Roughtor’s Random Rocks

Around the base of the main huge granite boulders making the summit of Roughtor are many random smaller stones. There is no pattern, just hundreds of assorted and irregular slabs strewn around the place.

A few are standing, maybe manoeuvred in a long ago history to point up at a significant object in the night sky. I was lucky to spot the contrail of a jet drifting in the daytime sky and crossing with the clouds to form an ‘x’ shape, marking and linking the modern world with the long past.

DSC00834Oct 30 2017 1

8 thoughts on “Roughtor’s Random Rocks”

    1. Ahh.. correct if you’re relying on maps (or other people who are writing about it relying on maps for getting to it) from far away… I’ll post an explanation I wrote for another website…

      “Let’s get pronunciation sorted out for Roughtor first though. It’s apparently not rough, as in not smooth, or a ruff around an Elizabethans neck, it’s rough to rhyme with cow. Or Slough. Yep, I appreciate that’s all very confusing and I don’t know why it is either. In England though, we can have a row with our next door neighbour over a row of hedging, especially if it’s a bit rough.

      And then there’s Roughtor or Rough Tor?

      The Ordnance Survey map has it as Rough Tor, but you approach it by Roughtor Road, a long and straight single track lane with a hugely dramatic deep dip in it, which my kids enjoy screaming like they’re riding a roller coaster as we drive through it. Then the Forestry Commission sign announces, when you get to the car park entrance at the end of Roughtor Road, that you have reached Roughtor. So I’m going with Roughtor.”


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