Exploring England – Lydford Gorge

Hello Lovelies, I hope that the summer (or winter if you are in the Southern Hemisphere) is treating you well. We are loving the warmth and how green and lush everything is right now, not to mention the lovely break we are having from lessons.

First order of business before I get to post what I wanted to share with you has to do with subscribing to this blog. It has come to my attention that some of you are missing out on blog posts. I realised that my subscription option was via ‘Bloglovin’ and not an email option. So I have added the email option for those who want to receive blog post right into their email boxes – easier to keep track of if you are not one to look at Bloglovin every day (like me).

Now let me take you on a little nature walk we went on this week. It’s a place that I’ve wanted to visit for some time and the girls were in an adventures mood, wanting to find a new walk, so I decided that Lydford Gorge was the place to go and explore.

It’s the deepest gorge in the South West and it felt like we had entered another world after we had completed the first part of the trail which runs across the top of the gorge. We were delighted with all the wildlife we encountered…

We spotted this little mouse who was so brave and completely at ease with us watching him gather seeds and nuts. He scurried into his home, a hole at the foot of a tree, to eat his gathered feast. I couldn’t help thinking of Jill Barklem’s ‘Brambly Hedge’ characters who live in just such a tree.

Bird’s darted about the tree canopy and were most obliging for the camera 😊,

we spotted Robins, Song Thrush, Dunnocks and even a few Nuthatches.

After descending into the gorge we were admired the Whitelady Waterfall, a 90-foot waterfall, the highest in the South West running down the gorge face. It really was quite lovely just to sit and watch for a while.

The second part of the trail was exciting and a bit tricky at the same time. It definitely is not for those who are not sure-footed. This part of the trail runs along the river, over the exposed rock-bed, often a bit slippery and it certainly could not be called ‘even ground’ by any stretch of the imagination.

But magical? Certainly!

At the end of the trail, we reached ‘The Devils Cauldron’, this is where the river narrows and you enter a dark ravine, mosses and ferns thrive here and water drips from the rocks above you.

Water thunders into the cauldron, a huge pothole that has been carved out by the sheer force of the flowing, falling water.

Absolutely magnificent!

On another nature note, did you catch the full moon this month? It really was so beautiful. We had been at a friends house for a BBQ and we watched the moon rise throughout the evening. It was quite breath-taking this month. I was amazed at how quickly the moon-scenery changed. The sky’s colours were constantly changing providing the moon with a rather magnificent stage on which to shine.

As soon as we got home I grabbed my simple SLR camera and took a few shots. 

Do you do this at all? It’s surprising first of all what great pictures you can get with a simple camera and secondly, how each months moon seems to have its own character. 

According to Native American folk-law, July’s moon is known as the Full Buck Moon because a buck’s antlers are in full growth at this time of the year. It was also known as the Full Thunder Moon because thunderstorms are so frequent during the month of July (in America I presume) – a bit of trivia for you 😃.

Anyhoo lovelies, that’s it for today, I hope you all have a lovely weekend. I hope to see you back here soon.

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