OS Explorer map OL28, Dartmoor – I own this map, and had visited before starting this blog. Visited again for this post 17th September 2022.
Google Maps location links: Bere Alston, Tavistock, Bedford Bridge, Okehampton
I visited this map area as part of my All Line Rover trip in September 2022, for which I did day-by-day blog posts already, and am now going through doing my regular posts about the new map areas I visited. The main content below will therefore be just a lightly edited version of relevant parts from my posts about Day 1 and Day 2 of the trip; for a more connected narrative I recommend taking a look there instead. The Previous Visits section will be new though.
After a busy day where exploring Cornwall as described in my last two posts, my end point for this first full day of my All Line Rover trip was Tavistock, a way north of Plymouth on the edge of Dartmoor, and which doesn’t have a train station. I’d therefore be taking the Gunnislake branch line as far as Bere Alston, where I’d catch a bus to Tavistock. Since the Gunnislake trains only run every couple of hours, upon rarriving in Plymouth I got on the one leaving soon, rather than exploring the town – I’ve never visited Plymouth before, so will need to come back sometime for a look around!
The ride to Bere Alston was fairly quick, taking me back out of Plymouth in the same direction as I’d entered it, before the branch line split off the main line and circled under the Tamar Bridge that I’d crossed less than an hour before. At Bere Alston, there was the second quirky train thing of the day: the driver had to get out of the train to change some points manualy using a lever. You see, Bere Alston was once the point where lines from Plymouth and Gunnislake met, to then continue on towards Tavistock and beyond. The Tavistock route was closed decades ago, so trains from Plymouth to Gunnislake have to enter Bere Alston, wait for the points to be changed, and then reverse out the same way to go on to Gunnislake. Given that this is a sleepy branch line there’s never been a need to adopt a more efficient system than the driver climbing out to change the points manually.
The 87A bus to Tavistock, admirably scheduled to meet the trains, was waiting at Bere Alston when I arrived, and I enjoyed seeing Dartmoor peep out between the trees occasionally during the journey. In Tavistock, I was staying in an Airbnb room very close to the bus station, which was very nice but had rather an unconventional setup: instead of renting out a bedroom in their house, this host rented out the sitting/dining room, which had an attached bathroom and a cute little conservatory. My bed was a very prettily-made up sofabed, looking rather incongruous in front of the dining table and sideboard!
It was still fairly early when I arrived, so I went out for a brief walk before buying dinner. Tavistock’s town centre is dominated by a disused railway viaduct, built as part of the aforementioned closed route that once came through from Bere Alston, continuing to Okehampton (which I’d visit tomorrow) and on to Exeter. The viaduct has been converted into a walking/cycle path, so I went up onto it and looked down onto the town.
From there, I went down to the Co-op and bought a wrap, salad and a brownie, and went back to my accommodation for a quiet evening and early night – I needed it after my late night last night and busy day!
The next morning, I had an enforced late start to my second full day’s travel because, it being a Sunday, the first 118 bus from Tavistock to Okehampton wouldn’t leave until 10:20am. However, I really like getting started early in the morning: it allows one to fit so much more into one’s day while still ending things early in the afternoon for plenty of post-accomplishment lounging around if you’d like; for me I just generally find makes my day more satisfying. This isn’t always possible on holiday, since often I’m away with others who have different prefernces, so I wanted to take advantage of my solitude-given freedom on this trip and start early every day. I therefore planned out a morning walk to take before my first bus – and I’m very glad I did, because it was great!
From central Tavistock, I started by walking up onto Whitchurch Down, an open common overlooking the town, and which was just extraordinarily pretty in the early morning sunlight.
The Down was lovely; it’s shot right up to near the top of the list of my favourite green spaces. Part of it was open grassland, cropped close by the wandering sheep, while other areas were covered in ferns and spiky bushes, with cows and Dartmoor ponies pottering about between them. The pointy-roofed structure you see in my photos was also very odd: it was a small triangular stone building, with benches running the length of each side, and no discernible means of accessing the inside. I suppose it was probably built just as an interesting bench-cum-folly, but there is space for a small room inside, so it’s puzzling that there’s no way in!
From the Down, I walked through the village of Whitchurch before joining a cycle path built in the route of an old railway route from Tavistock to Plymouth – not the route via Bere Alston I mentioned in my previous post, but a separate, older and more direct route to Plymouth, it seems.
It was a fun section of rail trail, with a very nice tunnel and bridge in the short section that I walked. Grenofen Tunnel was fun for being extremely echoey – since there was no-one else around I started singing to myself, and the notes would linger long enough that I could sing out whole chords one note at a time and harmonise with myself! Soon after the tunnel came Gem Bridge, a very impressively long and high bridge built over the valley of the River Walkham specifically for the opening of this walking and cycle route, the even high rail viaduct on the site having disappeared decades before. Unfortunately I didn’t get any particularly great photos of the bridge, but there’s a nice one here!
Immediately after crossing the bridge – from which I could see Dartmoor once again – I descended to the river, and walked along a pretty forested path to the hamlet of Bedford Bridge, the endpoint of my walk. After ten minutes sitting in the driveway of a retirement home – since the bus stop I’d be departing from was right in the road so not very conducive to comfortable waiting – the #1 bus arrived from Plymouth to whisk me back to Tavistock. At this point, I made a bit of a miscalculation: I knew I’d be taking several more buses that day – first to Okehamption and then all the way from Axminster to Weymouth along the Jurassic coast – so I spent £9 on a Devon day ticket. (While this was train holiday, I was making use of buses occasionally to fill gaps in the network, avoid having to double back etc – this was the most bus-heavy and train-light day of the trip!) However, due either to most of the latter route being outside Devon, or it being different bus companies, this ticket was invalid for most of my day’s travel – so I rather dramatically overpaid there. Oh well!
Back in Tavistock, I nipped back to my accommodation to collect my things, and twenty minutes later was on the #118 bus to Okehampton as planned. The journey of just under an hour was pleasant, with Dartmoor again peeking into view now and again; we also passed the very imposing Lydford Castle, and finally travelled through Okehampton town itself before the bus terminated at the outlying railway station. The castle and town both made me regret the need to continue with my day’s travel rather than getting out and exploring – another time!
The rail route between Okehampton and Exeter was notably reopened as a proper part of the national passenger network in 2021, following four decades of being first a freight-only line, then a heritage railway plus a few Sunday-only ordinary passenger services. The station still feels very “heritage-y” even though I think the heritage services have entirely stopped: as well as heritage decor, signs etc., there’s a little second-hand bookshop and tiny railway museum in a couple of the station buildings. It was very nice! My train soon arrived, and whisked me off out of this map area to Exeter.
Previous visits
I visited this map area previously on a June 2016 trip to Cornwall and Devon with my parents that’s been mentioned on this blog several times before. On that holiday, we stayed a couple of nights at Mousehole near Penzance, before visiting Tintagel and staying at Lewtrenchard, just to the west of Dartmoor. We stayed in one more place on the trip before heading home, to the east of Dartmoor, and to get there drove through Dartmoor itself.
We didn’t go for a walk or anything unfortunately, but we did stop in a car park to admire some of Dartmoor’s famous wild horses!
I once showed that photo on the left, of my father taking a selfie of a horse, to some of my friends, and all found it very amusing – there’s just something funny about it! It comes up in conversation occasionally…
Visiting all the maps! 
Is that the Warren Inn ? Do you know the legend?……..
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I don’t know which pub it was I’m afraid! I didn’t know the legend, but just looked it up now – interesting!
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