This is the 2nd birthday edition of mine and Skittles' personal geocaching event series based on the book 'Dartmoor 365', by John Hayward. In the past year our Dartmoor 365 events have included an Iron Age hillfort, two leats, the largest range pole on Dartmoor, a reservoir, a derelict house and a Letterboxing shrine. We have had a little more mixed weather than 2018, with all four season, including hail, although so far we have avoided any significant snow. Again we got a good spread around the National Park, but it has been nice to see some more remote events on the northern part of the Moor, with the events at I6 Western Red Lake and G9 Cranmere Pool. The following images shows the square locations visited to date.
The twenty-fifth event in a series of monthly events taking place in different squares of the Dartmoor 365; the square chosen at random by pulling out a square at each event. The square pulled out for this month is U14 Shipley Bridge. The event will start at around 10am at the given co-ordinates for geo-chat, TB exchanging etc. People are free to come and go as they please. Skittles and I will be there until around 11am, but depending on the weather/attendees it may go on for longer.
Shipley Bridge is located on the River Avon, down river from the Avon Dam Reservoir, and is a great place to start a walk on this part of the Moor. However, it is an interesting location in its own right. There is an interesting building with narrow vertical openings, that was once used as a drying shed for the clay works. The clay was brought in suspension through a pipe, into the setting pits that are further up the slope. The dry clay was heaped up in the area that is now the car park.
The current building replaced one that had machinery to extract naphtha from peat, which was dug from the area around Red Lake, and was transported along the Zeal Tor Tramway. Today the area around here is far less industrial, with the area around the carpark being rich in plant life. John Hayward mentions that there are patches of Chamomile, along with Mayweed and St John's Wort.
As this is the second birthday event, in keeping with our event last year at Pixie's Pool, I will be bringing cake(s). Number and quality will be very much depending on time and luck when baking.