LEJOG Day 13: Tavistock to Lydford

Weather: Hazy, still, sultry and blisteringly hot!

Distance covered today: 18.3km (11.4 mi)

Last night's B&B: Kingfisher Cottage (£45)

% Complete: 12.5%

GPS satellite track of today's route:Day 13 (click!)

Walking was hard work today.  For the first time since leaving Land’s End, I was looking forward to finishing the day’s walk. Partly it was the heat, but I think it was also that most of the day, I was going uphill, and I probably hadn’t fully recovered from yesterday’s workout.  Bits of me ached that had been behaving themselves since I started, and for the second day running, I ran out of water before reaching my destination.
 
It didn’t help that I got lost near the end of the walk, despite all my technology!  I was sure I was in the right place, but it seems they had changed the local access, without telling Ordnance Survey!  I found myself on a farm, from which I could find no exit. Instead of just retracing my steps, I made the mistake of trying to find an alternative exit, which didn’t work, and after half an hour, I was forced to retrace my steps past some rather puzzled horses who had warily been watching me as I rampaged around their fields searching for another way out!

The final straw was that my B&B was more than a mile away from the village on the other side, and the only way of getting there was via a big dog-leg!  I was almost prostrate by the time I arrived!

All of which was a pity. Today the landscape changed radically, and there was much to be enjoyed. Before leaving, I had another quick look around remarkably upmarket and bijou Tavistock, reflecting that the contrast with poor old Liskeard couldn’t be starker. Of course, it helps that a Duke of Bedford spent a fortune on it many years ago, which gives it the raw material to attract tourists, but the locals have done a great job at complementing this elegant backdrop with some fancy stores, exclusive restaurants, markets and theatre.  I spent an interesting hour last evening talking to Lisa who owns two of these emporia, a coffee shop and an exclusive and very modern restaurant. She was initially under stress because of staff absences, but when service was over, she and I had the time to discuss the problems of owning and running a restaurant in a provincial centre, where the local staff do not necessarily understand the level at which they will be expected to perform.

I could readily identify with this, as a little earlier, I had walked out of a competitor’s restaurant, incensed at the cavalier attitude of the head of front-of-house.  Lisa was delighted to hear my story!  She lives in a huge house as the central figure in a three generational family.  Of course there are issues that have to be resolved, but she wouldn’t swap her life-style for love or money.  And she said that by giving the kids a share in the business, they had an incentive to stay put.  For her, the loss of the extended family is at the root of today’s problems. I was, though, interested that the source of stability and control was entirely feminine through the generations of her family.  I am becoming increasingly convinced that here in England, we are living in an increasingly matriarchal society.

But I was talking about the landscape!  Today, I left behind the comfortable rural lanes with their hedgerows and wild flowers and entered the domain of the moors. Gradually, Dartmoor materialised in front of me, its brown and desolate landscape such a contrast with my earlier experience. The grandeur of the place is captivating, even though I doubt that its real milieu is bright sunshine. This is a place that needs mist and cold to reflect its true menace.  The well-loved film of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” starring Sir Ian Richardson was appropriately filmed here.

I’m staying just outside the famous village of Lydford. It was once one of the four major towns of Devon. The other three (Exeter, Barnstaple and Totnes) have grown into large cities, but for some reason Lydford is still a village. Its major claim to fame is the gash in the landscape just outside town, known as Lydford Gorge. I was too tired when I crossed it to have a proper look, but I understand that the geological stresses and strains which produced the ore-bearing lodes of this part of the world also fractured the granite cap in all sorts of unexpected ways, one of which produced this spectacularly deep gorge, with its rushing water audible but almost invisible down in the depths.

There were other firsts for me today.  I had just looking at the long-horned cattle that roam freely on Dartmoor, thinking that it was strange not to be hearing birdsong, when gradually I became conscious of the increasing volume of something way above me in the sky.  At last, skylarks singing their hearts out in the English countryside above me! And then, suddenly, unmistakeably, my first cuckoo of the summer!  For a short while, I forgot my aches and pains.  A little later, my OS map indicated that I was about to reach the source of the River Burn. I have never been to the source of a river before, so it was a good excuse to abandon my pack and leg it up the moor along the stream to see if I could find the actual source!  Gradually the stream lost its form and became a series of tiny rivulets, which in turn degenerated into boggy moorland. Clearly the source of the stream is an underground aquifer, bubbling to the surface through the fractured granite in a series of springs which gradually compose themselves into the stream.

Long ago, Father Johnson persuaded me to abandon Geography in favour of the “more academic” History. Today was a long delayed geography lesson, and you haven’t heard the half of it.

I will be having words with Farther Johnson about this in due course on this journey.

Stylish Tavistock

Helped by the Duke of Bedford's largesse!

My path this morning started on this lovely cycle track, but I wasn't fooled. I was going uphill!

An old-fashioned mile-post indicating 2 miles to Mary Tavy and 2 miles to Tavistock.

Gradually, Dartmoor loomed on the horizon, a sudden brown after all the green

Long-haired and long-horned cattle grazing freely on Dartmoor

A forbidding terrain, of a very different hue, but strange in the sunshine! Almost African!

Somehow, I have to drag myself to the other side of that hill tomorrow!

The River Burn, just below its source.

 

The amazing Lydford Gorge, though this picture does it no favours....  You can just see rushing water, 80 ft down at the foot of the picture!