As readers of this blog will know, one of my enthusiasms is the relationship between landscape, the past, and water. So, when a friend recently shared a copy of an old map of the Bere Peninsula, the first thing I did was to eye its lines, pictures and annotations to see what it revealed about the area’s hydrological history. Scanning, I noticed ‘The Were’, on the Tavy, just south of Denham Bridge. This blog tells the tale of what I discovered about this ancient weir and my hunt to see if any evidence of it still remained.
Category: <span>Devon</span>
A necessity to visit the outskirts of the city sparked a walk, in territory I wouldn’t normally think to walk – rural spaces in the city. North Plymouth is particularly endowed with woodlands in its steep valleys, which provide important corridors and habitats for both nature and people.
With my recent contemplations of the river Tavy in the context of the history of British rivers, I began wondering what all this meant for the stages of development of the town of Tavistock. In this blog I use a hydrological perspective to explore, what I hope is an informed speculation, that the original Saxon abbey may not lie under the remains of the abbey as we see them today, but on slightly higher ground north of the floodplain.
I ascended from the stink, din and whizz of the dual carriageway, via an ugly flight of concrete steps that ran up the side of the earthwork on which the fort sits. Like walking through an unseen door, the noise immediately fell away as I started on a circuit of the ramparts.
Not every walk provides a lesson. Why should it? But this walk did give me one. It reminded me of the need to get out of the ruts we form for ourselves when we walk our usual haunts, and the need to sometimes depart from our self-made beaten track.
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