Dartmoor swims

Singing the Body

May 6, 2015LakesDartmoor swims, limestone, Meldon, Meldon Bomb, Singing the Body, skinny dipping, wild swimmingSwimminghappyinmyskin Leave a comment

Meldon, Dartmoor

September 20 2014

‘… but when I try to imagine faultless love, or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.’ (WH Auden)

Meldon has a story rooted in limestone.

On the northernmost fringe of Dartmoor; where the roughness of granite yields to rolling pasture and where, on a fair day, the horizon widens to embrace the sea, the hamlet of Meldon is best known for its quarries.

Today, ballast for the railways is still excavated from one site, but beyond this, through woodland and under the vast spans of a viaduct, rests a peaceful place. Where drills and powder, tares and feather have long fallen silent. Where quiet has replaced the calls of the quarrymen.

At Meldon lay a deposit of limestone, sandwiched between layers of hard, flinty chert. Being quite distant from the coast, there were no ready supplies of seaweed and sand to nourish and neutralise the peaty, acidic fields. So lime was quarried, kilned and spread to ‘sweeten’ the soil hereabouts.

Excavation began on a small scale in the late 1700s and by the time the quarry became exhausted, early in the 20th Century, a two acre crater, some 130 feet deep, had been gouged from the ground.

With time, moorland rains and Auden’s murmuring streams poured balm into the earth’s wound and today this quarry offers one of the finest swims on Dartmoor.

Or so the wild swimming sites proclaimed – with pictures reminiscent of a Mediterranean idyll; all sunlight and serenity.

To be honest, I had never really believed that colour. It seemed too vivid, mystical, unearthly. Certainly it was unlike the night-sky blackness that envelops the swimmer in most moorland pools.

_______________________________

So, it’s with towel and a generous portion of scepticism stowed in my rucsac that I head for Meldon on a sultry Sunday afternoon in late September. Marley Bone is clearly as intrigued as me, for he leaps out through the car window before I have even parked. A bark of surprise and bemused face in my wing mirror shows that he has forgotten the harness he wears in the car, but his tail is still wagging as, gently swinging, he awaits rescue with an air of patient trust.

Emergency over, we head downhill, passing dense bracken and spoil heap fingers that grasp the hillside. The bronzed hues of early Autumn are painted here and there and skeletal remnants of rosebay willow herb loom up beside the gnarled remains of a long dead hawthorn. Thistledown trips along the ground. Wisps of cloud follow suit in a deepening sky.

The air hangs heavy with the drone of bobbing bees and I begin to doubt my direction, for there is no lake to see.

Finding a bridge, I cross the West Okement and moments later, through a parting of trunks, it is there.

Tree-ringed and pretty as the proverbial postcard. And that colour! It was true…

So intense that I can only sit in awe – absorbing what I had failed to believe.

Scrambling down through scrub and sending a cascade of stones into the water, it’s clear that the pool is instantly deep. No gently shelving entry here: In or out – all or nothing.

So in it is …

And how good! For the heat of a long summer has suffused these green waters. Dragonflies and a swooping wagtail become my crewmates as we set off on an exploratory voyage; traversing the length and breadth of the lake.

Voices above send me into a grove of trees that dip and drape into the water on the far bank. I shelter amongst shadows where all is still and stagnant. Like an alligator floating with eyes barely crowning the waterline. This is ‘Deliverance’ without the duelling banjos.

The voices pass and silence floods back into the quarry. Leaving my lair, I slide back out into the sunshine, into the heat and light that is focussed by the lake as if through a magnifying glass. I dive down, through a palette of greens that change from sage, through emerald to bottle as I probe deeper into the opaque water. Rising back, to float lazily at the heart of the pool, I am reminded of a more sombre day.

A day back in 1936; when a local man went missing and was believed to have drowned in the murky waters of the flooded quarry. But no corpse had been found so a decision was made to ‘sing the body.’ This was a traditional practice on the moors whenever a drowning occurred but no trace was evident. It was believed that by singing sacred songs at the water’s edge, the body would be attracted to the surface where a Christian burial would be waiting.

