These trails are essentially one – the NCR 27 (including NCR 270) departing Plym Bridge and heading north to just beyond Tavistock onto the edge of Dartmoor.
TRAFFIC – almost none (crossing a few roads, some minor back roads)
SURFACE – all paved/hard-packed
GRADIENT – mostly easy with some steep slopes beyond Tavistock
TOILETS – Yelverton & Tavistock
CAFE STOPS – several, especially near the towns
DISTANCE – approx 30 miles / 50km
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Welcome to THE TANDEM CHANNEL (aka T4 – TakesTwoToTandem); we are a couple of pensioners based in the South East of the UK that love to travel and take day-trips on our tandem. The channel is a means of sharing those routes and experiences with others – you don’t need to ride a tandem to do the rides….. but it is much more fun if you do
Our tandems:
Dawes Horizon from early 1980s
Orbit Velocity Sport Disk provided by JD Tandems of Gargrave in Yorkshire
Links:
Our Website: [under construction]
JD Tandems: https://www.tandems.co.uk/
The Tandem Club: https://www.tandem-club.org.uk/
Follow us on Komoot:
https://www.komoot.com/user/2178756993263?ref=wud
Wello we’ve got a really nice and easy route here today which is based around the plim Valley Trail and Drake’s Trail so we’re starting here on the border really of Devon and Cornwall we’re going to start at plymbridge just on the outside of Plymouth work our way up to
Tavo and just beyond it and you can see there’s a whole load of different rides here so our starting point Point here is at the end of the plim valley Railway so we’re going to work our way up through the plim valley Trail and at one point
You could actually want to take your way off towards the Moc and the reservoir over there or we continue on to yelverton and then up into Tavistock there are toilets on the way so just outside yelverton here we are there’s some toilets down near that roundabout
And here is that alternative to the the round of the reservoir at Mee but don’t expect to find toilets there unless you stop stop at the rooll Out Pub so we’re going to follow our way through up to Tavistock and then when you get near to Tavistock you’ve got two alternative
Routes we’re going to stop Beyond Tavo in that little uh just on a fire duck there and as you go through Tavistock you’ve got two Roots you can either take the Town Center where there’s more toilets and cafes or you can take the 270 which bypass it and we’ll follow
That home so here we are starting at the car park there’s loads of space to park and we just hit the trail really and you don’t really need much in the way of instructions uh except just a couple little places yelverton would help because you’re having to cross the
Road a couple of times but you can see the signs everywhere this is tavestock and this is the Town Center where there’s uh toilets and things and this is the far end uh the views so we’re up in the Dart Mo and here’s following the alternative route the 270 down and then
Back home occasionally the satinav will lose its place on this route because you’re going through a tunnel it’s not very good in a tunnel and then we work our way back to the carart very simple Journey you can see it’s about 30 Mi um just under
50K so we’re leaving the car park a bit tight for a tandem so we had to get off and actually push it around there so if you’ve got a bur trailer or anything and then the first you’ll see from the the hill chart at the bottom really the first good few
Kilometers are all uphill but not steeply uphill they’re no more than a railway can manage so we follow along and we get to some wonderful viaducts where you can look down on the valley below and here we are on the can Viaduct and not all of them had
Wonderful views but that one was especially looked after for the sustrans route but you can see the quality of the surface here is really very good and and it generally is on the Pim Valley Trail it’s clear and occasionally we had to stop because the uh mck and sticks
That were on the ground got caught in we just had a storm it was all sorts of stuff all over but this is a hard- packed surface and there are very very few puddles as well so you not going to expect necessarily to get get very wet
But what may happen is that the wind as it was for us on this day were blowing right in your face and because you’re often enclosed in the cut through that it can actually get a little bit cold if you’re not careful with the wind blowing
At you but we work our way up continually rising and the landscape opens up around you and you can see it twists and turns more VOD duct this is a wonderful view here the river crashing away underneath it was absolutely bursting we’ve had a lot of rain this is in February
2024 so we continue to head uphill that’s why the camera is shaking backwards and forwards because we’re heading up but just want you to really get a rough idea here we go through an old station platform still there on the right and yes here we enter the first tunnel now
The first tunnel isn’t too bad but I would recommend you’ve got lights on we have a rear light that was flashing and a front light that was on my helmet and we continue to rise again the quality still stays excellent and not too many leaves as well on the path making it
Slippy so we Ascend and occasionally the views will open up you get some spectacular views across the Hillside and there are some gates that you’re going to encounter not so many at the beginning but then as we work our way through to any residential areas so here
We follow along the top and uh we get manag to get around some gates and here we are at the edge of a very small village I forget the name of it now and this was quite pretty actually I looked at it and thought cool that would be a
Nice place to live uh as long as you don’t want shops post offices churches or anything else but beautiful Hillside uh that looks remarkably like the New Forest if you know the northern part of the New Forest near no man’s land and Bram Shore so we now continue we’re on a very
Minor Road and then we return back onto the Drake’s Trail and you can see here the the quality of the surfaces is not quite the same as it was beforehand little bit more gravy breaking up and then you’ve got this section where the uh really the sleepers really are made
Of of concrete and so you’ll jiggle your way over the top of that and this is where we start hitting all the gates but there’s lots of dog walkers around as well because we’re in a bit of a park and there is a Drakes Trail car park at this
Point if you want to pick it up at that but we follow along very interesting landscape because you’ve got the drainage uh ditches come haha beside you that are lined with flat stones which is very characteristic of Dart mall and here we go through a few more gates and
This is not going to be uncommon to hit Gates and again not uncommon to hit uh places here and here we are we’re in yelverton and this is where we stopped off and there’s some toilets there on the side so you can see that little loop
