aune

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Aune

The River Avon, also known as the River Aune, is a river in the county of Devon in the south of England.

It rises in the southern half of Dartmoor National Park in an area of bog to the west of Ryder's Hill.

Close to where the river leaves Dartmoor a dam was built in 1957 to form the Avon reservoir .

After leaving the moor it passes through South Brent and then Avonwick and Aveton Gifford and flows into the sea at Bigbury-on-Sea.

Near Loddiswell the valley flows through Fosse Copse a 1.88 hectares (4.65 acres) woodland owned and managed by the Woodland Trust.

The estuary lies within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is part of the South Devon Heritage Coast.

And why not the River Avon

Well,

I think Eric Hemery is right when, in the pages of High Dartmoor, he quotes a moorman who suggests that Aune or Auna should be the name of this pretty river, given that there are lots of Avons and only one Aune.

So let’s call it Aune on Dartmoor, though it might be the Avon as it winds a gentler course through the South Hams.

Aune Head defines Dartmoor for me.

A little while ago I was asked to write a piece for an anthology on a wild place that defines Dartmoor.

After some deliberation I chose Aune Head, given that it is unspoiled and not usually very crowded. I often ponder on the tinner’s hut there, imagining the man who must have lived and worked in that solitary place.

The great mire is vast and untouched for all his efforts, with the cry of the curlew being one of the few sounds to break into the great silence. In the early summer the skylarks fill the air round about, and a lonely heron might flap overhead.

Boggy ground it is too if you choose to explore in search of the exquisite mire flowers. A slight trudge through the mud on its edge reveals the Luckombe Stone, that great boulder that seems pointless in the landscape, yet somehow completes the view.

It must have all been a familiar scene to the traders and hucksters who used the nearby Sandy Way to get to the market at Princetown’s War Prison so that they might barter with those incarcerated French and Americans two centuries ago.

Sometimes, if you lie on the edge of the mire and close your eyes, it seems as though you can almost hear the gossip of those ancient travellers above the soughing of the breeze through the moorgrass.

When I was a small child, this was only a country of the imagination for me. My first contact with the Aune was a childhood picnic at Shipley Bridge. Wandering away from the others I climbed up to Black Tor and looked northwards to these distant and yet to be explored hills. A few years later I spent my first night bivouacking without a tent on Dartmoor, in a hollow on the hillside opposite Huntingdon Warren.

The Aune has some of the best bathing pools on Dartmoor, many of them a few minutes stroll up from Shipley. We used to bathe in the Aune’s chill waters, dousing our heads under the many little waterfalls where the river tumbles through Long-a-Traw (Long Trough). We would sunbathe ourselves dry, turning the pages of William Crossing’s Guide to Dartmoor, before continuing our exploration of the Moor. Sometimes we would meet and talk with Brother Adam of Buckfast Abbey, who kept his bees here to bring the taste of the moorland heather to the famous honey.

Long-a-Traw is one of the finest valleys on Dartmoor, ruined only by the dreadful concrete of the Avon Dam (and I revert to Avon for the name of this appalling intrusion) towards its head.

I mourn for the archaeology that was lost when the reservoir was built. More might go yet, for the dam was designed to be raised if circumstances made it necessary. To imprison a moorland river behind a dam, letting it pass only in fits and starts is a crime against nature.

Still, archaeology remains and one of my favourite areas is Rider’s Rings, a perfect place for a rest on a summer walk, though I do hope the bracken will be tackled soon. I like the little clapper bridge on the Aune above Huntingdon Cross.

I have stopped here for lunch on countless occasions, both on my own and with considerable numbers of Dartmoor walkers, fellow spirits in discovery, many of them now sadly passed on.

The focus for walks was often Broada Falls, that great mass of boulders through which the river forces its waters on the first stretch of its journey from Aune Head. I can remember, on one of my earliest visits, the late and much-missed Dartmoor expert Joe Turner showing me the ancient stone vermin traps just a little downstream.

From the high hills around, the slopes of Huntingdon Warren or the White-a-Barrows, the Aune winds through the land like a blue ribbon against the yellow, brown and green of the surrounding moorland, as it reflects the blue of the sky on summer days. I have seen it as a sprawl of raging white foam after prolonged Dartmoor thunderstorms, though that is rare, for despite a fairly rapid descent the Aune is a gentle river. Above the reservoir it is quintessentially a high moorland river, free of much vegetation beyond the occasional overhanging rowan.

