ONE of the best-known faces in British broadcasting returns to her West Devon roots later this month in a special programme highlighting the importance of Dartmoor National Park.

Angela Rippon started her journalistic career with the Western Morning News and worked for the Tavistock Times while training.

More than 35 years after her first broadcast for the BBC in Plymouth, she returns to our screens with Guardians of the Moor, filmed on location on Dartmoor.

Angela said: 'I was brought up in Plymouth, so Dartmoor was on my doorstep. My father has always been a great country-lover and of course, I lived on Dartmoor.'

Angela spent almost 20 years living in a cottage on the moor's edge, above the River Walkham.

'I used to ride over the moor, walk the dogs on the moor — it was very much part of my life,' she said.

Her blossoming broadcasting career meant a move away from the West Country, but she returns at regular intervals and keeps in contact with the area — recently, she became a patron of Tavistock Stannary Brass Band.

'My parents still live at Horrabridge and I obviously have many friends in the area,' said Angela. 'I don't come back that often but I love to visit.'

Surprisingly, Angela said now she lives in the South East, she does not actually miss Dartmoor.

'It's not something I think about. Because it's three-and-a-half hours from London you don't miss it, but you know it's there,' she said.

'Coming up the hill from Roborough, you used to go over that cattle grid and as you rattled over it, for me that was the beginning of the moor, that rattling. There was something very special about it.'

Angela said she loved the wide open space of the moor, the fact she would ride for miles without seeing anyone, yet still see the Tamar, Tavistock and other West Devon villages spread out below.

'It's a unique landscape, I don't think you get it anywhere else.'

She was away working when the foot and mouth outbreaks began and said it was sad the 50th anniversary celebrations of the National Park Authority had been so seriously over-shadowed by the crisis.

One of the changes Angela has noted on her return visits to the area is the amount of people using the roads and the moor itself.

'But I think the thing I notice most is that it's timeless and doesn't change. I can go to places where I used to ride and walk and the view is just the same and I still get the same sense of belonging.'

In Guardians of the Moor, she explores what has been achieved since Dartmoor was granted National Park status in 1951.

She said the main message of the programme is that Dartmoor needs to be managed, and the people who live there are the ones who need to be involved and have a 'particularly strong voice' in its future.

She interviews John Hodge, chairman of Dartmoor Commoners' Council, who farms the northern moorland near Okehampton, and looks to the future of the hill farming community.

She feels a difficult balancing act needs to be achieved, between the needs of those who live and work on the moor, and the commercial, environmental and military interests involved.

'Dartmoor National Park Authority doesn't have an easy job of it, but it's one which it does to the best of its ability,' said Angela. She also believes the structure of the Park's committee needs to change.

'At the moment it's made up from people who go through the route of local government, but there should perhaps be opportunities for people who have not taken an active role in local politics, all sorts of people who don't wish to get involved with that type of system but who have something valid to add,' she said.

She approved of fencing off the moor at Blackdown and across Roborough Down but was not so sure about the Princetown to Tavistock and Yelverton roads, which regularly see animals killed by motorists.

'In a way that's the bit of road I personally would not like to see fences on, because of that wide-open vista — I don't know what the answer is, It's not a decision I would like to take,' she said.

She was also keen to see the Dartmoor ponies still running wild over the moors — provided they are properly managed, fed and looked after by farmers.

Guardians of the Moor will be shown on Carlton TV on Sunday November 18 at 5pm.

'I just hope lots of people watch it and that it reminds people of how important this gem on their doorstep is,' Angela said.