The thing about moors is that there is nothing to see for miles around yet they are anything but monotonous. They invite you to walk on them for hours together without tiring. When you are on the moors you have little desire to walk anywhere else even though there are beautiful fields everywhere around. At Dartmoor, I saw several kinds of moorland. There were stretches filled with purple heather mixed with bright yellow gorse and some pinky purple flowering plants besides large quantities of grazing sheep who I imagine were responsible for keeping the grass quite short. The colours of this part of the moor are surprisingly and startling every time. It is like looking at fabric that shows in another colour from another angle. It seems iridescent yet the foliage is quite dark and you tend to associate iridescence of objects like opals, shells and rainbows with paleness or light. The colours seem to form a gradient from violet to green but there is the occasional splash of a different colour like a tiny pink orchid or a red leaf adding a further element of surprise.
In the walk from Princetown to South Hessary Tor, the moors were covered with clumps of low grass, some green, some the colour of straw (with what seemed to me a slightly reddish tinge at places), occasionally heather and hardly any gorse. In some places there were boggy patches identifiable by a layer of bright green moss and made somewhat alarming by the memories of the bog in The Hound of the Baskervilles and the actual fact that your foot sank in quite easily if you stepped on one of them.
The grass is rather deep perhaps because there are fewer grazing animals particularly as you move away from the fields and bridle path. The land is very uneven with grooves and pits everywhere but you soon become accustomed to them and although it sometimes feels like you are wading through the grass, it is easy and untiring to walk on the springy surface even when going uphill.
At intervals you come across big smooth rocks on which you can rest for a moment and on a dry day you could lie down on the ground at places where the heather grows. Despite walking under the sun without a hat and no apparent shade, it never felt unpleasantly hot. Maybe because there was a constant cooling breeze during all the time I was there.
A somewhat different sort of landscape was encountered in the drive towards Whiteworks where the road comes to an end and all around there are miles of uninterrupted moorland. There were greener regions with a lot more rocks and a greater variety of grazing animals, cows and horses besides the ubiquitous sheep.
Driving towards Exeter I encountered yet another type of moorland, which looked purple from the distance and on approaching was found to be covered with large clumps of heather mostly gorse-free on which you could comfortably lie down.
It is relaxing even to drive through the moors when you see the road and the surroundings extend far ahead of you in every direction. Often the road is level with the moor so it feels like you are driving on the moor and not through it – as indeed you are.