood), then you would most certainly be deterred by the wood itself.



The branches grow in a twisty way, like interlaced boney fingers. They weave together so low and dense, it's impossible to see far forward, let alone pass through. I think you'd have to slither along on your belly like the adders themselves.

In the early 1970s the trees were reported as being very distorted and on average 10 ft high, with occasional specimens over 25 ft. Trees marked from the 1912 expedition had not grown. It looks no different now from the 1970s description. Interestingly, we're in late autumn here, and there's not an acorn to be found on them or on the ground (I'd have surely grabbed a few). No young trees are spouting here, and with no acorns it seems unlikely any will soon.

Despite this, the wood continues as it has all these millennia and that may be one of the reasons it's such a mysterious place.

Legend says the woods are the dwelling place of the "wisthounds." These huge, black, red-eyed dogs are said to have a taste for human flesh (and souls) and prey on lost travelers out on the moors after sunset.

I can't speak to any mystical dogs of the devil. I _can_ tell you the Wistman's Wood on a dark October afternoon moves alternately between spiritual, beautiful, mysterious, and downright spooky.

I sat for some time on boulders just inside the wood, and as you look into the trees, they're sort of hypnotizing. There's so much to see, so many entangled branches and beautiful green mosses. You can tend to forget entirely what you're doing and the next thing you know, the sun has long set.

I tried hard to capture the Wistman's Wood in pictures, but I really don't think anything I got did it justice. I think as close as i can get is the video I took, that you can see clicking here. It's a place I will always treasure having the chance to spend quiet time in and an experience I won't forget.