Summer Half-Term Day Trip #4 - Lydford Gorge & Brentor

Our final half-term secret outing was also somewhat close to home. Christine and Rebecca surprised me and Gwendolyn with a trip to Lydford Gorge on the western edge of Dartmoor National Park.

This is also a National Trust property – our membership is paying off!

Here are our trip leaders, posing in front of a nice map of the gorge. Both Rebecca and Gwendolyn worked on their map-reading skills on this hike.

The National Trust has the hike set up as a three-mile loop. We started the walk at the main visitor centre and worked our way along the top of the ridge. We then had a picnic lunch, the girls, of course, had their ice cream,

and then we returned along the bottom of the gorge. As this sign shows, there are two main highlights in the park – Lydford Falls and the Devil’s Cauldron.

Lydford Falls is one of the biggest waterfalls in the South West. Coming from western North Carolina, it isn’t very big, but it was nice to see a 90-foot waterfall. This whole gorge reminded us of North Carolina.

After the falls we made our way upstream along the river,

which in a couple of places had sheer drops to the water.

The girls did a great job through here and didn’t flinch on the thin, wet, and slippery path that has been carved into the rock.

Rebecca even led us the whole way through. Here are Christine and the girls after a particularly tough stretch.

Little did we know that the best was yet to come. The Devil’s Cauldron portion of the gorge lives up to its name. Here, the gorge became even narrower. So narrow, in fact, that we could touch both sides at the same time! In the next picture you may be able to see the stairs leading down into the thinnest part. I say “may be able to see” because on this trip I was still in camera purgatory. Great geology, again, and a poor substitute for a legitimate camera.

Not only was it narrow, but the stream plunged its way down through this thin opening in the rocks. There were also plenty of Christine’s favorite geological features: pot holes! Pictures just cannot do justice to how cool this section of the gorge is.

We were impressed with Lydford Gorge, to say the least. The girls had had their treat, so Christine and I decided to have one as well. We left the park and headed for the small village of Lydford, which boasts a fine 16^th Century pub, The Castle Inn,

a castle right next door, as the name suggests,

and an old church.

Our day was almost finished, but there was one more stop. I requested a two-mile detour on the way home in order to visit Brentor, scene of some more great geology and an interesting church. I first learned of Brentor back in March when Christine and I did our second Dartmoor hike. As we were looking west from a high spot during that walk, I noticed a tall mound of rock with a building on top that resembled a castle. Upon further inquiry, I discovered that it was Brentor and that the building is a church, not a castle. Here is a view of Brentor.

The information signs at the car park pointed to more interesting information regarding the church. Like Mont St. Michel in France and St. Michael’s Mount in western Cornwall (more on our visit there in the next post), the church at the top of Brentor is dedicated to St. Michael and is called St. Michael de Rupe, or St. Michael of the Rock.

Our landlord, Liz, told me that in the 13^th Century a rich merchant who shipwrecked in Plymouth Sound looked up, saw Brentor in the distance, and, inspired by churches at Mt. St. Michel and St. Michael’s Mount, decided to pay for a church dedicated to St. Michael on that tor. Brentor certainly is noticeable from a distance. I was waiting for the train at the station in Gunnislake this morning. I looked across the tracks, and there it was in the distance. Here is a view from near the top, showing how it rises above the surrounding landscape.

I climbed up ahead of the girls and Christine and you can see them far below me.

The rocks comprising this peak are also interesting. Unlike the rest of Dartmoor National Park, which lies on granitic bedrock, the mound at Brentor is made up of pillow basalts. Basalt is a form of lava – think lava flows in Hawaii. This particular basalt, however, forms little “pillows” as it extrudes underwater, sort of like a tube of toothpaste being squeezed.  Here is a view of a “pillow”

and here are the girls enjoying the basalts.

Finally, a parting shot of the Church of St. Michael de Rupe.

That was the final installment of the Half-Term Hijinx. Next, it’s on to the Penwith Peninsula for the final weekend of half term!