Dartmoor CAM

This walk: 2009-11-4. Yennadon Down, Burrator Halt railway station, Burrator Dam, Sheep's Tor, mill stone, Burrator Lodge, corrugated iron building, Lowery threshing barn, Devonport Leat, sluices, clapper bridge, Honey Fungus.

Walk details below - Information about the route etc.

Sheep's Tor, from Yennadon Down.

History lesson at a reservoir catchment boundary stone on Yennadon Down .....

The usual PCWW (Plymouth Corporation Water Works) 1917 inscription. There are also 1917 and 1932 stones in other areas.

Gathered walkers at Burrator Halt dismantled railway station (line closed in 1956), listening intently in the ##**## rain.

View along the old railway bed towards Dousland and Yelverton .....

..... and towards Ingra Tor Halt and Princetown.

Burrator Dam.

Granite seat at the foot of the waterfall .....

A view of the waterfall ..... or, non-water fall - where is the water? It has been pouring with rain lately! Perhaps the outlet, or "rotary screening device" was blocked with leaves - there is a lot of them about right now .....

Old mill stone in the grounds opposite Burrator Lodge (over the road) , note the striated surface for grinding corn into flour .....

Burrator Lodge - Built in 1895 by Plymouth Corporation Water Works for the water engineer who maintained the Plymouth (or Drakes) leat. He was called Amos Shillibeer and had previously lived in Headweir Cottage which was to be submerged under the new reservoir. The lodge was lived in by successive generations of the Shillibeer family until 1940. Electricity to the property was via a turbine powered by some of the overflow from the Devonport leat. The lodge is now used by South West Lakes Trust.

The workshop across the road from Burrator Lodge, now a listed building due to it being one of the few remaining buildings constructed entirely from corrugated iron.

The reservoir seen through the trees.

Looking up the reservoir with Down Tor in the distance.

Sheep's Tor, across the reservoir.

Lowery threshing barn, with many doors of which several have been blocked up.

A different view .....

Internal view, showing the supports for an upper floor - granite footers or corbels.

A date stone, near the top of the long wall, on the outside.

Nearby, Devonport Leat.

A clapper bridge over the leat.

Looking along the leat towards Plymouth.

Leat tunnel under the nearby road.

Honey fungus, Armillaria mellea.

A sawn tree stump - there must have been some big trees in this area.

Another view of Sheep's Tor through the trees.

Sluices in the leet to control take-off to the reservoir .....

..... seen from the other side.

A shelter in the woods.

Walk details

MAP: This shows a route drawn after the walk as my GPS seemed to have turned itself off the tracker mode at the start of the walk, maybe rubbing against my jacket, with the tracker screen still showing on the GPS, the on/off button was accidentally pressed .....

The walk was easily accessed by turning off the B3212 road near Dousland with easy parking at the P symbol on the map near the cross-roads at Lowery Cross.

Statistics
Distance - 4.8 km / 3.0 miles.