2 - Stoke Gabriel & Mill Pool

I did lots of crabbing off the Mill Pool wall when I was really tiny. I was always scared of the big sucky water outlet, but that’s been filled in or changed somehow and it’s nice and easy to walk across the dam now.

Mill Pool is tidal so the wall is completely covered at high tide; I remember wading across it once and thinking that it was probably a bad idea!

South Downs Wood, along the edge of Mill Pool and the bank of the Dart are privately owned and fenced off, but you can still walk there in one of those slightly strange, NO PUBLIC ACCESS but if you do then it’s at your own risk and we ask you to keep to the path and not start fires, kind of arrangements.

At the top of the pool, there is a beautifully zen little spot to sit and take a quiet moment for yourself. It’s also a great place for a dog to get completely muddy and then dunked in the stream to wash off.

The village of Stoke Gabriel is quirky and picturesque, with nice little wobbly streets to explore. Nothing much else to report as there didn’t seem to be any information boards or a museum which I was quite surprised about. Surprisingly there also seems to be very little information online, so I am going to need to find alternative methods to research it for my book. I should have gone in the pub and asked a local!