Discovering Dartmoor

Julian Baird on learning to love a place.

Julian is a Dartmoor based photographer, tutor, guide and storyteller. He is also the creator of the acclaimed video series Discovering Dartmoor. Visit his website.

When I moved to Devon in 2009, I began capturing landscape photographs of Dartmoor’s most beautiful locations. But at the time, I had little knowledge of the subjects I was photographing. A tor was just an interesting rock that caught the light well, not a beautiful monument to millions of years of geological history.

Looking back on those early years, I’m struck by a sense of confusion. How could I spend a decade immersed in this environment and know so little about it? I think part of the answer lies in where I grew up, the Scottish Highlands. There, my understanding of the landscape of lochs, glens, and mountains was built up gradually, often unconsciously. The stories of the land were all around me.

Dartmoor, however, was different. Despite my lack of understanding, I claimed to love it. That is, until a friend said to me, “You can’t really love a place unless you truly know it.”. That one sentence struck a chord. It applied uncomfortably well to my relationship with Dartmoor. So, I set out to learn more about what makes Dartmoor place so special. But how?

I needed an approach that would take me out onto the moor and allow me to express myself creatively, combining my skills as a photographer and filmmaker. That idea became Discovering Dartmoor, a video series that would document my journey to understand the landscape through exploration, photography, and conversation. It was a challenging process from inception to publication, but creating the series taught me that taking time to learn about a place can profoundly change your connection to it.

Well, I say "a little time" but in truth, the project took over three years. It began with a modest goal: visit a handful of Dartmoor locations and learn something about each one. To narrow things down, I eventually settled on an A-to-Z approach, hoping that 26 locations would naturally provide a broad coverage of Dartmoor. I naively thought the whole thing might take three months. Six, at most. How wrong I was.

I was no stranger to creating short films for my photography YouTube channel, but this was different. For Discovering Dartmoor, I had to research and explore each location (sometimes multiple times), then film it, photograph it, edit the footage, write and record voiceovers, create graphics, select music, and produce the final episode. And I did this not once, but 24 times! (Yes, there are 26 letters in the alphabet, but X and Z had to be combined with other locations.)

Great Links Tor

Filming these Dartmoor stories wasn’t my only objective. I also wanted to speak to the people who live and work there and know it intimately. So, I became an interviewer too. The final series includes five on-location interviews with some of Dartmoor’s most passionate and knowledgeable ambassadors.

And yes, I did all this myself. No film crew. No post-production team. No PR agency or publisher. Just me and my passion for communicating my journey around Dartmoor.

You might wonder why go to all this effort? Surely there are easier ways to explore and learn about a place. And there are. If I’d known how much work was involved, I might never have started. But that’s precisely why I’m sharing this, because despite the challenges, the project transformed my relationship with Dartmoor. I still love the scenery, but I now see and feel it differently.

The most surprising rewards came from the things I once overlooked. Before Discovering Dartmoor, I would pass by a prehistoric site or weathered stone marker without a second glance. I’d dismissed history as “boring” and failed to see Dartmoor as a human-shaped landscape rich with stories spanning thousands of years.

I remember standing on a hillside overlooking Grimspound for the first time, trying to imagine life for the people who once lived there. That moment changed me. It gave meaning to the photograph I took that evening, something that had been missing from my Dartmoor work until then.

My understanding of Dartmoor’s tors has also evolved. I’d admired them for their form and texture, but I knew nothing of the geological forces that shaped them. That changed thanks to OWPG’s own Josephine Collingwood, whose books Dartmoor Tors Compendium and Geology of Dartmoor were instrumental in helping me appreciate their deeper story. Josephine was also kind enough to be interviewed for the series and to give me a personal tour of Great Links Tor, one of Dartmoor’s most fascinating geological sites.

These are just two examples of how Discovering Dartmoor reshaped my connection to the land. So now, I’d like to offer you a challenge.

How well do you know your local landscape? Maybe your bond with it runs deep. But if there’s more to uncover (and when isn’t there?), I challenge you to go on your own journey of discovery. Dig a little deeper and you may find your local area holds hidden wonders, stories of history, geology, folklore, and community, just waiting to be uncovered. Just like I found with Dartmoor.

You can watch all five episodes of Discovering Dartmoor here.