TORS OF DARTMOOR
a database of both lesser- & well-known rocks and outcrops
Shipley Gorge Easily accessed from the car park at Shipley Bridge and with the metalled dam road following the right bank of the Avon, this is a popular spot. Of particular interest is the section about five hundred metres north of the bridge where the river has carved its way through granite bank and bed, culminating in a fine waterfall.  William Crossing described the scene north of the bridge in his book 'Gems in a Granite Setting'; "The Avon here forces its way over a bed of rock, and suddenly tumbles into a deep pool, where it encounters a mass of granite, and turns sullenly aside, but only to fall again."  Crossing, however, stopped short of calling it 'Shipley Gorge' and it is Hemery who appears to name it first, in 'High Dartmoor'; "Below Stone Hollow Avon enters Shipley Gorge, where ancient oaks spread great boughs across its width, and the steep, stony sides of Shipley Tor and Zeal Hill confine the river in a valley of exceptional beauty. The fine-grained granite of Long-a-Traw continues southward to beyond Shipley Bridge; as the floor steepens here, the river has cut into this pink horizontal bedding and created fine falls and cascades and, despite the large extraction of the dam, a swollen river in the cataract-channels can throw up a fine, whipped spray." 
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