This popular reservoir is located just over two miles, along a very narrow road, from our current house sit. We drove there the other day to take the dog for a walk because at Fernworthy Reservoir dogs can go off-lead, and because we were trying to find some ancient stone hut circles or standing stones – Dartmoor National Park is famous for both.

There are several walking tracks around the reservoir, and we picked one at random and headed off. Mick joked when we came to this fence skiting he had found a standing stone. Ha Ha!!

The reservoir was constructed between 1936 and 1942, the dam was built of concrete and faced with granite supplied from a quarry to the south of the dam. It covers 37 hectares (76 acres) and is 20 metres (64 feet) at its deepest. It has a capacity of 380 million gallons.

The water is used to provide drinking water to Chagford and well as other towns in south Devon.

The land (203 acres in total) for the reservoir and its surrounds was bought from the Dutchy of Cornwall in 1930s and forestry planting began in 1931. Fishing is permitted in the reservoir, mostly fly fishing for trout.

The place is teeming with birdlife, and several bird hides are located at vantage points to allow visitors to enjoy and observe more than they normally would otherwise.

Can you spot Mick trying to hide beside the hide? Even the dog didn’t want to have anything to do with that silly game.

After walking for half an hour in this direction and not finding any stone hut circles, we decided to cut our losses and head back to the car park and try a different direction.

And we found one of the estimated 5000 stone hut circles that are situated in Dartmoor National Park. Not the best example based on photographs I have seen of some, but at least it was a start, and we still have two weeks left to find some more.

In archeology, a hut circle is a circular or oval depression in the ground with evidence of a low stone wall around it that used to be the foundation of a round house. The superstructure of such a house would have been made of timber and thatch.

There was another hut circle very close by to this one we found, but we could only see two of the rocks of the structure / circle as the water level of the reservoir was too high following lots of rain. But we did see a photograph of it.

Because the road to and from the reservoir to the house sit is totally on small back roads, Mick had a go at driving our hire car. I am the only one registered to drive it even though Mick has a driver’s licence. I was so hoping he would come across a tractor or huge truck coming along the road in the opposite direction so he would have to reverse the car and negotiate a safe way past. But, the luck was with Mick on this occasion. He had a dream drive home – not another car in sight. But it did give me the chance as the passenger to take two great photos. The first one as we were coming to the end of the boundary of the national park, showing how the sheep graze along the sides of the road.

And this one taken as we emerged from the national park and got a great view of the Devon countryside. This is a glorious part of England to be spending some time.