Below the reservoir the trees creep in to the landscape, with rhododendrons in the lower stages. I always think it a pity that Brent Moor House has gone, just a few low walls to mark its passing. I used to know a lot of moor folk who remembered it, and a few walkers who had stayed there during its brief incarnation as a youth hostel. Nearby, hidden high in the bushes, is the memorial to the young daughter of the Meynell family, killed when out horse riding in 1865.

Shipley Bridge is fortunate in that it stands some yards away from the nearby car park, thereby having its ancient view preserved without too much 21st century intrusion.

But even though the river ceases to be a moorland water at this point, I think we should continue our journey down through Didworthy, using the public right of way, to Lydia Bridge and then South Brent, where the Aune leaves the National Park.

I always think Lydia Bridge is one of the delights of Dartmoor and is too seldom visited. And what a beautiful name. South Brent should be visited too, not least as a homage to William Crossing who lived and explored Dartmoor from this useful base, using the valley of the Aune as an approach to so much of Dartmoor.

The Aune is a beautiful river and it is a privilege to walk here in the footsteps of Dartmoor’s greatest writer, the incomparable William Crossing.

The River Avon,

also known as the River Aune, is a river in the county of Devon in the south of England.

It rises in the southern half of Dartmoor National Park in an area of bog to the west of Ryder's Hill. Close to where the river leaves Dartmoor a dam was built in 1957 to form the Avon reservoir . After leaving the moor it passes through South Brent and then Avonwick and Aveton Gifford and flows into the sea at Bigbury-on-Sea.

Near Loddiswell the valley flows through Fosse Copse a 1.88 hectares (4.65 acres) woodland owned and managed by the Woodland Trust.

The estuary lies within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is part of the South Devon Heritage Coast.

The wreck – dating from around 900BC – has been found just 300 yards off the coast of Salcombe in South Devon.

It measures 40ft long and up to 6ft wide and is made from planks of timber, and would have been powered by a crew of 15 sailors with paddles.

Cargo recovered so far includes 259 copper ingots and 27 tin ingots as wells as a bronze leaf sword, several sling shots and three gold bracelets.

Archaeologists have described the find as "incredibly exciting" because it provides new evidence about Britain's links with Europe in the Bronze Age.

It shows how people of the time were capable sailors and boat builders and experts from University of Oxford are now carrying out further analysis of the cargo.

The copper and tin would have been used for making bronze – the main product of the period which was used to forge weapons, tools, jewellery and ornaments.

Archaeologists from the South West Maritime Archaeological Group have already recovered hundreds of artefacts weighing a total of more than 84kg.

Spokesman Mick Palmer said: "For the British Isles, this is extremely important. This was a cargo trading vessel on a big scale.

"There is more down there and we will carry on searching for it. We anticipate a lot more will be found."

Archaeologists believe the copper was being imported into Britain from countries throughout Europe including Switzerland, France and Austria.

Tin ingots from this period have never been found in Britain before and experts believe it may have been brought in from eastern Germany.

The wreck is lying in 10 metres of water in an area called Wash Gully and the ship may have sunk while attempting to land.

Dave Parham, senior lecturer in marine archaeology at Bournemouth University, said: "What we are seeing is trade in action.

"We are not stuck with trying to work out trade based on a few deposits across a broader landscape.

"We are looking at the stuff actually on the boat being moved.

"Everything that is in the ship sinks with it and is on the seabed somewhere. What you would call this today is a bulk carrier. It was carrying what was for the time a large consignment of raw materials."

It was found last year but the discovery was not announced until this month's International Shipwreck Conference, in Plymouth.

The finds have been reported to both English Heritage and the Receiver of Wreck, which administers all shipwrecks and will handed to the British Museum next week.

Dr Peter Northover, a scientist at the University of Oxford who has been analysing the find, said: "These are the produce of a multitude of countries, scattered right around Europe, up and down the Atlantic coast and inland.

"It came from a combination of places. It is showing the diversity of the trade. Metal traders and workers would have traded parcels of metal with each other.

"The metal would have moved in steps, along networks of contacts exchanging metal as and when they needed it."