So a choir from Okehampton was duly assembled. Hymns were sung, psalms chanted and prayers said over the waters of Meldon. Within a few days the corpse was found floating on the surface – the last recorded occasion of a body being ‘sung’ from the depths.

To my left, a sudden splash!

Excited shouts…

Three lads have clambered onto a ledge of chert far above the water. Here a sloped overhang, created by the undercutting of limestone, towers 40 feet above the lake. This is the site of the ‘Meldon Bomb’ – as infamous as it is dangerous – for, from this height, any dive that lacks needle-precision is potentially lethal.

I can almost imagine the spirits of that 1936 choir assembling once more beside these virescent waters…

I feel a shiver. I’ve been in the pool for over an hour, so set off for the steep bank that leads to a towel and picnic.

From my new vantage point high above the lake, I see a shimmering surface and shadows of sycamore in the dryness of the dust.

But in the breath of a breeze, an occasional crusty leaf drifts across my gaze.

A sign that all must change.

For these languid days of summer stand numbered now …

The Spitchwick Sardines

April 4, 2015RiversDartmoor swims, Deeper Marsh, rapping, River Dart, skinny dipping, Spitchwick, wild swimmingSwimminghappyinmyskin Leave a comment

Spitchwick, River Dart

May 21, 2014

‘What a difference a day makes’ – or so sang Dinah Washington.

Now multiply that by seven.

Seven sun-soaked, blossom-laden days.

A week that has transformed Spitchwick from a place of quiet beauty into a post-apocalyptic landscape of litter and contempt. Where the pristine grass has been seared into a chess board of barbecue burns. Coals and foil tossed aside. Cast-off cartons and cans creaking in the heat.

But the blossom and bluebells have survived the weekenders and on this Wednesday noon the turf is warm and the air pristine. ‘Spitch’ is still a site of sunshine and solace – albeit shared with two couples who lay pressed close together; roasting flesh on an undersized rug.

I lay my own blanket far away; on a small sandy beach, set in a dense dappling of leaves beneath the bank.

The Dart chatters and sparkles all about me as I settle down to Roger Deakin, a sandwich and luke-warm pasty.

Roger’s words are deep and clear and charged with the energy of experience. The pages turn themselves, rushing by with the impatience of a river in spate – surging and pressing from his pen.

An hour passes. The sun sears through the lens of her sky and I hear footsteps: A woman and child. They pass, smile and head towards the river.

But they make a mistake. They break the cardinal canine rule:

‘NEVER SPREAD A PICNIC BETWEEN A SPANIEL AND WATER’

Thirty minutes later they pass again. The smiles are forced this time…

By now lunch has settled and I hear the call of the Dart – a needy cry that demands only one answer.

So moments later I am tip-toeing past the sleepers. The dreamers. Not a murmur. Their dream goes on.

And my clothes come off.

At the water’s edge; a cool clear embrace – ankles, calves, knees, thighs.

I slip. The kiss of the river and I am swimming. Weightless. Carried in her current. Yesterday and tomorrow are left behind. All is now – condensed into this moment.

And still no movement from the sleepers.

I slide off my shorts – tuck them into the bank.

Securely wrapped in the blackness of the deep, I drift with Mother Dart, probing the bank. What mysteries lie within her burrows – these dark places? The water sings. My ears strain. Can I know her secrets?

Buoyed by our embrace, I spin lazily …. and meet the gaze of eight eyes!

Dreaming no more and watching my every stroke. A shout, a giggle.

I groan and head for the far bank where I languish until interest is lost and all four fall supine again.

But now I have been joined by an unwelcome spirit – the pulsing beat of their boom boom boom box.

It bores, erodes, pummels my skull, skull, skull.

