THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 



mile, and for yet another frets again in a contracted 

 and bosky trough. Then all at once, within the space 

 of half a mile, it becomes to my thinking one of the 

 best bits of water in Devonshire. On the moor the 

 Avon is prohfic of fingerlings, and practically nothing 

 else. In the tangled hollows below the fish are a 

 little better, but hardly worth the arduous struggles 

 necessary to their ensnaring. In the meadows below 

 Brent, the sportsmen of the latter being free of this 

 much of the water, flog it pretty hard, while through 

 the gorge below, the force of the current — at least we 

 always thought so — was against it as a holt for fish. 



It is at Avonwick, just below this, that the river 

 comes into its own as a trouting stream, and thence it 

 is but a dozen or so miles to the little estuary where 

 it joins the sea beyond Loddiswell. Nearly all of its 

 wayward, sparkling journey thither lies through as 

 snug a valley as there is in Devon. There are many 

 valleys in the county more beautiful, to be sure, but 

 this one is absolutely and completely typical. Even 

 the single track railroad which foUows it to Kings- 

 bridge has done little aesthetic damage. When I first 

 knew the valley in my college days, and indeed for long 

 afterwards, there was nothing of this. If bound for the 

 Kingsbridge country you joined the coach or your 

 friend's trap at Kingsbridge Road station, now re- 

 christened Ugborough, after the tor at whose foot it 

 lies. 



Brent, on the main line of the Great Western, is the 

 starting-point of the Avon valley branch line. It lies 

 between Plymouth and Totnes, and summer refugees 

 from both those pleasant enervating places repair to 



219 



