Post by Dave on Sept 13, 2010 18:35:58 GMT
Longtimber Woods 12th September 2010
With Carol now working every other weekend and the fact I still need far more unwinding time, plus today it was a nice dry day we just had to go out and make the most of the day.
By 12 pm I still had nothing on the plate so to speak and then by accident found someone’s blog and on it he talked about a walk he had done and it sounded just perfect and so we got in the car and drove to Ivybridge and parked in one of the main car parks.
If you walk up the main street and go over the bridge that goes over the River Erme and look to your left, you can see an old stone road bridge and this is the one you need to walk over turning right once over it onto Station Road.
This old stone bridge is meant to be very popular with photographers but it’s not half as good as many of the bridges Carol and I have found lately on other walks we have done.
We walked up Station Road and when we got to the gates of the mill we were meant to go onto a public football right next to the mill gates that would have been right beside the river where it tumbles down through the gorge, but it was roped off an a sign gave the reason why as it was unstable (don’t tell anyone I came back along the path on my own a few hours later)
So Carol and I stayed on the road and as we walked up the hill we could see the path over a wall all the way until we came to a railway viaduct over the road and as far as I could see looking down on the path it looked just fine to use.
We did not go under the viaduct as there is a gate just before it on the right hand side that takes you into Longtimber Woods and once you go through the gate you are under the viaduct and boy did I have some great fun here. Carol stayed up on the path while I carefully went down the bank to the base of the viaduct, but there is not just one here but two only the other one is derelict and I hope to find out some more information about that one.
I do know the derelict one was built by I.K Brunel who lived in Ivybridge while it was being built and originally the line that was going to run on it was Brunel’s Atmospheric Railway but I’m not sure or not if this viaduct was ever even finished let alone used. I say that only as there are I would guess two supporting brick towers missing just to get the line to where the road is and much later when we came down that road at the end of our walk, I could find no evidence of there being any supports on the other side of the road.
Longtimber Wood is a beautiful wood to walk in as the River Erme is right next to the pathway and we found ourselves stopping so many times to look at the river in the places where there were rock formations the river had to negotiate. Its best described as the free version of Lydeford Gorge and while not quite dramatic and spectacular as Lydeford, it has its own special charm.
Much further into the woods on the left you come across the remains of the old swimming pool, this was originally a reservoir but it must had been used when few people lived in Ivybridge because its not very big at all. I don’t know when it was converted into a swimming pool and when it stopped being used, its now very overgrown and has trees growing in it, but I understand when it was in use it was extremely popular with the local youngsters. It was also used before D Day by the Americans who were based in Ivybridge for their training exercises.
Further on we came to a picnic area after walking past some things we found a bit strange to be in a wood such as parallel bars, a bean, and a vaulting bar, on the mans blog he said it was at this point he took a path on the left up some steep steps to the top of the wood.
We decided to carry on walking on the path by the river and sometime later came to a rather strange looking style, there was a sign pointing up some very steep and over grown steps on the left so we went over the style. It was not too long before we found it was getting very wet and muddy in places and so went back to the style.
So what to do? Go back the way we came or make it even more of adventure by going up those steps to the unknown. We went up them and boy some were so far apart and high I struggled to get my legs high enough to get up them, sometimes being a short ass has major disadvantages.
Once up the top we turned left and were walking on a ledge high about the pathway and river below and for much of the way back we had a wall that had been built so very thick beside us, we wondered why it would have built there but came to the conclusion it was originally a wall that was the end of some fields as on our right we had what was a never wire fence that must have been put there so where we were walking could be made into a public pathway.
Up on this pathway we soon started coming across very muddy parts that we had to try and find stones to stand on to get over, I kept saying to Carol that’s the last muddy bit but I got that wrong for sure as we kept coming across them In the end we came out onto a very narrow lane and once again turned left and started walking down it hoping we were going the right way.
Soon we could see we were approaching the viaduct from the other side and I said to Carol I was just going to pop back into the woods and get some more shots from under the Viaduct. When I got all the shots I wanted I told her to walk back on the road to the Mill gates where I would meet her as I was going to walk along the closed path.
It was fine and there was only one small part of the path that had slipped into the river but there was still plenty of pathway left to walk on, bloody health and safety don’t you just love them.
Carol was at the Mill gate waiting when I got there and we looked over the gate and Carol pointed out a very big chimney and then a man stopped and told us the top of it had recently been rebuilt. He asked where we came from and where we had been walking and soon I discovered he had been born in the South Hams.
By this time Carol had found a small wall to park her bum expecting to be sitting there a good while. Well this man I learned grew up in Loddiswell and used to ride the trains on the Primrose Line to get to school, he relived for me what it was like and how he hated the long walk back to the village from the station after school.
Time to bid the man farewell and wake Carol up and get back to the car and decide where we were going to find some food and in the end both agreed on getting a takeaway back in Paignton.
That never happened as we saw a sign for food at the pub in Avonwick and decided to eat there. Worst steak and ale pie I have ever eaten, mostly full of large pieces of mushrooms and onions that did not seem to well cooked, never mind Carol had a breakfast and loved it and it’s not unusual for fussy and picky eater Dave to not like what he ordered where ever we eat out.
