Calendar of Activities

Simon Dell is a retired Moorland Guide Director with over twenty books to his name, retiring from the police service after 41 years’ service in 2016. He led the volunteer policing teams throughout the Devon and Cornwall area in respect to wildlife crime. Over 30 years of his service was spent at Tavistock Police Station and 17 of these as Community Constable, where, in 1997 he was awarded the MBE for services to the
community and mountain rescue.

His off duty interests include 20 years as a member of the Dartmoor Rescue Group and being a Dartmoor National Park Guide. He leads guided walks on Lundy Island and the Pembrokeshire island of Skomer during the puffin season. He is now a prolific writer of books and for magazines, on topics ranging from policing,
Dartmoor Prison, industrial archaeology and Lundy Island.

He lives in Tavistock with his wife, daughter, and grandchildren. His spare time is spent mountaineering in the UK, the Alps and the Himalayas. When not found up a mountain he is often found playing in the local town band or with the band of the South Wales Police of which he is a member. He is also now a member of the band of Lodestone Border Morris in Tavistock.

Sermons in Stone – Reverend Bray’s Bardic Boulders
There are many curious and intriguing things to see on Dartmoor. If you stroll from The Two Bridges Hotel along the public footpath which follows the Cowsic River you will go through the delightful woods and reach Beardown Farm Bridge. The public footpath goes over the bridge up past the farm out to the Devonport Leat and onto the moors, but as you reach the bridge in the trees if you look around at the boulders there you might see carvings and dedications to Spencer, Burns, Shakespeare and Milton etc. These are just a few of the carvings within the publicly accessible area. But away from footpaths and access land there is a multitude lying within the private grounds of Beardown Farm, in the woods and fields. They mainly lay unseen for over 100 years and little was known or written about until Simon and grandson Joseph spent their Covid isolations exploring Dartmoor and discovering all of the stones. They recorded them and Simon wrote a paper for the Transactions of the Devonshire Association on these artifacts in 2014. Simon’s talk describes the story of how these stones came to be in the Cowsic valley and the intriguing life of Edward Atkyns Bray – the Vicar of Tavistock.

a