Black Tor Clitter

The approach

Merrivale is the closest parking, and from there you have two choices. The short way follows the Walkham up the valley floor and climbs to the tor in about forty minutes. The long way takes the bridleway over the north shoulder and adds half an hour but gives you the stone rows and the standing stone first, which is the better sequence.

The last two hundred metres are where the terrain rating comes from. There is no path through the clitter, only a route. Pick your line before you commit and keep your hands free.

What clitter actually is

Clitter — sometimes spelled clitter field, sometimes called a boulder run — is the granite that was already broken and lying on the surface when the last ice retreat didn't quite reach it. On Dartmoor the accepted explanation is repeated freeze-thaw during periglacial phases: water worked into joints in the granite, froze, expanded, and levered blocks loose, which then crept downhill under their own weight and the push of frost heave. Nothing carried them. They have not moved far, and they are not going to.

That matters for the search, because it means the clitter is sorted rather than random. The blocks are at their largest at the top of the run, near the outcrop they came off, and get smaller and rounder as you descend. If you are hunting at the bottom of the run among football-sized rocks, you have misread the land.

The find itself

The tor is a low outcrop of coarse granite, not a dramatic stack, which is why it gets skipped. Stand at the published coordinate facing uphill. There are two boulders in front of you that are noticeably larger than anything else in the run: the left one is a slab standing more or less on edge, the right one is rounded and leaning into it.

The container sits in the gap between them, under a flat capstone about the size of a dinner plate, on the north side. It is a 1.2 litre clip-lock with a taped lid, wrapped in a dark green stuff sack and wedged so that it does not move when the ground is wet. Put the capstone back the way you found it — it is the only thing keeping the rain out of the gap.

Terrain and footing

• The granite is polished where thousands of boots have crossed it and greasy when wet. Take the descent slowly.
• Mires along the valley floor are genuine. In a wet summer the path from Merrivale has two sections of standing bog.
• The clitter has voids. A misplaced foot can drop twenty centimetres and twist an ankle, so test each boulder before you trust it.
• Midges are fierce in still, humid weather from June to August. Wind is your friend.

After the find

Follow the Walkham down to the confluence and you reach the Merrivale complex: two stone rows, a stone circle, a burial cairn and a set of hollowed stones that people have argued over for a century. It is one of the densest prehistoric landscapes in southern England and it takes twenty minutes to walk.