The eighth event in a series of monthly events taking place in different squares of the Dartmoor 365; the square chosen at random by pulling out a square at each event. The square pulled out for this month is M14: Shallowford. The event will start at around 10am at the given co-ordinates for geo-chat, TB exchanging etc. People are free to come and go as they please. Lala and I will be there until around 12pm. We will be wearing our hi-vis so people can see where to aim for!
Unfortunately this one is going to be tough for parking, and as such we will not be putting a parking waypoint.
The John Hayward book focuses less on a particular feature in this square, but on nature: specifically a small wet patch just above West Shallowford farm which displays two fine flowers. Blood-drop Emlets which are large showy yellow flowers very similar to Monkey Flower and native to Chile. The other is the small Ivy-leaved Bellflower, a native to Devon.
Upon studying the Dartmoor 365 map we recently purchased we chose to hold the event at the site of a cairn, in fact there are two cairns and a settlement within close proximity. A cairn is a man-made pile (or stack) os stones. The word comes from Scottish Gaelic. Cairns have been used for a broad variety of purposes from prehistory to the present. Their uses have ranged from landmarks to burial monuments, from ceremonial purposes to astronomy.