Devon 11 - Day 3, No Longer a Railway

The day started with a slightly unusual breakfast, the remains of the cheese and biscuits from last night’s snack! 

As long time readers will know one of my frequent holiday activities is cycling along old railway lines. The route this time was the Granite Way from Lydford to Okehampton, formerly part of the London and South Western Railway’s Exeter to Plymouth line. 

I decided for convenience that I’d hire an eBike rather than bring one of my own (because of kit for later in the week I couldn’t fit the folder in the boot) so I’d booked one from Devon Cycle Hire. The bike itself was a later version of my own, with the same Bosch drive, the only functional difference being that it was a step through. The chap at the hire place kindly loaned me a pannier to save carrying the rucksack and to carry the fairly weighty lock. 

Most of the route is tarmac apart from a short section which is privately owned, that was narrow and rough but manageable. Other than the two ends it’s all off road, one of the reasons I like these trails. There’s some fairly spectacular scenery in a few places, including two viaducts. 

Lake Viaduct 

The hire place is roughly in the middle of the trail so I decided to go to Lydford first then back along the whole trail to Okehampton. In practice I didn’t go into Lydford itself as there didn’t seem much point. At the Okehampton end I decided it was coffee and cake time so locked the bike up and headed into the station buffet. 

Carrot Cake is healthy, isn’t it?

I’d visited that end of the trail before when we went walking on one of the activity weekends but back then there was a volunteer led heritage service from the station to Meldon Viaduct, with an excellent and very welcoming buffet coach stationed at the end. Sadly the coach was badly vandalised one winter and the service ended around the time mainline services to Oakie were restored. At one point there was talk of reopening the whole line as an alternative route to the coastal track through Dawlish but in the end they decided to move the sea (literally, they built a new sea wall further out to protect the line). 

The line is still there but is very overgrown

The last remnants of running trains beyond Oakhampton

The highlight of the route has to be Meldon Viaduct itself, built in 1874 and widened to double track 5 years later. It closed to most traffic in 1968 but was still used for some shunting from the nearby quarry until the track was removed in the 1990’s. 

On top…

And underneath!

All that remained was for me to ride the mile or so back to the hire shop and return the bike - I’d paid for a whole day to give me some flexibility, in the end I’d have just about got away with a half day’s hire but the difference in cost wasn’t that much. 

As I was sat outside drinking a bottle of Coke I got chatting to a couple of ladies, as you do, who’d been putting the world to rights, a pleasant interlude even if we didn’t entirely see eye to eye over how dreadful things are nowadays compared to the 1960’s, my view is that it’s not so much there’s a lot more bad things happening, it’s just that we hear about them (I know that’s being simplistic). One of the ladies reckoned she’s visited every county in England except Durham and Northumberland so I had to point out that in that case she’s missed the best bits! 😊

I’ve made a change to the SatNav settings for this week, putting it on quickest route rather than eco, The later generally works well but in Devon it tens to send you down mostly narrow lanes which don’t even have a decent view thanks to the Devon Banks (field boundaries tended to be raised backs of earth with a laid hedge on top). I still had to do a couple of reverses today to let cars get past but I’m not complaining, yesterday everyone ended up getting out of my way! 

I rounded the day off with spare ribs and a portion of chips, the ribs were supposed to be a starter but it was definitely a man sized portion.