THe tells the Church of St Michael de Rupe begins – as all the best dartmoor stories do – in a dark and storm at night. A sailor, hit by a wild and furious sea, fell to the deck of his ship to pray for salvation. The Almighty opened a mountain in the middle of the storm where the ship deserved to make a landfall: thanks to the seafarers a church at its climax. The devil – who released the bad storm – did his best to prize the church from its foundations, but Archangel Michael appeared in its defense and became patron of this Devon parish. The story has many versions, but this is the general gist.
Today, St Michael de Rupe is counted as the highest working church in Southern England – noticeably spit on the top of a western release of dartmoor tors. This medieval building delivers a remarkable silhouette in the western Devon scene, but it also marks the start of Archangel: a travel route created in 2021 by the Diocese of Exter traveling 38 miles east from here opposite the dartmoor to a second st Michael’s Church in Chagford. I chose to walk the route in February when Moor was in the quiet and most mysterious – and even the seas of the famous folk story retreated, on my visit the storm was not.
Storm Herminia flows into the western country as I climb the muddy path to St Michael de Rupe’s porch. Inside, the church has the condition of a ship in a storm. There was a whistle on the roof: gusts pressing lead-lined glass in ancient panels. Archangel Michael’s winged figure adorns the dirty glasses behind the altar. In folklore he is the guardian of high places, and the vanquisher of pagan forces that once held dominance over the peaks.
Sitting on the porch, I opened a map and considered the path ahead of me. The way Archangel passes the villages with parish churches, pubs with hot hearths, places where you will find success and society. However, it also prevents North Moor – the more united and secluded half of the dartmoor, where the signs of Christendom are still not eliminated by pagan pagan edists, such as stone circles and mysterious megaliths.
In the dartmoor folklore is almost a crossroads the devil is not often barter for a soul, or a hill or stone where some evil creatures claim authority – phantom, animal, horns figure. Walking this route is, in a sense, to walk a line between dark and light. To become a English forest wanderer for, if not exactly 40 days, then at least 40 miles.
The path leads to Lydford and then climbs the western flank of dartmoor valid. The green fields turn to bracken the color of a well-thumbed two pieces of pence. A final stone cross guards the Brat Tor approach: In the South Red Flags that explode in poles, a sign of warning that the army is conducting live firing exercises nearby.
The storm exploded. The overflow waterfall of the Meldon Reservoir flew upward to mass clouds. I was walking with my friend, Justin Foulkes, a Devonian who had been exploring Moor since he was 15. He pointed to the sad destruction named Bleak House, and Amicombe Hill, the scene of the fires associated with the devil of the residents of the field below. Obviously Justin who, for him, Dartmoor was never an obscene place. As a teenager he found herself too eager to change home tests and thus brought piles of books to Moor to find a focus. “When you sit at the top of a bronze age funeral room it puts everything,” he said.
After a night in Moor near a friend’s belstone, additional prehistoric remains were followed on the second day of walking. First came the Nine Maidens Stone Circle – Stones said to survive along the church bells (not in the earshot in the air). Followed rows of stone to Cosdon Hill, which comes through a thick horror horror mist. Followed rows of stone to Cosdon Hill, which comes through a thick horror horror mist. Finally came the amazing – a wonderful rock of scorhill – allegedly protected by a magic forfield that prevents entry into animals.
Folklore is a false guide to these lips of a bad past-that the meaning and functionality have been lost at an age before recording history-in fact an age before climate change helped lead a large human size from the dartmoor high country.
However, where the assurances are none of the imagination steps to complete the picture. It is probably natural for people who fear God to live in Moorland with supernatural beings that can develop in wild times and hostile lands where people will no longer live.
“The dartmoor is like the sea,” Chloe Axford of the Diocese of Exeter told me. “It’s a rugged, wild and unpredictable place. We want to use Moor’s spirituality in creating Archangel’s way. And also encourage people to visit its churches and chapels, and give them a welcome there.”
Later, there were signs that I returned to society: a cow grid, a row of conifer. A countryway circulating around St Michael, Chagford, where snowdrops sprout in graves. Inside the beautiful little church is a rough hek sculpture by St Michael-a demon lost under his foot. However, you can still hear the air pressing on the rafters, as if Herminia himself was trying to get inside.
On this holy island: a modern pilgrimage throughout Britain by Oliver Smith has been published by Bloomsbury (£ 10.99). To support the Guardian and the observer to buy a copy at GuardianBookshop.com. Delivery charges can be applied
