Dartmoor is an area of outstanding natural beauty covering 400 square miles. Your favourite wonder is the biggest and wildest area of open country in southern England.
Dartmoor was one of the first National Parks to be designated in Britain in 1951. It boasts stark and beautiful moors, huge stone tors, ancient clapper bridges and the famous Dartmoor ponies.
Its moorland landscape is characterised by rough grazing land, wooded valleys and distinctive granite tors. Much of the area is made up of granite, an igneous rock, surrounded by limestones, shales and sandstones. Its famous tors were formed about 280 million years ago as the granite forming Dartmoor cooled down. Today Dartmoor is a hugely popular wilderness area as well as being home to about 33,000 people. |