Wild Camping on Dartmoor

Backpacking and sleeping wild on Dartmoor is tremendous under clear skies. Camping for one or two nights on the open land on Dartmoor is perfectly acceptable provided that you choose your spot sensibly and don't pitch your tent on farmland, on moorland enclosed by walls, within 100 metres of a road, on flood plains or on archaeological sites.

Interactive map of where you can legally wild camp on Dartmoor
Dartmoor camping code of conduct

Dartmoor National Park Authority wild camping advice

Watern Tor Wild Camp, Dartmoor

Dartmoor wild camp at Watern Tor. Leaving the car at Belstone

we followed the lane through the village and down to the River Taw. Rowan trees draped in vivid red berries lined the banks of the river.

From Taw Marsh we climbed up onto Oke Tor to avoid the worst of the wet ground below before crossing the Taw at the head of Steeperton Gorge. From here it was up onto Steeperton Tor before heading across to Wild Tor and finally, Watern Tor

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winds were South Westerly through South so we opted to pitch the tent to the West of the Watern Tor Thirlstone to give us some shelter from the wind. Unfortunately numerous sheep have had the same idea on previous nights so the low grass was smothered in sheep poo, mountains of the stuff :-(

Fur Tor Wild Camp

Overnight wild camp west of Fur Tor. Leaving the car at Lydford and catching the bus to Betty Cottles Cottage and returning to Lydford on the second day.

Unfortunately the night turned out to be a sleepless one, we had pitched the tent in an exposed position to the west of Fur Tor, with a good view looking down towards Tavy Cleave and when we arrived there was little wind and we enjoyed a pleasant evening eating a Korma washed down with cider.

Overnight the wind picked up and I began to wish I had picked a spot rather more sheltered. First windy night in a tunnel tent, will be seeking more shelter next time as the noise was deafening at times. The tent, a Hillebrg Kaitum 3 was flexing alarmingly in the stronger gusts but never succumbed to the wind and held its ground. Will put that one down to experience.

Lower Hartor Wild Camp

Two nights camping on Dartmoor, the first night at the Plume of Feathers Campsite inPrincetown and the second night out on the moor at Lower Harter Tor.During the wild camp were awoken in the early hours by an animal of some sort moving up and down parallel to our tent. Every ten seconds or so it would let out a crisp loud shriek.When we looked out from the tent all we could see were bright white eyes reflecting back at us, coming and going as the animal moved among the rocks.

It did not seem bothered by the light from our torches nor the barking and growling from our two dogs who were rather freaked out, as was my girlfriend. It must of been about size wise something like a sheep or dog as the rocks would not have blocked anything such as a cow or pony.Before dark there were lots of cattle, sheep around and we had passed a fair number of ponies earlier as well but the noise we were hearing did not fit easily with any of those animals. It was crisp, fairly high pitched, not a doggy growl, or piggy rasp, not a bovine bellow or a sheepy baa/bleat. Each shriek was a few seconds long with no sound in between.It hung around for 5 minutes or so moving back and forth in our torch light and then disappeared with us never catching more than a glimpse of its white eyes reflecting in our torch light.

Turns out it was a fox but we had no idea what it was at the time!