Exploring Green Lanes South and South East Devon by Valerie Belsey

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Here is a chance to leave the car behind and penetrate deep into the south Devon countryside with only the birds for company. Valerie Belsey has gathered together 50 walks which take you through wooded slopes, high heathland, river valleys, sheltered coves, exposed headlands and rolling grassland.

She looks at the history of these routes, and the stories that surround them; the smugglers ways in from the coast, the mine workers who had to walk a long way to their quarries, the lace makers who trudged through the lanes bringing lace to Honiton and the drovers moving their animals from one farm to the next.

Featured on the walks are castles and ancient monuments, and lively historical heroes such as Thomas Wakley, founder of The Lancet, Cavaliers fleeing from Roundheads, a poet seeking an Ancient Mariner and some tanners still working in a small town based industry. These 50 lanes lead the walker forth into the ‘labyrinth of brambly burrow lanes’ (with only a bus ticket to protect you!)

The Author: Valerie Belsey managed an MSc Government project on green lanes in the 1980s, and later worked for Devon County Council as the only ‘historic highway monuments surveyor’ ever. Her other books include Exploring Green Lanes:?North and North-West Devon, The Green Lanes of England, Discovering Green Lanes, Exploring Green Lanes in the South Hams and Devon Roads, Past and Present