Perhaps I should thank Helios, the Greek sun god? Friday 23rd January was a quite glorious day on our part of Dartmoor, as the photos below show, although the sun faded just as we finished work, with perfect timing. When I got home, the rain set in – the weather forecast was quite accurate.

This part of the leat was previously cleared on 16th Sept. 2011 when there were no real “before” photos because it was then simply a no-go impenetrable mass of bramble and hawthorn with some gorse; even the animals did not get in here!  The photograph above is a “before” scene taken before we started today, although behind the camera work was already well-under way.

As with many of the scrub trees in the leat, they had survived grazing and trampling etc. by livestock and had grown as multi-stem forms, as seen in the next photograpg …..

Removing errant scrub like this is often difficult because cut stems are held up by the inter-locking of the branches higher up.

Once the area was finished, it looked like this …..

Above – a Georgian archaeological treasure!

Once again I have to thank the volunteers for their efforts in preserving the old 1801 leat in as good a state as we can manage: these were Bill Radcliffe, Bob Bruce, Chris Francis, David Auty, Derek Collins, Elaine Viant, Helen Wilson, John Viant, Keith Ryan, Rachel Watson, Sylvia Hamilton and Val Barns – 12 in total.

These last photographs are simply views of the work in progress.

And finally …..

We haven’t seen a photograph of the cake lately! Thank you to Rachel for both the fruit cake and the lemon cake, I can say that both were excellent!

Just a reminder that these photos can be seen full-screen on many devices by clicking on the photo and pressing F11.  Press F11 again and then the browser back-arrow to return to normal view.