Before the storms, blue sky lures us out to the less familiar Devon side of the valley. Over there, in the centre of Bere Alston, red crab apples cling to ornamental trees and a nearby line of washing billows dry beside the wind-rocked branches of pink camellia. Blasting across from Hingston Down, gusts buffet full-out daffodils on top of hedges; more sheltered lanes drop downhill between banks of pennywort and moss overhung by swaying catkins.
Towards Tuckermarsh Quay, past the bridge over a cutting of the derelict Southern Railway (linking Plymouth with Waterloo via Okehampton), woodland overwhelms formerly cultivated plots. Daffodil buds point skyward between ivy, hart’s-tongue fern, primrose and spears of onion-scented ramson; fallen trees sprawl among hazel bushes and the midday sun sidelights tall mossy trunks.
Down by the Tamar, opposite sunlit Calstock, shady Buttspill Wood occupies a river cliff with undergrowth of shining holly grounded in the absorbent leaf mould of oak and beech. Out in the open and beneath the viaduct, a path continues on the levee separating vacated green pastures of Ferry Farm from straw-coloured reedbeds lapped by the flooding tide. Around the Danescoombe bend, Cotehele’s chapel in the wood perches on a rocky promontory among lichen-encrusted trees; downstream, the tide-washed “hard” beneath South Ward Mine was the landing stage for an established ferry across this waterway. A century ago my grandfather would have been rowed over from Cornwall, en route from the manorial mill to Plymouth’s Corn Exchange, via the railway station, a mile-long walk uphill.
Beyond Braunder Wood, land harvested of maize for fodder remains impacted and waterlogged, shedding runoff towards the river; sheep and lambs on steeper ground along an adjoining tributary tread lighter than a group of Hereford yearlings further on, but most fields await drier weather before animals can be turned out. Drab unshorn hedgebanks and regenerating woodland masking abandoned market gardens and historic mine workings brighten in today’s sunshine, glossing ripe ivy berries, gilding yellow gorse and masses of catkins. Towards Halton Quay and Pentillie the expanse of water appears as a shining lake before the ebb reveals mudbanks and strands of wrack and debris.
