Walking around Burrator - again.

 Just a select few for our walk yesterday and the rest of the group missed another good one. We seem to have centred on Burrator Reservoir and its environs recently and our route today was a circumnavigation in a clockwise direction. A day of heavy showers with intermittent fine spells. Autumn is definitely here.

We started at the Longstone Manor car park (the peninsular jutting out into the water), headed across the dam and then followed the Devonport Leat up to where it crosses the River Meavy. Then it was back down the eastern side of the river back to our starting point. We'll give ourselves 8 miles for this one.

Longstone Manor originates from the 13th century but was abandoned when Burrator Reservoir was built in the late 1800s. It's ruins are extensive and have been 'stabilised' recently. There are lots of granite artefacts scattered around including this apple crusher. The top circular piece would have been positioned vertically and would have turned round in the trough like bottom piece of granite. Revolving and turning round a centre vertical pillar, the granite was turned by a horse walking round and round the trough. Apples were placed in the trough and crushed by the wheel, producing pulped apple for cider making. I don't think they were into apple juice in those days.

 

An unusual bird on the water. It took us a while to figure out what it was and it's a male Muscovy Duck. Probably an escapee from somewhere as it's not a wild species.

Walking in the mist along an old mineral railway track.

I like gates as they act as a threshold to somewhere else. This one takes the walker from a fir plantation onto the open moor, via a puddle.

This is the caterpillar of the pale tussock moth. The hairs and the red tuft at the back end are there to deter birds - allegedly. Some people get quite a rash after handling these as they exude an irritant liquid when held. I'm glad to say I was not one of them.

Devonport Leat with a good head of water flowing along it. It was built in the late 1700's to supply water to the port of Devonport, rather than the town of Plymouth - which had its own water supply via Drake's Leat. The head weir of the Leat is some 28 miles out from Devonport, on the moors above Two Bridges and looking at the route the Leat takes on the map, you'd think it was a tortuous way to get from A to B. In actual fact, it's a pretty smart bit of engineering as it follows a contour line most of the way. Nowadays it ends above Burrator and discharges several million gallons of water into the reservoir as the drinking supply for Plymouth. Remnants of it can still be found en route to the outskirts of Plymouth, where it finishes in a car park of the DIY superstore, B & Q, at Crownhill.

The Leat forms an impressive cascade as it drops down Raddick Hill. At the bottom it crosses the River Meavy via an aquaduct. Since around 1840 the aquaduct has been a metal tube and before that it was an 'oaken shute'. At around this point the Meavy is diverted to flow into Drake's Leat, and has done since the early 1600s, and supply the then growing town of Plymouth with water. That role has been superseded by Burrator Reservoir but there are remnants of the original leat if you know where to look. Apparently one of the reasons for the source of the Devonport Leat was to make sure that it had no effect on the catchment of water for Drake's Leat.

A typical wooden Dartmoor finger post, this one at the crossroads of the tracks near Leathertor Bridge. Is this the best clapper bridge on Dartmoor? I think so, even if it is relatively modern (circa 1820), being the last clapper bridge built on Dartmoor.

A mediaeval tin mould stone lying on the site of a blowing house (early type of furnace). I surmise that the ore would have been obtained from the nearby River Meavy.

Once obtained, the ore would have been crushed by some water-powered stamps. The constant pounding of the up and down motion of the heavy wooden stamps (capped with metal) would caused indentations in the granite stones at the bottom. Two of these 'stamp holes' can be made out on this moss covered stone. There are about 5 of these scattered around this site. A site which, for me, has a 'spirit of place'. It's so easy to conjure up what it was like when the furnace was working and the stamps were in operation, all against the background of the River Meavy thundering passed. 

And it rained and rained for the final few yards.