This is the perfect place to visit if you want to explore one of the last remaining wilderness spots in England. Dartmoor is home to a fantastic diversity of wildlife and habitats, much of it rare and protected. The special habitats on Dartmoor are a result of the geology of the moor and the influences of people over 4,000 years. Africa has the ‘Big 5’ but Dartmoor has the ‘Little 5’ and includes the Blue Ground Beetle, Marsh Fritillary Butterfly, Cuckoo, Otter and Marsh Black Slug a giant at 20cm long!

Dartmoor’s landscape is dominated by rocks. Granite is the main rock type and can be seen in many dramatic outcrops (tors) and on boulder-strewn slopes. The granite was formed around 280 million years ago thrusting upwards under older rocks into the area we now know as Devon and Cornwall. Over a very long time, the overlying rocks have been eroded by nature to expose the granite beneath and shape the moor we see today. These processes have produced the soils and conditions to which certain wild plants are particularly suited.

Dartmoor may look like a wild landscape but it has been shaped over time by the way it has been farmed. Through a very long tradition of grazing with cattle, sheep and ponies, certain plants and habitats have thrived. Habitats such as Postbridge’s wonderful wildflower meadows exist only because of the long tradition of haymaking in the area which has favoured these species to grow.

Dartmoor Ponies
There is no more iconic sight on Dartmoor than a herd of ponies grazing together, with stunning, majestic Dartmoor as their backdrop. They have been here a long time, hoof prints found on Dartmoor during an archaeological dig were found to be 3,500 yrs old & written records of ponies on the moor go back as far as AD1012. In the mid 1800s ponies were used to transport granite from the moorland quarries.

At the moment, there are about 1500, with herds of pedigree Dartmoor ponies, Heritage ponies, Hill ponies, Shetlands, Welsh, and Spotted ponies spread all across the moor. All the ponies are owned by various Dartmoor Commoners, (the farmers and residents of the Moor who have grazing rights on the open moor), and with these rights comes the responsibility of seeing that the herds of ponies are kept healthy.

Your Hosts

It’s in this very diverse and exciting area, Phil and Mandi Heard, live and work from their home Meldon Farm. They have a keen interest in horses, especially western riding and offer guests stays that include daily ride outs, natural horsemanship and cattle herding.

Phil and Mandi keep beef cows and sheep, plus a few ponies, which graze the farm and commons of Dartmoor where they have thousands of acres to roam over. Many towns or parishes have their own part of the moor called a common; many farms in the parish have common grazing rights attached to the land. Meldon Farm has rights to graze cattle, sheep and ponies.

The farm runs two herds of cattle. The first are Limousin x Friesian cows put to a Charolais bull and make use of the more fertile low lying land around the farm and produce fast growing high quality cattle, very popular with local cattle buyers and the second are Welsh Black Cattle. These are a docile hill breed that are excellent mothers and make good use of the poorer moorland grazing and these are the cattle that guests help to move at certain points of the year, like taking them out of their winter housing to the their first pasture of the season.