Walking: Sheeps Tor Circular

This walk was my husband's idea and a very good one it was too.  It was in an area I hadn't really thought about before because it's so close to where I work, but it very separate from that with no connection to my work week and the scenery was lovely.  We also really lucked out with the weather after a week of rain.  

We had a look at a route recommended on All Trails, but had to make a slight change to it as we weren't able to find anywhere to park in the location they recommended.  In the end we parked at one of the car parks on the east side of the Burrator Reservoir.  This did mean that we missed out of lower section of the walk and ended up doing the walk backwards to what we originally intended, but adapting is an important part of enjoying the outdoors.

Firstly, we walked along the road that surrounded the reservoir for a little bit before heading south into the woods on a footpath that basically took us straight to Sheeps Tor.  It was a pretty steep climb practically straight away and we ended up with a good view of the area.  We didn't stay up there too long though, what with my dislike of being surrounded by too many people especially when outdoors, and headed down the south side of the slope, looking for Pixie Houses as we went, before curling round the base to head back to the woods we had come out of.

There were a few places you could cross over the wall from this point, but we carried on down the track until we reached a cross roads of tracks and footpaths, and headed right over the fence and onto a footpath that meandered through the woods.  Then it was over a footbridge and onto a bridleway heading north.  We got to cross over a clapper bridge, which I always love, and look at quite a few gnarly trees.  

When we got to a crossroads of footpaths we followed the sign for the reservoir which neatly took us back to the car we'd started from.  There were some ruins of the buildings that looked like it had something to doing with mining and some amazing dry stone walls with enormous stones in them, which made me wonder how on earth they got them in there.

This turned out to be a really good afternoon walk which gave our legs a good stretch and the lack of rain made it practically perfect.  It might be worth going back and just having a wander through all woodland paths to see where we would end up.  Regardless, I would definitely recommend the walk up Sheeps Tor, I think it would even be good on a misty day.