By: Blonde Two
If you find the Grimstone and Sortridge Leat on the OL28 Dartmoor map and follow it along from the road, you will see a cross marked. This is Windy Post (it was definitely windy there yesterday). Next to Windy Post, you will see the words “Bullseye Stone” marked (there definitely wasn’t a bull there yesterday).
This particular bullseye does not belong to a famous marauding bovine, it is a feature in the leat, in effect a sluice, which allows a certain amount of water to be directed to the farms below. A simple but impressive solution to possible neighbourly disputes.
The Grimstone and Sortridge Leat is not my favourite leat (surely everyone has a favourite leat), but it is a special one, it has been supplying water to Dartmoor properties for over 700 years and is the only remaining leat on the moor to supplement drinking water. It looked quite sparkly yesterday so I wouldn’t mind drinking it; despite that horrid episode after drinking out of the Devonport Leat a few years ago (you really don’t want to hear about that!) This leat is so well loved that it even has its own committee and has, in recent years, been subject to some very excellent and loving restoration work.
Windy Post and the Bullseye Stone are only a short, easy walk from the Pork Hill car park (SX 531 751) and well worth a visit.
I love your leat (never heard the word before) – that brown Dartmoor water, like a good bitter is magnetic.
It is not shown on my 1:50000 map. If exploring Dartmoor in detail it is obvious that the 1:25000 is indispensable despite my occasional derogatory remarks about it, especially the huge size of the maps making them bulky to carry and awkward to fold. However prices for the digital version have tumbled. You can now get the whole of GB for £200 from Memory Map with a licence to put it on 5 devices, e.g. PC, iPad, iPhone or android, etc. For the amount of use you Blondes would get that sounds like good value. I know you like your paper maps and so do I, but there are now so many advantages including the integration of gps, route plotting, distance measuring, location finding, enlarge and minimise and many others, and I am proud of having moved with the times at my advanced age.
Leat is a great word isn’t it. We have lots on Dartmoor, all fascinating. Some dry ones aren’t marked on the OS map but Harvey shows them on the 1:40000. Blonde One always says that Harvey is good at water. If someone was only going to buy one more paper OS map (my laminated ones only last a year) it should be OL28 – there is so much on it that an evening spent looking at it is like settling down to read a favourite book.
This is my favourite leat as it is the first place I ever went to on Dartmoor.