River Tavy
The Tavy above Tavistock, on the moor
On Dartmoor, near Princetown.
T h e r e are few roads in all Devon so pleasant for travellers of every kind as that which runs from Plymouth to Tavistock. The first three miles are long and toilsome; but when the town and its dull suburbs are once left behind, the moors are quickly reached ; and the road runs for many a mile undulating gently over a lofty ridge of downs, having on the right hand at a little distance a higher chain of rugged hills, across which the cloud shadows sweep with amazing suddenness and beauty, leaving those slopes in dark obscurity one moment which the next are radiant with sunlight to their very summits, while the tall granite church towers in the hollows change from dark gray blocks hardly distinguishable from the gloomy hillside, to living palpitating things, so brightly do they gleam and sparkle in the sudden glow of warm light. It is a lonely rugged CH.
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country of infinite beauty, sterner and less wooded than the fringes of the moor around Ashburton, offering vistas indeed across the higher slopes which are so obviously seldom trodden by any other feet than those of forest ponies that it is easy to believe the story told of how a shepherd, wandering not so very far away from his customary pastures in quest of some strayed sheep, found the body of a sailor lying in a little hollow fully clothed, his head upon the bundle which he had been carrying and the whole attitude that of a man who had lain down to sleep in that desolate place for very weariness. At his feet lay curled up his little dog ; but both dog and man were skeletons; and must have been resting there together for many weeks. There are numerous points along this road which are the approaches to valleys of such interest and beauty that it is a constant temptation to diverge.
There is Horrabridge, most lovely of moorland scenes, whence one looks up the Walkham valley, lying exquisitely among a group of tors of singular grandeur, Staple Tor, Mis Tor, Sheep’s T o r; and not far away is that grand rock called the Dewerstone, which is the common haunt or meet of the yeth-hounds that hunt across the moor with phantom riders from Buckfastleigh to Tavistock along the old track road called the “ Abbot’s Way.” Bickleigh too, where the great family of Slanning was seated, whose name will never be forgotten in the w est; Buckland Abbey, where Sir Francis Drake established himself; Princetown, on which we look down from this high elevation, a drear and barren monument of human suffering and crime,— there is no end to the digressions which might be made, if there were time to think of them, in this most interesting district. But Tavistock has greater claims upon our space. Already one sees it lying in a hollow on the right; and a rapid descent brings the road out on the brink of a swift stream, across an ivied bridge, and by a grand stone gateway, which is one of the sights of Tavistock, both for its handsome architecture, and for the
Lopwell weir,
The Tavy is a river on Dartmoor, Devon, England. The name derives from the Brythonic root "Taff", the original meaning of which has now been lost.[1] It has given its name to the town of Tavistock and the villages of Mary Tavy and Peter Tavy. It is a tributary of the River Tamar and has as its own tributaries:
Collybrooke
River Burn
River Wallabrooke
River Lumburn
River Walkham
At Tavistock it feeds a canal running to Morwellham Quay.
Its mouth it is crossed by the Tavy Bridge which carries the Tamar Valley railway line.
The river is navigable inland as far as Lopwell, where a weir marks the normal tidal limit, about a 9-mile (14 km) journey from North Corner Quay at Devonport.
River transport was an important feature of the local farming, mining, tourism and forestry economies.
The Queen's Harbour Master for Plymouth is responsible for managing navigation on the River Tavy up to the normal tidal limi
^ "Welcome to Lopwell" (PDF). Plymouth City Council. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 June 2011. Retrieved 5 July 2011.
^ Queen's Harbour Master Plym
^ The Dockyard Port of Plymouth Order 1999
The dam, or weir, at Lopwell
Lopwell is a site of natural beauty situated at the normal tidal limit of the River Tavy, 3 miles from north Plymouth and 7 miles from Tavistock, Devon, England.
Lopwell Dam is a Local Nature Reserve consisting of several different habitats including saltmarsh, freshwater marsh and ancient semi-natural woodland. Mammals include roe deer, otters and Atlantic grey seals. The area forms part of the Tamar–Tavy Estuary Site of Special Scientific Interest