I am trapped in the rhythm. An irresistible pressure. Words squeezed from me. A tortuous sinew stutters and cries out. An involuntary rap – conjured from somewhere I hope not to visit again:

It is May and the mercury’s high / Dandelion seeds are drifting by / but the Dart is wet / Yes the river is cool / And I am needy for her midday pools / Crossing the common, with silent tread / Past the heads of the sleepers – four to a bed / Snug as a bug on their rug in the sun/ In shorts and bikinis that will never know the fun of a plunge / In this place. Dark eyes to the sky / Grilling and searing, close together they lie / As I pass by, to their side I glide / Then into the green and ochre I slide, striking out / For the depths, for the shade I aim / Lazy and slow ’til the sound of a name / Of a laugh and a shout – and my secret is out! / For I am unclothed, alone and laid bare / And the couples on the bank they sit and stare / Eating their lunch while the water I tread / Until they lose interest and sink back to their bed…

Somehow, somewhere in the strains of the rhyme I find an exorcism, a freedom. Released and at large, I drift on down until the shallows claim me and my knees grind on their arresting stones. All is silent again.

My towel scatters sand on the remnants of lunch as teeth chatter and cold skin claws.

Roger smiles – this was once his bread and butter too.

The hawthorn blossom has burst through and my path back is a marriage of confetti and birdsong.

But within this idyll is scattered man’s detritus: Bottles in the bluebells. Coke cans crush the campion.

The Council has turned away. Fifty bags of rubbish in one day was simply too heavy a burden.

At the laneside, a newly carved sign commands ‘No Open Fires’

The original is long gone.

Broken up.

Burned on a barbecue…

The Magpie and the Hidden Gem

March 8, 2015RiversDartmoor swims, Dipper, Horrabridge, Magpie, River Walkham, skinny dipping, Wheal Franco, wild swimmingSwimminghappyinmyskin View all 2 comments

Magpie

August 2nd 2014

Dartmoor is littered with honeypots.

Places people go on hot Sunday afternoons to escape the pressure cooker of the city.

In my mind’s eye, honeypots drip the 1950s – all braces and rolled up trousers, white ankles paddling whilst a kettle whistles on the primus. Lazy deckchair days behind the Daily Mirror.

A packet of Woodbines.

Which is why I tend to avoid them – particularly those close at hand.

One such honeypot is but a short stroll from my cottage, through woods that are steeped with the scent of bluebells in May, when the forest floor is painted in the same colours as the sky.

And that honeypot is known locally as ‘Magpie’ …

Named after the inn that once gave riverside rest to travellers on the turnpike linking the channel coast with prosperous Tavistock; Magpie has been a popular bathing place for generations.

For here flows the Walkham, the only river to run its entire course on Dartmoor. This main tributary of the Tavy arises high on the northern moor; draining from sodden peat into a bleak and featureless landscape at Walkham Head. It then gathers pace and pours through heathland, then pasture, before reaching Magpie. Here it begins cutting a winding path through tree-lined gorges en route to its union with the Tavy at Double Waters.

The Walkham Valley is peppered with isolated mine workings, their remnants choked by roots and crowned with moss like some forgotten jungle temple.

The grassy hummocks of Magpie itself conceal the corpse of Wheal Franco, a copper mine which produced 10,000 tons of valuable ore between 1826 and 1862.

Here the river is spanned by Bedford Bridge, built in 1822 and carrying the road between Yelverton and Tavistock.

The water is deep enough to swim beneath its arch, but to be honest, this place had never really appealed. Somehow the thought of swimming so close to the modern world always left me colder than the river in February.

But a good friend had recounted happy family memories of this place, so I had filed it away as a ‘possible’ – but no more than that…

Which is why I was a little surprised to find myself heading for Magpie one sultry, sticky evening in high summer.

I followed the disused railway through the woods, along a track that now bears daytrippers on bicycles rather than in carriages, then headed down beneath the viaduct, past yarrow and wild thyme. Moments later I was walking out onto the heavily grazed and much trampled grassland that abuts the Walkham. Here chamomile may still be found. Once commonplace, but now exotic in Britain, its aroma has long scented herbal infusions and the finest lawns.