On the way home so again if that’s a concern for you that uh it’s all available and then a few more gates but we’re now open and exposed on the on the top and this is the high point of our ride and we can follow along here occasionally getting a bit muddy
Now it is a bit wetter here and a bit slipperier and the gradient sort of jump out at you all over the place but then we’re back onto the road and we’re getting towards the outside now of Tibetan not far to go so we head our way
Along the top and you can see down across the landscape here one final of the main viaducts and a bit of a descent now as we get towards Tieton through a few Bridges around past the farm here is a big wide V duct that looks as if it’s
Been done up specifically for this purpose really fabulous views down the valley and I don’t know why I photographed filmed a bloke struggling his way Against the Wind But Here we are now working our way down and we’re just on the outskirts of Tibetan bit more negotiating a bit of mud with the
Tandem we’ve got twice as many chains so we’re likely to pick up stones and now here’s our next tunnel now this one’s really long and it have been absolutely hammering with rain and and it was raining very very hard inside even though it was sunny outside and it was
Like coming from Winter into spring as you passed through it it was cold and wet and bit slippy so again make sure you’ve got your lights on here’s the housing us new housing estate really on the back of Tieton as we first hit it and descend through towards the town and
You’ll find it gets a bit older and older so we’ve gone through Modern and then ’70s housing now back in into a h into a the edge of a uh Industrial Development bus stop we work our way around there and this is where we could be on two different
Journeys you’ll see there the one that follows if you like the river goes into the middle of Tieton which is the one we’re on here now and then the upper route that you can see on that map which is the one we took when we returned home
Which follows down uh through a quieter part of the town so we beside a school here here work our way up and around the edges of Playing Fields again you can see how built up is and we’re working our way into town so this is a big park with loads of people
And we had a little chat with somebody there who was asking some questions and we decided instead of stopping here in the town that we would work our way through now we cross over the bridge and we decide that we’re going to go to the other side of Tibetan
So first of all we’re going to hit the town center and the Town Center is actually very attractive it’s a lovely little town and we stopped here and then we walked into the marketplace which is essentially through that Arch that you can see over there so these are the old buildings in the
Middle of Tibetan and particularly nice Town doing some work here but balcon is all over the place work our way into the Old Market Square and the town we had a good look around and there’s some public toilets there so uh why waste an opportunity so we
Stopped and then after the town we had to walk our way out we decided it wasn’t appropriate to ride a tandem around in that part of the town so we pushed our way through against all the pedestrians and then down a back street and then back out and now we’re on the very
Outskirts on the far north of Tieton and the climb up this was actually a very very Steep Hill uh quite brutally steep really and we get towards tunnel and this is the tunnel on the right here is where you can head off back down onto the 270 rather than the 27 but we’ve
Taken the 27 up and we just Ascend this hill work our way around now up towards the V duct at the top pass some farms and it levels off a little bit and follow through the tunnels and this is where we stopped and we stopped here and had a bit of lunch had
A look around and you can see you can continue out onto dartmore but now we’re going to just head our way back down so at this point we retrace our route but just before the tunnel that we’re going to get to in a minute there’s a pair of gates you can see some
Brick pillars and we’re going to turn left into that and you’ll see the signs there says 270 and so this is a slightly different route from the one we took up it’s going around the backs of houses and it takes us over a really nice VCT
And it’s a lot quieter so if you don’t need the town then we headed up over here and it gave us this fabulous view over the back end of the Town even looks bright and sunny at this point but it wasn’t and we descend on the 270 which
Is a a very wet cycled path but it is wellmaintained there wasn’t anything that was an obstacle or difficult on the quality of the surface but you can see here it’s thinning out a bit it’s not quite the same standard then back onto some minor roads and work our way back
Through into the town follow around the back and then we will pick up where we left off when we get to the just past the school here we’re on the other side of the school and then we get towards that industrial estate over the bridge and at this point
This is where we diverg before head our way back and now I’m just going to speed up the route on the way home because you’ve seen a lot of this before back out to the quiet peaceful Countryside a little bit of ascending here but it’s none of it is onerous it’s it’s
Probably only takes you about 70% of the time on the way home this was the wet Bridge or the wet tunnel we descend across lovely views into the open it’s much quicker going home because you’re generally going downhill but the traffic did get worse later on this is where we stopped for
The toilets again and then headed off back through and then eventually leave Drake’s Trail and join up with the plim valley they’re essentially the same thing treat them both as one and the plim Valley Trail does continue beyond the car park where we started so you can
Actually uh carry on right the way into the middle of Plymouth or you can stop there and there’s a steam train that takes you into Plymouth so you’ve got a couple of alternatives but it was getting a bit late this day uh the trouble with February is the days
Aren’t long and we were camping absolutely nowhere near we were out in the middle of dmore uh slowly watching our campsite disappear underwater and um watching the the wind blow everything away but that doesn’t matter because when you drive away you get have to go down tiny little Lanes in
The middle of Devon but here we are we’re back to our homepage if you want to find the route you can download the trail and a Garmin route from that page and we look forward to seeing you on the next one there’ll probably be another one in dartmore around there some
Wonderful rots and we’ve got plenty more do like and subscribe we need people to subscribe in order to be able to keep doing all of this but uh we just wanted to make sure we’ve documented all of the roots that you may want to try with your
Family or or just for fun so until then bye for now