50 circular routes to explore in some of Devonis most beautiful countryside
Valerie Belsey Knihy
Shows how to identify green lanes on the ground, how to recognise them on antique maps, and how to locate documents and other records which will reveal who used them in past times.
'Exploring Green Lanes in North and North-West Devon' describes 51 walks, each one provided with public transport information, and historical and ecological facts. Some of these walks are not circular; most are linked to bus and train routes, the author's mode of travel when writing the book. The walks take you to the dramatic cliffs of the Atlantic, the sunken lanes of the Taw and Torridge valleys, to compact and rolling stretches of heathland and moorland. There are large parkland trees, small copses of limes and curving, bastion-like beech hedges. Each walk includes a wealth of local you will hear old wreckers tales, meet up with local carpenters, travelling ranting preacheresses, Celtic saints, bereaved parents, destitute soldiers and sailors, postmen poets, barefoot children, smugglers and, of course, highwaymen, hunting parsons, looting parishioners, market gardeners, mythical white stags, miners, ghostly-looking white clay workers, angry farmers turned fascists for a while and many, many more. The walks are illustrated with old Ordnance Survey maps (some over 100 years old), but the pattern of the lanes remains the same today. The 51 walks will lead you into the labyrinth of brambly burrow lanes which parcel up this great sweep of the Devonshire landscape.