Lydford Gorge

After a dreadfully wet day in Falmouth (and down a tin mine to escape the rain!!) I headed homewards from my Eden trip, stopping en route to visit another botanists paradise: Lydford Gorge near Okehampton, on the northern edge of Dartmoor (the blog title links to National Trust page about it).

Not surprisingly, after all the rain there was a lot of water around.......

Great news for the mosses, liverworts and ferns....

and bringing some little streamlets a lease of life they might not have had in a summer like last year (remember the heatwave....? http://carter-in-gloucester.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_archive.html)

But the gorge wasn't gouged by little trickles....

At the southern end of the gorge is this spectacle....

A truly lovely spot.

But note: not even this torrent made the gorge, that was the combined effort of the Lyd and Burn, carving through rock like a knife through butter creating precipitous slopes where oak woodlands cling beautifully....

and thundering through the narrow confines of the descent from the Devil's Cauldron.

Its truly a dark, damp, noisy hell-hole. Truly Wicked!!( in both senses!)........but above: oh so green!!!

After the noise of the Cauldron a short walk further up the valley brings you to Tucker's Pool, where brown trout swim, and (though it might have tempted me on a hotter day, were that allowed!) I did not. Afteral, I had just seen what was down stream. This was the water's calm-before-the-storm moment and I left the waters, and trout, in peace.

I went and had a cream tea instead!!!!!!