Thursday 21 October 2010

Meldon Reservoir and Lydford Gorge

We woke this morning to a really heavy frost ...

We'd suggested that today we drive to Meldon Reservoir as this was somewhere that Jo and Paul had not visited before and we could hopefully have a walk on Dartmoor. We parked and walked down to the water. Crossing the dam with water on one side ...

and a lovely view over to the viaduct on the other ..

We then went through the gate ...

and tried to walk but it was so steep that we gave up and after taking photos ...

we made our way back down and went the other way which was much easier as it was flat! We found a little gate and went through it finding a picnic area at the end ...

Jo and I went off to try and get a photo of the dam ...

Looking further down the reservoir there is an island and a tor in the distance ...

It was very sunny but also very cold so we returned to the car and drove to Sourton where we stopped at the Highwayman Inn for lunch ...

This is the pub that we were brought to by the MX-5 club and we really wanted to show it to the others. After lunch we drove on down to Lydford Gorge as this was somewhere high on Paul's wish list of places to visit ...

We decided on the short walk to Devil's Cauldron and set off down the track ...

We crossed the bridge at Pixie Glen ...

At one stage we looked down and could see fish swimming in the clear water ...

Then it began to look more like a gorge ...

We reached the Devil's Cauldron and Jo and I went as near as we dared ...

but Paul and Mike went right to the end (where there was no rail to hang to!) and Hamish watched anxiously waiting for his dad to reappear ...

We then followed the river up to Tucker's Pool passing the way out which we'd be returning to later ...

With the water sometimes below us ...

but mostly beside us ...

and passing little features ...

we finally found the Pool where Hamish was very pleased to be able to have a drink of the beautiful water ...

After a brief stop ...

we retraced our steps back to the way out and walked up and out of the woods ...

It was then time for a cream tea at the cafe ...

Very, very yummy! As we'd taken the short route we hadn't seen the 90ft waterfall and so we drove to the other entrance where Paul went on his own to see it. We were all too tired to move another inch! He returned remarkably quickly and then drove us all back to camp.

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