Dartmoor climbs, run, walk

Crag: Irishman's Wall, Belstone Tor, Dartmoor
Routes: Central Corner (M:sol), Meander's Mutterings (S 4b:sol), Ann, Jim & Mary (S 4b:sol), Caffery's* (S 4b:sol)
After a fine run down the Granite Trail from Sourton to Lydford Gorge, and a family walk, we enjoyed a superb pub lunch. Thus fortified, we headed round to the north-eastern side of Dartmoor and the pretty Devon village of Belstone. A lovely walk to the top of Belstone Tor gave the family a taste of the Dartmoor atmosphere in superb conditions of shifting cloud, wind and showers: all quite photogenic. At the top, Irishman's Wall is obvious: a long broken wall presumably built by navvies. A little crag, like a cube of absolutely immaculate rough granite rises above it, so I nipped up the routes as a huge shower cloud threatened from the north. The corner was easy, with a harder variant to the right. An awkward start up the 4b crack further left gave a few moments thought, but leads to easier climbing up shelves. Nice moves: a very small but perfectly formed lump of rough granite. It started to rain, so we all headed back down the ridge (an inadvertent reccie for the Sticklepath Horseshoe race scheduled for our return journey: it covered exactly the same ground). The rain got heavier as we descended but our work for the day was over.