The three Military Firing Ranges on Dartmoor are Merrivale, Okehampton and Willsworthy. To protect the public from entering the Ranges during periods of live firing the military publishes their firing times online (see Resources in the menu bar above) and fly red flags on certain highly visible hills and tors. The military also erected numerous red and white metal poles to form a visible boundary around the three ranges. The item numbers used are not official, they are partly the order I (RJN) visited them in and partly how I have chosen to group this classification. As many poles are shared between the ranges, where their boundaries coincide, I have split and numbered the poles depending on whether they are in a shared or unshared boundary ‘line’. I haven't visited it again to double-check but I believe the pole where all three ranges meet (north east of Standon Hill, near The Meads) is a "Super-Big" Pole! Because the military seem to often travel along these boundaries (I assume for pole maintenance and to check for civilians before firing?) these pole lines have some easy to walk along tracks running parallel, often quite wide and relatively ‘flat’. These 'tracks' allow for some surprisingly swift access to those harder to reach inner Dartmoor locations. Compared to some of the surrounding terrain some of these tracks are practically motorways! I suspect that livestock farmers on their quad bikes also use these routes. The letters in the item name refer to the range of the boundary: M = Merrivale, O = Okehampton and W = Willsworthy Shared boundary poles thus can have two or even three (in the case of the Super-Big Pole) range letters.

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