One year after a covid-enforced postponement Belstone’s Beating the Bounds walk took place with just over 100 people setting off from the village on Thursday, May 26.

They walked the 12 mile perambulation around the parish boundary, a journey that took them through a rich variety of landscape including open moorland, wooded valleys, field boundaries, private gardens and main roads. For many who did the ful route it took eight and a half hours to complete.

Flagman Peter Cooper led the way from the village down to the River Taw with the parting words of Reverend Stephen Cook’s address fresh in everyone’s mind; ‘As we walk together as friends as generations have before us, may we renew our determination to care for one another and for this amazing landscape.’

The first stop was the boundary stone at Taw Marsh where willing youngsters were upended, bumped on the stone and tapped with the flag, the latter to fix in their minds the exact extent of the parish, with a £2 coin their reward.

The youngest parishioner to be bumped was 20-month old Elliot Curnow. Parish Council chairman Michael Ash stepped out of Belstone parish to cut a slab of turf within the Forest of Dartmoor, thus symbolically claiming the right of Belstone commoners to take peat from Duchy of Cornwall land. Michael first took part in Beating the Bounds as an 11-year-old in 1958 — this was his tenth event.

He cut the slab with a turf iron passed to him in 1972, confiding: ‘I was worried that the old iron might break when I cut the turf so I went up a few days ago and cut it out with a spade, then laid it back so no one would notice’

After liquid refreshments the perambulation continued up and over the Belstone Tor-Oke Tor ridge to the lunch stop at Cullever Steps on the East Okement River.

In the food tent overseen by caterer-in-chief Sharon Cooper, Pat Bray showed a treasured black and white photo and said: ‘This is me in 1937 when I was three years old. It was taken when I was brought out here in a basket on the side of a pony’

Belstone Commoners chairman Michael Reddaway called a halt to the socialising and feasting on pasties and ale with the words: ‘The next section can be a bit tricky and slippery’ – and with that the walk continued through bogs, over fences and under fallen trees down the west bank of the East Okement to Chapel Ford and then on easier ground to Fatherford.

The 21st century intruded as the walkers swung onto the main road at Mole Avon and proceeded to hold up the impatient eastbound traffic all the way past White House Services to Tongue End where yet more cakes, teas and ale awaited in the farmyard at Tenacity Cottage.

James Reddaway’s hunting horn called the remaining walkers back to the tarmac, past the ancient Honest Man standing stone, across more fields to a steep scamble up through the woods to The Mount, close to where John Wesley reputedly preached in 1744.

No sooner was the climb complete then everyone descended down towards Sticklepath on the track that was once the main London to Falmouth coaching route.

As the afternoon wore on the last section saw the flagman and followers hurrying westward up the River Taw through wooded Belstone Cleave to emerge at last back at the beginning, the boundary stone beside the river below the village.

Peter Cooper raised the flag atop the stone, which he himself had carved BB 2000 AD when it was placed there to mark the new millennium. Little Elliot Curnow wasn’t far behind, safe all the way round on her father Hugh’s back.

Everyone converged on the village hall for a convivial evening supper that confirmed the village’s community spirit and reinforced the message of tradition and continuity embodied in the Beating the Bounds ritual.