Just south of Dartmoor, the River Plym emerges from the spongy peat bogs and gains momentum as it flows toward the city that shares its name.

During my childhood, my Great Aunt Winifred would often take me to this place in her small Fiat Panda. She had fallen in love with a young man in 1940 or 1941, who had gone off to war and never returned. The rest of her life was marked by quiet mourning for him.

In hindsight, I wonder if this spot held special significance for her and her beloved, as she frequently brought me here. I used to love splashing in the cold water and watching the sunlight dance beneath the road bridge, which lent its name to the place: Cadover Bridge.

Back then, I had no idea that a short walk from here revealed a couple more Neolithic circles and rows. Perhaps they served a functional purpose related to the more extensive and arguably more impressive remains at Yellowmeade or Drizzlecombe. These structures might not catch your eye unless you actively seek them out.

They modestly blend with the scattered stones around the base of Greater Trowlesworthy Tor, which from a bird’s-eye perspective reveal former settlements. Upon discovery, they prove impressive: a small circle of stones with one particularly intriguing stone indicating the path downhill along a double stone row.

This row is intersected by a man-made watercourse, a leat carrying water to the nearby China Clay works, but at the final stone on the opposite side, you’re not far from a second stone circle. This one features a row heading in a completely different direction, leading towards the river.

As usual, idle speculation abounds regarding the purpose of these features and the rationale behind their orientations.

On a beautiful, cloudless morning like this, it’s natural to ponder.

Could Great Aunt Win be reunited with her beloved here, in some way? Do memories and love vanish forever when their bearers pass away, or do they somehow endure, becoming intertwined with the stones, with the landscape? The people who built these stones lived and laughed and loved here, and something about that still seems to enchant the place, on a certain day, in a certain light. 

If we can’t speak the language of memory, it doesn’t mean those memories are not there. 

Nothing is ever truly forgotten, or so I might wish to believe.