Walkers beware

[bunn]

We went to the pub in Horsebridge, the Royal Inn, tonight (had a lovely meal too. Scallops. Mmmmm).   Horsebridge is only just up the Tamar from where we live, but to get there by car you have to take a rather circuitous route up onto the hills, so when we got back I thought I'd have a look and see how far it was as the crow flies, and indeed if there was a walking route along the river valley.   I used this thing to measure the route.


So, if I were a crow, I found, it would be 1.6 miles
If I walked via Latchley and Luckett, along paths that I mostly know already, but hadn't followed all the way: 3.58miles (sadly this is too far for Mollydog nowadays on her ricketty legs).

Then I saw an alternative route that goes across the river, that would be just 2.64 miles.  That's odd, I thought. I don't think there is a bridge there, but the map thinks there is.  So I went to Google maps and confirmed what I thought I saw last time I walked that way: 
 


Yup, you can cut almost a mile off the walk if you swim the river. Or, I suppose, carry a canoe on your back, or perhaps whittle yourself a coracle from twigs as you walk through the woods...  I wonder if in the summer the river shallows enough at that point that you can ford it?  I must remember to go and look. 

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. I just had a play, and am grumping a bit, since it made the walk I did last Saturday a good mile shorter than the piece of embroidery thread wiggled on the OS map made it. Though this site definitely ironed out some of the wiggles (i.e. I got bored with marking them all up.) I'm not sure I've mastered the site yet; when I thought I'd tried to tell it that one part of the walk was an out-and-back-the-same-way thing, it enthusiastically drew me a return route that jumped off a tall cliff and swam next to the coast for a few miles, before scaling another cliff and returning to the regularly scheduled walk.

Maybe the road is only visible on Midsummer's Eve, when the moon shines bright, and those who follow it will not been seen for 50 years, when they emerge blinking into the daylight, having aged but the length of one night.

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

I love the idea of a 2.64 mile walk carrying a coracle on your back and scaring all the livestock...

If there's a ford, surely it would be marked on an OS map?

Maybe the road is only visible on Midsummer's Eve, when the moon shines bright,

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I don't know if websites are able to interface with mythology in that way. I shall have to look into it. Perhaps there is a Myth API or something. :-D

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I have now found an OS map that does have it marked as a ford. I must say I wouldn't care to walk across the Tamar most of the year - it might be fordable in midsummer but it's definitely still a decent-sized river at that point!

I will have to go and have a proper look. With or without a coracle

*sings*
"I like to go a wandering... my coracle on my back! "

Re: Maybe the road is only visible on Midsummer's Eve, when the moon shines bright,

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

To find portals to Fairyland, you need SidhePS.

Re: Maybe the road is only visible on Midsummer's Eve, when the moon shines bright,

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

A+, would LOL again.