It was getting late and a rising wisp of blue smoke between distant trees was the only sign that I was not entirely alone.

Sliding into the cool water, I was surprised that it was deeper than it looked – for refraction had overcome reason and I had long forgotten my first year physics.

The vista before me was also far from expected. The slate and granite arch of the bridge framed a perfect picture – a study in emerald. Beneath my feet, long fronds of weed streamed across the sandy river bed; green fingers pointing me downstream.

Ignoring their direction, I headed up and under the masonry, where stalactites dripped from the overhang. Here the heat of the day, efficiently absorbed by the black tar above, emanated back from the stones in a hazy shimmer.

Swimming on and into the shallows where acrobat shadows danced across the water, I lay on my back and floated beneath boughs of willow, oak and hazel. Past alder, the only British deciduous tree to bear cones, and by banks of wild chervil whose frothy white flowers deserve the title Queen Anne’s Lace more than their more common name – Cow Parsley. To me these are the quintessential hallmark of summer – luxuriant, abundant but short-lived.

Back under the bridge, face down and floating to where Marley Bone was patiently waiting, I smiled as I thought of the traffic passing overhead and the shock that my cheeky grin would give to anyone who happened to glance down from the Number 83 bus!

Beyond lay an artificial pool, created by damming the course of the river – a temporary arrangement of rocks that would never survive the first surge of Autumn. I drifted softly up to the barricade with eyes barely proud of the mirrored surface.

Here a dipper perched, attending to its evening ablutions in the sinking light. This is very much a local bird, characterised by it’s shocking white breast, low flight and bobbing tail. But it is not this twitch of feathers that gives the dipper its name – rather it is the unusual habit of walking into and under the water in search of insect larvae.

Above – and also hunting insects – a bat looped in dizzying dives around my dripping head as I clambered out of the river and into the still warm night air.

Retracing the path home, I passed a young couple with a six-pack of lager and a disposable barbecue.

The night-shift had arrived….

The Dart Triple Decker

February 16, 2015RiversCharles Kingsley, Dartmoor swims, Holne, River Dart, Sharrah Pool, skinny dipping, Water Babies, Wellsfoot Island, wild swimmingSwimminghappyinmyskin View all 5 comments

River Dart near Holne

September 6th 2014

Dartmoor gives birth to her river in quiet solitude, labouring amid the peat, granite and heather of the high tors. Twin daughters, later to conjoin, her waters babble and stutter before finding their feet and learning to run. A careless childhoood is spent skipping down gulleys and dancing through vistas of coarse grassland, close-cropped by generations of grazing animals. By the time she reaches the village of Holne, the Dart is a fast and flashy teenager, twisting and turning, jiving through dense woodland.

Here, her mood can change on a whim; one moment bubbling and effervescent, the next, deep and dark and difficult to predict. Emerging from the torments of adolescence at Ashburton, her adult years are lived serenely, gliding through the buccolic beauty of the South Hams before reaching her dotage at Dartmouth. Here the ocean steals her soul and she is borne up into the heavens where her samsaric cycle begins anew.

Life, death and rebirth.

This journey has been repeated many times in the 700 years since the ancient yew in the churchyard at Holne first saw the light of a Devon sky. Villagers have come and villagers have gone.

Onesuch was Charles Kingsley, born into this tiny community in 1819. Kingsley was priest, professor, poet and a friend of Charles Darwin, but he is best known as author of ‘The Water Babies.’

This moral fable, once a must on every child’s bookshelf, tells the story of Tom, a young chimney sweep who tumbles into a river, drowns and is reborn as a water baby, in which form he embarks on a succession of adventures.

