After a successful workday on Tuesday, on Raddick Bronze Age settlement, when at last the weather was good and so were the views, volunteers adjourned to the self-sown spruce just inside our land on Sharpitor.    Courtesy of Derek there were lights on the tree and carols.   To restore our energies after working there…

DPA volunteers met for the second time in the car park of the Cornwood Inn, Cornwood,  prior to setting out to Dendles – the first occasion was on 22nd November 2013. Clearance work was carried out for the conservation of old field walls and the area of the medieval farmstead buildings and associated walls at…

“Keith’s sold his soul to the Devil” – that’s what they said when they saw the weather that we had for the work party on Saturday 11th January.  I know that’s not true, but it was a fantastically beautiful day, wall-to-wall blue sky, and it was due to the bones. Divination by throwing chicken bones is…

Monday 9th December saw the DPA volunteers meeting at the main car park beside Plymouth Leat at Clearbrook. The day was a little cool and there was a mist in the valley of the River Meavy ….. The clan gathered in the car park, picked up the tools and then walked back to the finish…

Twenty people spent a day of surprisingly good weather on DPA land at High House Waste, north of Cornwood, on Sunday 3rd November, clearing the firebreak for the 2014 swaling and continuing with clearance of gorse from the post-medieval farmstead walls. The photo shows the group by the Sayer gate entrance to High House Waste.  

Sometimes I sit here and wonder what the whats-it can I say that hasn’t been said already – the joy of being a regular blogger! The DPA’s intrepid volunteers were out again on Friday 1st November, on the Plymouth Leat, built (profitably) by Sir Francis Drake, which became operational on 24th April 1591. The water…

One of the DPA’s conservation projects is to uncover a secret, hidden stone row from the Bronze Age, this being approximately 2,500-800 BC, lasting about 1,700 years. On Monday 14th October a group of volunteers gathered in a small disused quarry car park at Merripit Hill, north-east of Postbridge. After the usual preliminaries, such as…

Friday 20th Sept. saw the volunteers of the DPA Conservation Team in action again, back on the leat built by Sir Francis Drake in 1591 to take water into Plymouth.  Over a five-year period recently, the leat was cleared from a near-total covering of gorse in places to expose it again to public view, for…

Our last entry reported that we had reached the end of the leat. However, the DPA Leat Team doesn’t leave things at that! Fortuitously, we had one more day left on the calendar, Thursday 14th March. We used it to walk the whole length of the leat that was the subject of this current project….

Halleluia! If I could sing that like Mrs Brown on Mrs Brown’s Boys, I would, but I can’t, and you are all the luckier for it! Saturday 16th February 2013 was our 25th day of working on the Devonport Leat project. This was after cancelling this particular work day three times in succession because of…