JUNE 18th Bells walk South Hill to St Andrews Calstock


Start 10am St. Sampsons church South Hill Grid ref SX 329 726 Postcode PL17 7LP

Choose from the full route which is 10.3 miles or 8 miles, or 6 miles or 3 miles and let Ali know ASAP. Transport will be arranged back from Calstock church. If you have dogs please make your own arrangements. Toilets are at the start, at HB & Metherel hall and at St Andrews church.

Brings drinks and refreshments, we’ll aim to lunch at HB & Metherel hall in the play area, it’s 3 miles from there to St Andrews.

St Andrews bell ringers will welcome us with a cup of tea and chance to go up the tower and see the bells and also try your hand at ringing them. There are lots of interesting details about the bells www.calstockbellringers.com, the church and the grave yard where you can find 3 people died on The Titantic and a Celtic Cross to mark the grave of Sir William Salusbury-Trelawny of Harewood House, Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall and the Grandfather of Emily Hobhouse.     

Sign up for the walk or meet us at the end, if you don’t want to walk maybe you could offer a lift back to our cars. Either way let Ali know your intentions so she can coordinate. Email is best iamalihumphreys@yahoo.com or  07305 044049

Next month we have another church bells walk in the planning and look forward to walking with you. Contact Ali to be added to the list for more details. iamalihumphreys@yahoo.com

SHARE Update May 2022


South Hill Jubilee Orchard

On April 24th, volunteers were invited to help plant a sapling hedge alongside the new parish Orchard.  Altogether, 15 people turned up to help for varying amounts of time, and we were able to plant more than 420 trees in just over 4 hours.  Species included Rowan, Elder, Dog Rose, Crab Apple, Blackthorn and Hazel.  Refreshments were provided and, after a damp start, the weather was kind to us.

On April 24th, volunteers were invited to help plant a sapling hedge alongside the new parish Orchard. Altogether, 15 people turned up to help for varying amounts of time, and we were able to plant more than 420 trees in just over 4 hours. Species included Rowan, Elder, Dog Rose, Crab Apple, Blackthorn and Hazel. Refreshments were provided and, after a damp start, the weather was kind to us.

The new hedgerow will form a boundary between the Jubilee Orchard and the new allotments, and a wildlife corridor along the internal boundary of the orchard.

A Grand Opening is planned at the Orchard on June 3rd as part of the South Hill Parish Jubilee Celebrations, with information for the public and entertainments for young and not so young.

Energy Crisis

Recent events have thrown into sharp relief the reasons why SHARE was formed by a group of concerned residents 7 years ago.  Our mission statement, “Powering renewable energy into a secure and sustainable future for all”, set us on a path which saw the installation of 40kW of solar PV panels at Church Park, South Hill.  To date this has generated 22.6MWh, saving 4.81tonnes of CO2 equivalent.  Unfortunately the abolition of the Feed-in Tariff made further similar installations financially unviable.  However, we have high hopes that in the near future it will be possible to have local energy networks, in which power generated locally can benefit local households directly through cheaper tariffs.  Totnes Renewable Energy Society (Tresoc) are on track to deliver this in Totnes, and we are watching with interest.

Meanwhile, what can we as individuals do to reduce our energy usage (to save both money and CO2 emissions)?  A recent post by Martin Lewis, the Money Saving Expert outlined ‘90 Ways to Survive The Cost of Living Crisis’, which includes many hints and tips for energy saving.  The Consumers Association website, which.co.uk is also a good source of advice e.g. ‘Ease the squeeze: how to save on your energy bills’

The Hydro-power struggle

More recently, regulars will have read about our attempts to measure the generating potential of a small river in the parish.  It seems we’re not the only ones to have our hopes dashed by the regulations and fees imposed by the Environment Agency.  Tresoc have recently had to abandon their hopes for a hydro scheme on the River Dart, a much more promising project than ours, at a location which had historically generated electricity for the Dartington Estate in the 1930s.  You can read about it here…  

To quote Rupert Armstrong Evans of Evans Engineering (Water and Power engineers since 1810), “Decades of environmental legislation designed to protect rivers have inadvertently caught small domestic scale waterpower and watermills in their web and will kill them off in a few years if nothing changes.”  Rupert’s home, Trecarrell Mill, a working mill for around 500 years, was one of the first to feed ‘green electricity’ into the National Grid.  Rupert was upgrading it to produce enough electricity for around 30 homes when the EA imposed new conditions that rendered the project unviable.  Trecarrell is only one of many historic water mills across the UK with the potential to become sources of renewable energy.

