The photograph above shows the area of Haytor in the southeast corner of Dartmoor. The moor stretches away to the left, beyond the valley.
Dartmoor is the largest area of granite in the UK. Granite is a hard igneous rock which, in this case, was intruded into the surrounding sedimentary rocks over 300 million years ago. The moor receives very heavy rainfall and as a consequence is covered by peat and wet bogland, except where it is capped by isolated, jointed and weathered granite outcrops. These are known as tors. You can see one of these centre-right and another behind it higher up the hillside. The photograph below shows one the tors close up. The highest point of the moor, at 621 metres, is High Willhays tor.
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