Meavy - Lovaton - Wigford Down - Callisham

Dave Pawley

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Meavy is a lovely little moorland village, quite close to the main Plymouth to Tavistock road. It has a lovely triangular village green and its own parish-owned pub, the Royal Oak, which offers some good pub food. In the village there is also a very old church and an even older oak tree. The tree is so old that the trunk has split open and it provides an excellent frame for photographs of the church behind. If you are looking for a short walk with a mixture of footpaths, quiet country lanes and moorland down, then this four-mile walk should meet your needs well.

Meavy Village is named after the river, which flows down from the moors above, filling Burrator Reservoir en route. There are two bridges over the River Meavy and this walk starts with a section of road-walking to take you up and across the Meavy, using either the higher bridge or some very large stepping-stones, some fifty metres downstream from the bridge. A short, steep, uphill section follows, passing by Marchant's Cross. Very soon you are on footpaths through fields leading to the very small village of Lovaton. The first half of the walk is more or less uphill the whole way, as you are heading up to Wigford Down which sits high above Meavy in the valley below. Beyond Lovaton the footpath leads you up through Durance Farm and so out on another country road which skirts Wigford Down.

A few hundred metres along this road and you are onto Wigford Down, which if you have extra time can be explored at leisure. There are many Bronze Age hut circles and stone rows to visit on this downland. The route of this walk leads you across the corner of the moor and then back, along a country lane and downhill once again via footpaths, through an area marked as Callisham on the map and so back to Meavy Village. Just beyond Callisham Farm at the lowest point of the walk the footpath can be very muddy, but thankfully only for about fifty metres.

The final section of the walk crosses the Lower Meavy Bridge and then back into the village once again along a narrow country lane.

As you come back into the village you pass directly by the famous Meavy oak tree. It is getting on for 1,000 yrs old if stories are to be believed and definitely shows signs of great age with its split trunk.

The walk ends very conveniently just metres away from the Royal Oak pub at Meavy, for those who enjoy a village pub atmosphere.

England - South West England - Devon - Dartmoor