There are few places on Dartmoor where history, landscape and human intention meet as harmoniously as they do along Dr Blackall’s Drive. High above the wooded gorge of the River Dart, this narrow track curves and climbs along the hillside with a confidence that belies its modest width. Today it is a recreational path, a favourite of walkers and riders, but its origins lie firmly in the Victorian age — and in the ambitions of one man.
That man was Dr Thomas Blackall, a prominent Exeter physician whose family had already made its mark on the city’s medical life. When his father died in 1860, Blackall inherited a substantial fortune, and with it the means to acquire a country estate worthy of his status. In 1867 he purchased Spitchwick, a manor of more than 2,000 acres stretching across some of the most dramatic scenery in the Dart valley. Although he continued to live primarily in Exeter, Spitchwick became his retreat, a place where he could entertain guests and enjoy the restorative qualities of the moor.
It was during the 1880s that Blackall conceived the idea that would secure his name on the landscape. The steep, wooded slopes above the Dart offered magnificent views, but they were inaccessible to a carriage — and Blackall was determined that neither he nor his visitors should be denied them. He therefore commissioned a man named Gerald Warren to cut a track along the hillside: a deliberately scenic route, engineered not for speed or utility but for pleasure. In an age when the picturesque was a serious aesthetic pursuit, this was a bold and very modern gesture. Some have even argued that it stands among the earliest purpose‑built scenic drives in Britain.
The resulting track is surprisingly slight. At its broadest it is little more than eight feet wide, just enough for a single horse‑drawn carriage to pass with dignity. Yet its alignment is masterful. Beginning near Spitchwick House, it rises steadily towards what is now the Bel Tor car park, shadowing the higher road to Poundsgate but always keeping to the contour that offers the finest prospect. From its vantage points the Dart can be glimpsed far below, twisting through oak woods that seem to belong to an older, wilder England.
By the late nineteenth century the drive had already become something of a local attraction. Organised excursions were advertised; guidebooks praised its “singular beauty”; and by 1906 the Great Western Railway was urging visitors not to miss it. Later publications — from Time Out to the Good Britain Guide — continued the tradition, ensuring that Dr Blackall’s Victorian experiment in landscape appreciation survived long after the last carriage had rolled along it.
Today the drive climbs from roughly 680 feet near the manor to over 1,100 feet at its highest point. Much of it lies on open access land, with a short section designated as a bridleway. Walkers encounter a mixture of open heath, wooded slopes and sudden, breath‑catching views across the Dart valley towards Mel Tor, Sharp Tor and the distant bulk of North Hessary Tor. In winter the river can often be heard before it is seen, its swollen waters echoing up through the trees.
What makes Dr Blackall’s Drive so compelling is not simply its scenery — Dartmoor has no shortage of that — but the way it embodies a particular Victorian sensibility. It is a landscape shaped not for agriculture or industry, but for the sheer enjoyment of looking. It reflects a moment when the moor was beginning to be appreciated not as a marginal wilderness but as a place of recreation, health and aesthetic delight.
Walking it today, with the wind funneling up from the gorge and the valley unfolding in layers of green and grey, it is easy to imagine the doctor’s carriage pausing at one of the viewpoints, guests leaning forward to admire the sweep of the river below. The track may be unpaved and weathered now, but its purpose remains unchanged: to reveal the Dart at its most dramatic, and to remind us that even on Dartmoor, some of the finest views were deliberately — and lovingly — engineered.
