Blogging from Dartmoor National Park

Dartmoor is probably where the idea of supporting local first made sense to me. Not as a business strategy but as part of how a place works.

I grew up on the edge of Dartmoor National Park, and I still make my home there when I am in the UK. It is a landscape shaped not only by granite, weather and open moorland, but by farms, villages, small businesses and communities — past and present — that have given the place its character.

That way of looking at Dartmoor has followed me into my work in Mongolia too.

It is also the thinking behind Eternal Landscapes Dartmoor, an idea that has been sitting with me for years: small-scale experiences built around the people who know the place best. Farmers, guides, makers and local businesses. Wildlife walks. Food. A bit of scrambling. Perhaps a cold dip in a river if the mood takes you.

Nothing manufactured or trying too hard to turn Dartmoor into a product. Just a way of experiencing the place through the people who live and work there.

At the moment, Eternal Landscapes Dartmoor is still more idea than business. It has moved forwards, stalled, changed shape and resurfaced more than once. But it has never quite gone away. And perhaps that is why it still matters to me.