Plym Bridge in Winter

There has been a lot of rain recently and so we thought we would see how the River Plym was flowing at Plym Bridge.  We parked on the Estover side of the river and started by looking at the river by the bridge.  Although it was flowing fast, we were surprised that it was not that deep under the bridge.

We started to walk up the river and although the ground was flooded in places the river had not broken its banks.  There was a lot of water flowing into the river from the surrounding ground, making waterfalls.

At times there was white water as the river flowed over boulders, completely submerging them, but it was nothing special until we came until the weir, just past Cann viaduct.  The water flowing over this gave a  spectacular sight.

Being winter there was not much to see in the way of flora or fauna, but we did notice some catkins by the Cann Viaduct - the first signs of spring.

Woodland walks

With temperatures in the mid 20s it was too hot to walk far in open countryside.  It was not even cool right on the coast.  Therefore we looked for walks in woodland so we would not get overheated.

On Sunday morning we decided to do a walk we have done before, parking the car at Bedford Bridge and walking along the river to Grenofen.  To begin with we followed the path by the side of the river Walkham, but it became very rough so we headed up to a higher path.  At times we could not see the river, but other times it came down close to the waters edge.  On the way back we went on an even higher path which was a very good track for walking though not so pleasant as you could not hear the river gurgling past.

River Walkham

On Monday we thought we would walk in Plymbridge Woods.  Usually we park at Plym Bridge and walk up the river Plym from there.  For a change we decided to park at Woolwell and explore the woodland around there that leads on to Plym Bridge Woods.

We parked in Pinewood Drive as we thought we would be able to get onto a path from there but we had to walk back past the bottom of several closes before we could enter the woods.  To begin with the path was narrow and a bit overgrown and after a while we had to go down a steep incline,but this led to a good path that took us all the way down to a viaduct over the river plym.  We then walked along the river until Bickleigh.  This is where the river path ends and we had to climb up a steep hill to reach the cycle path.  We followed the cycle path back until the second viaduct.  We had to scramble down a steep path to return to the path we needed to be on to return to Woolwell.

To avoid climbing up the steep path near the end of the walk we took another path back that looked as if it would get us back to our car.  Unfortunately it went past where we were parked and the Woolwell estate is designed in such a way that you can't get from one close to another but have to go back to the through roads.  We therefore had a longer walk back than we had anticipated.

The map route is saved on getamap.co.uk