A walk along the leat.

We went for a nice walk on Saturday on the moor.  It was a sort of subdued day weather wise, with a uniform white sky, and slightly cooler.  We started at Two Bridges where the East Dart river flows peaty brown the colour of stewed tea.

The bridle path led us along a track edged with green mossy walls, like velvet coats, and mossy trees that danced and held their twisted limbs out to us..

The path gradually rose higher and higher till we entered a beautiful Beech wood, a magical place where the tall graceful trees were covered in emerald moss, and above the canopy was studded with knotty beech mast...some of the beech leaves had started to turn and were in shades of toffee and lemon...

And down below the river gurgled and splashed over rocks in waterfalls and whirlpools ...

And all around there were jewels to be seen, like the shiny blackberries in the hedging and the beautiful saffron coloured toadstools clustered at the foot of a tree..

 

Eventually the path finished by a lovely old bridge, then emerged onto a dusty track, that wound up onto the moor, we passed Beardown Farm where the smell of wood smoke drifted across the path, and a very perky Jack Russell raced out to bark very noisily at us with hackles raised and a very stiff little tail...

 

 

The path turned and followed the course of the Devonport leat which wound between the farmers fields, above a Buzzard soared into the sky and its mewling cry carried on the wind....

 

 

Along the leat was a sheep leap, a large granite stone that jutted out above the water to allow the sheep to jump from one side to the other..

 

 

Ahead was a pine plantation, the trees tall and straight and regimented, and beside them a small thicket of small fir trees whose new growth was a pretty blue..

 

 

 

We walked into the green gloom of the plantation, ferns grew lushly beneath the trees and along the leat, and the ground was a soft carpet of tiny cones and pine needles...

 

 

In a bank was a huge badgers set, we counted lots of holes that would lead to the chambers...a lovely spot for them live...

 

 

 

The path came out onto the open moor, the leat was very pretty here edged with ferns and gorse and clumps of heather..and on the surface Pond skaters rowed back and forward rippling the water..

 

 

 

We had lovely views across the moor, the horizons still hazy, and a breeze stirring the grasses..

 

 

In the valley below us we could see a farm lonely and hunched against the vastness of the moor, its certainly a place of extremes and never boring....