Medium difficulty. Distance 3.5 miles (5.7 km)
Devon’s hedges are among the best in the country, and Chardstock parish has plenty. Park at the road bridge over the River Kit west of Chardstock (ST305044). Take the footpath sign downstream. After 100m cross the river at the footbridge, walk uphill, bearing slightly left and aiming left of the middle of the bank of trees ahead, when a waymark post will soon be seen. Cross a usually dry stream bed at the bottom end of the wood and continue uphill.
Pasture near the bottom end of the wood is agriculturally semi-improved, with only occasional richer patches with a variety of herbs, such as cat’s-ear and ribwort-plantain. As you go uphill, the herbs become fewer and the grass lusher as a result of greater muck-spreading. Keep going uphill with the wood on your right, across two fields and through two gates.
The wood on your right is Parks Coppice, an ash-oak wood with hazel understorey. Some larch and a few Douglas fir have been planted. In spring a mass of bluebells and white ramsons can be seen from the path, but both die back by midsummer. There’s plenty of holly in the understorey of the wood and in its boundary, a characteristic of woods on the slightly acid soils of the parish. Half-way up, there’s a splendid beech with smooth grey bark.
On the bank at the stile into the third field, there are the tiny remnants of a heathland flora that would once have been extensive here – bell heather and billberry. The bank on the left is also composed of remnant heath vegetation, with much gorse, birch, holly and rowan, whereas the usual hedge species – hawthorn, blackthorn – are scarce. This field is improved grass, re-seeded and well fertilized, and short of interesting herbs. Cross the road, through the gate directly opposite and uphill.
The first steep field on greensand is noted for its acid grassland flora. Recent fencing makes the sward difficult to appreciate but on the track margins are leathery-leaved wood sage, trailing yellow tormentil and pignut, and blue pom-poms of devil’s bit scabious in late summer. In spring there is a huge expanse of bluebell which grows in the open here, with bracken providing it with shade in place of woodland. At the top, the flat plateau on the glacial head deposits (clay-with-chert or flint) is suddenly better pasture, which is worth agriculturally improving, resulting in dense dull grass. The footpath doglegs through the hedge; proceed along the topside of the same hedge.
This hedge has both well-trimmed and tall straggly sections, the first good for nesting birds and the second for food – flowers for insects, berries for birds. The double comb (two rows of shrubs) is very obvious but the hedge seems to have lost much of its earth bank. At the gateway, continue diagonally across the middle of the field to the gate in the far corner. Over the field to your right is a wiggly line of isolated oaks, perhaps the remnant of a hedgerow but there’s no Devon bank showing now.
The hedges you are approaching by the gate are especially diverse; even from the footpath, you can spot blackthorn, hawthorn, ash, hazel and holly, with bramble, dog rose and honeysuckle scrambling over them. Once through the gate, gorse and broom are seen in the right-hand hedge. As with many Chardstock hedges, there’s bluebell under them. Go gently downhill, through the next gate into a green lane.
Green lanes are unsealed farm tracks bordered by a hedge on both sides. They are especially valuable because the hedge facing the track is much more sheltered from wind and warmer in sunshine than the field side. You’re more likely to see a butterfly here than in the open fields above. This is a very good example with lots of plants in the banks – wild strawberry, violets and primrose in spring, and a profusion of ferns all year; six types of fern have been found here. The infrequency of nettles and cleavers suggests the bank has low nutrient levels, which is much better for wild plants.
The old apple orchard on the right before the house is one of the few remaining in the parish. What’s left is a reminder of their once-important function in providing cider for farm workers. Old apple-trees can be full of wood-boring insects. Pass Yard Farm and go down the lane. This lane is almost as good as the green lane you’ve just left. The exposed sandy bank is home to mining solitary bees whose little holes with piles of fine soil are obvious in spring. Mistletoe may be visible on an apple tree on your right as you progress down the hill, particularly in winter after the hedge has been cut. At the house, turn left over the stile on to a very stony track.
This shaded tunnel has an extraordinary old holly hedge with lots of dead wood with beetle burrows. Further up, multi-stemmed sycamore, ash and maple show that this was once a laid hedge. Through the gate, keep left at the field of Beacon Hill (uphill side; ignore the grassy path going right), to the gate at the top of the slope. You are on almost pure sand with all the lime removed, which suits the bracken and gorse scrub. At the top of the slope on the right is a banked enclosure of trees, probably where a cottage stood. Cubes of red-rotten heartwood decay can be seen on an old cherry. Many dead-wood beetles like this type of rot.
It’s easy to go wrong in the next 200m so pay attention! Take the gate through the top hedgerow, keep the hedge to your right and pass a fenced ring of small trees by some gorse which is the site of the old beacon warning system, giving its name to the hill here. Go down to the corner (often unclear and with temporary electric fencing in the way) onto the track; turn right, through a gate, stick to the hedge on your left, and take the left wooden gate into a green lane, through another gate and over the stile immediately on the left, along the top by the wood, into the second field and strike diagonally downhill.
Even in arable fields there can be something interesting. Arable annual ‘weeds’ that escape the herbicide can see found by the gate at the bottom of the field, such as vivid scarlet pimpernel and fuzzy grey marsh cudweed. This heavily improved pasture generates sloppy cow dung; furry yellow dung-flies are abundant on this in summer as they are unaffected by chemicals used to treat gut parasites of cattle, which get passed out in the dung. Go through the gate into a green lane and bear left at the drive.
The hedge by the drive has numerous scramblers – honeysuckle, black bryony, dog rose and more. In front of the thatched house, the stile is in the drive corner; walk through the orchard into pasture. The rather dull pasture often has many molehills; this is the work of just a few very busy animals, perhaps rather fewer than 20 in this 2-hectare field. Turn right down the lane. 18 Sparse oaks, perhaps 80 years old, now line this lane which was probably once hedged. Polypody ferns are particularly frequent on this bank, along with several less distinguishable species.
Bear right at the fork, towards Alston. Just before railings by a stream under the lane, look up at an oak on the right, where polypody ferns are growing aloft on horizontal branches. These are one of our few big epiphytes (plants growing on trees). Turn left down the track. Take the left path where it forks after the houses. Gorse in the narrow hedge on the left is western gorse, in flower in late summer, unlike the common gorse which flowers in cold months. The gateposts of Gozleford are topped with stone acorns which are perhaps not the right representation of the pedunculate oaks either side of it, which have stems to their acorns.
At the gate posts, take the gate on the left, diagonally down the field, into the garden, bearing left at the cattle grid, between clipped hedges, and sharp right before the gate to the field, down to the river. From the footbridge over the River Kit, the view upstream shows the ‘pool and riffle’ sequence, with both features separated by the classic interval of about seven times the river’s width, although the stone gabions spoil the effect. Stop long enough and you may see grey wagtails, dipper and kingfisher. The large fuzzy plant in the stream is an aquatic moss, Fontinalis. Ramsons grows on the banks, indicating slightly lime-rich conditions.
Return to the gate into the field by the clipped hedges, through it and go diagonally uphill a little to the left. The lumpy terrain is due to land-slipping of the soft greensand and clays, aided by poor drainage. Across the valley you can see more such bumpy ground. Looking around from this field, it is clear that many trees in the hedgerows are lolly-pop-shaped, open-grown with no need to grow tall and straight as do those in woods. At the lane turn right downhill. At the River Kit, the capstones of the old footbridge are probably Ham stone, as used in St Andrews church. Plates of liverworts cover the footings of this bridge at water level where it is always humid. Continue uphill, taking the gate on the left beyond the houses, taking you back to nearly the starting point.
