7 September 2021
We certainly seem to have enjoyed Indian Summer weather for the last couple of days! I persuaded my husband to come out for a walk and we spent the morning having a relaxed wander from Fingle Bridge. My ulterior motive was to bag Hunter’s Tor and Sharp Tor which aren’t particularly near to any other tors on the LDWA list.
The path from Fingle Bridge to the Hunter’s Path is steep. I’ve only ever run up it previously, towards the end of the Drogo race. It was much hotter today than it will ever be in November so that no doubt makes the climb seem harder. However in retrospect I am impressed that I have ever run up here without stopping! This time I actually had time to take in the magnificent views across the Teign Valley and to Chagford and beyond – really an awesome sight even with the morning haze.
We reached Sharp Tor, admiring the view from a point near a bench.
We then walked on to the view point at Hunter’s Tor.
Next we followed the path downhill and then a small road and track past Combe to a footbridge which we crossed. We didn’t want to walk past some cows that were lying on the track just beyond the bridge. Hence we re-crossed the bridge and followed the footpath past a weir and then spotted the turbine house on the opposite bank of the river.
When Julius Drewe was organising the building of Castle Drogo in the early twentieth century, he wanted to have electricity in his “modern” home. In the end work didn’t start on the hydro scheme until 1927 and the turbines started producing electricity for the castle in March 1929. I am impressed that this was done at a time before there was the current level of understanding of the importance of sustainable and renewable energy.
Despite the castle being connected to the National Grid in the late 1960s or early 1970s, the turbines continued to supply some power to the castle and garages until 1994. They were switched off as the informal abstraction requirements didn’t comply with the current regulations. However there has been a recent restoration effort and the turbine house was recommissioned in late October 2017. It has been generating electricity ever since, as long as there is sufficient water in the River Teign. The electricity is used by the visitor centre at Castle Drogo and any excess is used to heat one of the boilers in the biomass house.
From this beacon of excellence in early renewable energy, we continued our walk along the riverside, passing through a narrower rocky area before emerging on a flatter part of the valley. We had been fortunate that we had been early enough to have many bits of the walk to ourselves. However it was definitely much more busy as we approached the picturesque narrow Fingle Bridge. Certainly “discovering” the restored turbine house had added to the interest of the walk. Moreover I had kept my promise that this was a “path” walk – I can’t actually remember the last time I did a path walk on Dartmoor – my walks always seem to end up in gorse bushes, hopping over bogs or floundering through tussocks!
Where's Kathryn? 