'It's a wonderful place, the moor....'

'It's a wonderful place, the moor,' he said, 'such wonderful secrets. 

It's so large and mysterious.'

These words, so very true, uttered by Stapleton, from

 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', 

which just happens to be one my favourite books.

"It's a wonderful place, the moor," he said, "such wonderful secrets. It's so large and so mysterious

Whatever the weather, the drive across Dartmoor 

is one of the most beautiful in the country.

You can quite understand why the artist William Widgery and his son,

 Frederick John, felt so inspired to produce such wonderful paintings.

We often do this lovely journey to Tavistock...and each journey 

is a real treat.

And finally, one of my favourite extracts from the said book, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:

'The wagonette swung round into a side road, and we curved upward

 through deep lanes worn by centuries of wheels, high banks on either side,

 heavy with dripping moss and fleshy hart's-tongue ferns.

 Bronzing bracken and mottled bramble gleamed in the light of

 the sinking sun. Still steadily rising, we passed over a narrow

 granite bridge and skirted a noisy stream which gushed swiftly down, 

foaming and roaring amid the gray boulders. 

Both road and stream wound up through a valley dense 

with scrub oak and fir. At every turn, Baskerville gave an exclamation of delight, 

looking eagerly about him and asking countless questions. 

To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy

 lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark 

of the waning year. Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered 

down upon us as we passed. '