Congratulations from SHARE to South Hill Connection 


100 editions of the newsletter – what an achievement! SHARE is proud to be a regular contributor to the Connection since our early days in 2015.  We registered as a Community Benefit Society that year, and together with the Parish Council, installed our first solar PV array on the Parish Hall roof.  This continues to supply power for the Hall and will do so for years to come.

May 7th 4 1/2 miles details of walk


From South Hill church take the road towards Mornick. After a few 100 meters turn right onto a farm track and follow to the end. Turn right onto a path, at the metal gate take care as it’s off it’s hinges and needs lifting to enter the field.

Keep the hedge on your left side and follow a worn footpath, as you drop down through an uncultivated area and step over the stream and the stile. Keep the hedge on your left to a metal gate with a great view of the church at Linkinhorne.  Go through this gate and veer to the right, there’s a newly enlarged gateway that brings you to the road.

Turn left and follow the road to Linkinhorne. You can take a detour to the church or at the junction, go straight ahead and enter the cemetery, the path takes you to the top where you join the road. Go left around the corner, past the turn on your left and at the junction of the turn on your right. Go though the metal gate, marked with a FP disc. From the gateway you can see a small pedestrian gate in the hedge ahead to your right. Aim for this. There were friendly young cattle here when I walked through, who were vaguely interested.

Go through the gate, look left and ahead to see a wooden gate, with another wooden gate immediately behind it.  Go through these and keep the hedge on your left to the gateway and track that runs alongside some buildings and brings you to a gate at the main road. TAKE CARE and cross over.

Go through the small metal gate here and drop down to the road at Lanhargy Old Chapel.

Turn right and follow the road to Bray Shop.

Turn left at the main road and at the junction, turn left. Bray Shop Old chapel is on the left and alongside is a small path that takes you to the cemetery.

Cross back over the main road to the notice board, the building there is the old Sunday School.

From the notice board follow the pavement to the junction and turn right, on Trefinnick rd, signposted to South Hill.

Stay on this road back to South Hill church.

Kit Hillbillies Rock Calstock


On Friday March 4th 2022, the amazing Kit Hillbillies played at Calstock Arts, at the Old Chapel, Calstock.

A great time was had by all, and a generous collection for the UK Red Cross Ukraine appeal raised £1500.


How to describe the Kit Hillbillies?

Old-timey, good-timey bluegrass!
With rousing vocal harmonies that smuggle in occasional quirky local references.

Instrumental tasting notes: Banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar. Irresistibly tappy on the toes, with a crisp percussive finish.

Think Betty Stogs, rather than Harvey’s Bristol Cream!

In their words: “We throw in some original bluesy songs with many a knowing nod to the backwoods and badlands of Devon & Cornwall. These *usually* avoid causing offence (happily people don’t always listen to the words!). We always do some 20thC classics by the likes of Johnny Cash & Steve Earle. And like Hayseed Dixie we throw in songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Clash and even Radiohead – all delivered in good-time string band style. In short, it’s the makings of a rousing, stomping night of tunes.”

Pooh Sticks!


SHARE Hydro Feasibility Update, March 2022

Regular readers will remember earlier articles describing our initial investigations into the potential of water turbines. For the benefit of newer readers, those investigations involved installing a measurement weir structure, however this unfortunately came to a premature end when the Environment Agency took an active interest. Temporary measurement weirs are permitted, however in this instance the EA considered that expensive licences would be needed, and that special provisions would have to be put in place to enable eels and migrating fish to move upstream unhindered.  To our knowledge, eels and migrating fish haven’t been seen in this tributary of the Lynher in living memory, however the possibility that Samantha Salmon might take a wrong turn and find her path obstructed was enough to keep the good folk at the EA awake at night. Also, the required licences were unaffordable, and so the measurement weir had to go. Continue reading →