RESEARCH over the last 50 years has challenged the accuracy of the route of the Abbot’s Way as it appears on Ordnance Survey (OS) maps for more than a hundred years.

Like bad journalism, once something is in print it becomes embedded especially as the OS is considered a reliable source. But as anyone who has tried to follow the OS  route soon finds out, there is no path and the only “waymark” cross at the eastern end (Huntington’s) has turned out to be a boundary marker erected after the Dissolution of the monasteries.

The more northern route however, is well furnished with these medieval signposts, especially on Ter Hill which has three, guiding travellers from all directions. I had a  choice when writing this book to continue with the inaccuracy, compound the error or begin the long and disrupting process of getting the Abbot’s Way re-designated to the route the monks and lay brothers actually followed.
The first reference to an ”Abbot’s Way” across the moors comes at the end of the 18th century in travellers’ journals. John Smith, a solicitor in Modbury, mentions it in 1790. But moor men had no such romantic notion. They called it the Jobbers’ Cawse referring to the wool traders who for centuries transported loads on pack animals along it. The little clapper bridge over the Avon near Huntingdon’s is a clue to its long-established use.

Benjamin Donn's Map 

In Benjamin Donn’s 1795 map of Devon there are several trans-moorland tracks but none called the Abbot’s Way. The 1809 OS map records it but only the eastern section as far as Erme Head. It seems likely that some time later an over- enthusiastic cartographer took the logical step of extending it to Tavistock so the route made sense. But William Crossing was unequivocal. In a Western Morning News in 1905 he wrote: “The path shown on the Ordnance Survey map as the Abbot’s Way is not the old monk’s path but a mine and peat road of comparatively recent date.”

Despite such misgivings, by the 1930s the moorland starting point of the Abbot’s Way was well established at Cross Furze and continues to be followed by hundreds of school children every year to this day. When Eric Hemery researched his seminal book Walking Dartmoor’s Ancient Tracks in 1986 he was in no doubt. He says the OS Abbot’s Way was “drastically unsuited to monastic travel and that convincing evidence now exists to the show that Track 12 was the authentic route”. Other writers, like R H Worth (Dartmoor Tracks and Guide- stones 1953) and F H Starkey (Dartmoor Crosses and some ancient tracks 1983)agree. Starkey named Hemery’s Track 12 “the Monk’s Path” which really only added to the confusion.

The Nothern Route

Apart from historical accuracy, a good reason for asserting the northern route is so walkers have the excitement of following in the genuine footsteps of our monastic forebears, sighting the waymark crosses on distant hills and navigating by them. The walk feeds the imagination and can be a powerful spiritual experience for those for whom navigating by an ancient cross on a far away hill has special meaning.