Water_Babies(Restored,_Alternate_crop_2)

And there are certainly adventures to be had in rivers…

For some time I had been looking forward to swimming at three sites along this stretch of the Dart. All are well known among the wild swimming community and have recently gained a wider audience through written guides and web sites. So, seeking solace, I waited for a weekday after the schoolchildren had returned to their lessons before trekking up through ancient oak woodland towards the first of my triple decker destinations – Sharrah Pool.

For almost two miles I kicked and shuffled through a leafy carpet, where ripening hawthorn berries hung thick and blackberries dripped the goodness of a long summer. Streams busied past in heady dives down the valley sides, reaching for the river far below.

The path was peppered with black beetles, stranded on their backs in an urgency of flailing legs and failing strength. The day was hot and having checked my position on the OS map, I was glad to emerge from the trees to be welcomed by a long, tranquil expanse of still water.

Sharrah was all I had hoped for – beautiful, cool, deserted. Within seconds I was stripped and heading upstream to falls where I jumped in and was spat out by the force of the current. A wet n’ wild fairground ride – helter skelter – around the rocks and back into 100 metres of limpid loveliness, rich with reflections.

This was a playful pool, filled with the thrill of being spilled and spewed, nudged and nuzzled. And then caught – as if in the net of a trapeze – to be cradled and carried to safety.

A picnic lunch was followed by a second, unscheduled swim – too delicious a dessert to forego. Dipping and diving, bathing and basking, I was oblivious to the presence of a passing hiker, but I was immersed in a personal world, where the only thing that mattered was the wonder of the water.

Wellsfoot Island is particularly acclaimed as a skinny dipper’s delight and so dressed, but still dripping, I retraced the winding path down through the woods towards this second tier of my triple decker.

This heavily wooded island, encircled by a divide in the Dart, is best approached from the far bank, where a precarious bridge spans the water.

But for me, the approach was through the water, as I slipped and slid across smooth algae-laden boulders, until the river was deep enough to swim. I came ashore on a sandy beach, abundant with flowers. A place so perfect that I half expected to discover the footsteps of Man Friday; this was an island paradise and I was a happy castaway.

Soft sands nestled into a clearing where ebony embers lay scattered in testament to a midnight swim. Tracks led away from the beach, fingering through verdant vegetation and topped by a tall canopy of trees. This really was a special place, a place to sit with friends, into the dusk and beyond. A place to be warm beside a sparking fire, to talk, to laugh and to swim – to commune and connect.

But on this sultry afternoon, it was simply a place to just be. To float in the warmth of the September sun and, after a few lazy strokes, to drift into the deeper waters where the Dart has relentlessly chiseled her mark into the the cliffs that tower above an elbow in the river.

Here all was stillness; a haven, where the waters pause before tripping and tumbling off downstream, hustling and hurrying through a succession of rocky rapids and peaceful pools.

And soon I was following on, stumbling over the roots that straddled the narrow woodland path and pausing only to enjoy the company of fellow evening travellers through Cleave Wood.

Then onwards to the final tier of the Dart Triple Decker – crafted like a horse shoe – a natural jacuzzi. Deep and delicious, I had spied this place on a previous visit and was determined to sample the spa treatment it promised.

Here I hoped to savour the ultimate watery massage, amid the foam and first-fallen leaves of Autumn.

But it was not easy to gain entry into this private pool – the force of the current repelled every attempt to swim up and into the narrow channel that funnels into the fall itself.

The only faesible approach was to drop in from above. Nine hours of Devon sunshine had warmed the smooth rock from which this plunge pool was hewn, its comfortable heat giving little clue as to the cold shock that awaited me as I slid over the edge and into the maelstrom.

But wow! What a feeling. It was impossible not to whoop and shout in exhilaration as my shoulders were pummelled and pressed by the crystal waters. An umbrella of spray rose above me, splashing down to wash away the view and flood into my eyes, nose and mouth. And how sweet that water tasted.

A couple were swimming a little way upstream, so in deference I had donned my swimmers. But Mother Dart, she had other ideas and soon I felt the strength of her flow tugging and pulling and, in an instant, the shorts were around my thighs, knees and then gone.

It was as if she were saying there is only one pure and beautiful way to enjoy my gift to you – like a baby, naked, drenched and vulnerable within the slate of my womb …

‘In fact, the fairies had turned him into a water baby. A water baby? You never heard of a water baby? Perhaps not. That is the very reason why this story was written.” (Charles Kingsley)

Well Crazy!

July 8, 2014LakesCrazywell Pool, Dartmoor swims, skinny dipping, wild swimmingSwimminghappyinmyskin Leave a comment

Crazywell Pool

May 28th 2014

The hazy sun present on departure was soon transformed into slow lazy leaden drops of rain, warm and tantalisingly refreshing, as I headed up the stony track from Norsworthy, past Down Tor and towards Cramber Tor arriving at Crazywell Cross and pool, some 30 minutes later.

Climbing up to Crazywell

The journey took me past a meadow of yellow flag iris with sheep grazing around the margins of their marshy home. Beyond this, a panorama that included Burrator and a far distant Plymouth Sound. There can be little doubt that the south west of Dartmoor offers some of the most spectacular vistas in the entire South West.

Yellow iris

Simple beauty

Like a broken and windswept web, lichened undulating grey drystone walls straddled the moorland and all about; the heady coconut scent of gorse flowers, an explosion of may blossom and early foxgloves. A straggle of Royal Marines, some striding, some stumbling passed by, eager for their next water stop. For this is an area used by the military for training and it is only a handful of years since one young recruit perished in the icy winter waters of Crazywell.

Gorgeous granite walls grace to tors hereabouts

Gorgeous granite walls grace the tors hereabouts

In the shadow of Crazywell Cross, one of many granite crosses marking the ancient route between Buckfast and Tavistock Abbeys, the pool was grey, wind ruffled and uninviting on arrival. This served as a reminder of the legend that the waters whisper the name of the next parishioner to die into the whistling wind, for there is no shortage of folklore and superstition regarding this remote and bleak place.

Crazywell Cross

There were spits of rain in my eyes as I peeled off my kit and slid into the water, now far cooler than when I had last visited towards the end of the long hot summer of 2013.

A sudden shard of light leaping from behind a cloud heralded my entry and soon my feet were melting into the soft silty bed and I was enjoying a relaxed breast stroke towards the far bank.

One man and his dog

The absolute peace of the place was dappled only by the sound of rippling wavelets amongst the reeds, the excited call of a skylark and the steady rhythmic whoosh of an overflying duck. Leaving my swimmers tucked into the bank I swam free and for a moment the cares of the world drained away, diffusing into the water. I was floating in a second Eden, a place of beauty and innocence.

Swimming free

From time to time, an occasional sun scattered diamond shards across the 0.86 acre (3,500 sq m) surface of the lake. The origin of Crazywell is uncertain, but most likely it is a flooded mine excavation, as the pool lies adjacent to a valley known as Newleycombe Lake where tin workings abound. The banks are up to 100 feet high and the lake was once reputed to be bottomless, its levels changing with the tides. Actually, the water level rarely changes – being maintained by a hidden feeder stream and subterranean drainage.

The beauty of the place was perfectly described by Eden Phillpotts in 1908:

Crazywell Pool in late summer

“Nature, passing nigh Cramber Tor, where old-time miners delved for tin, has found a great pit, filled the same with sweet water, and transformed all into a thing of beauty. Like a cup in the waste lies Crazywell ; and, at this summer season, a rare pattern of mingled gold and amethyst glorified the goblet. Autumn furze and the splendour of the heath surrounded it; the margins of the tarn were like chased silver, where little sheep tracks, white under dust of granite, threaded the acclivities round about and disappeared in the gravel beaches beneath.”
(Phillpotts, E. The Virgin in Judgement. 1908)

swimminghappyinmyskin

the fresh and salty diary of a westcountry wild swimmer