Golitha Falls

The River Fowey ( ; kw, Fowi) is a river in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.

It rises at Fowey Well (originally kw, Fenten Fowi, meaning ''spring of the river Fowey'') about north-west of Brown Willy on Bodmin Moor, not far from one of its tributaries rising at Dozmary Pool and Colliford Lake, passes Lanhydrock House, Restormel Castle and Lostwithiel, then broadens below Milltown before joining the English Channel at Fowey. The estuary is called Uzell ( kw, Usel, meaning ''howling place''). It is only navigable by larger craft for the last . There is a ferry between Fowey and Bodinnick. The first road crossing going upstream is in Lostwithiel. The river has seven tributaries, the largest being the River Lerryn. The section of the Fowey Valley between Doublebois and Bodmin Parkway railway station is known as the Glynn Valley ( kw, Glyn, meaning ''deep wooded valley''). The valley is the route of both the A38 trunk road and the railway line (built by the Cornwall Railway in 1859). The railway line is carried on eight stone viaducts along this stretch.

History

Donyarth ( la, Doniert), or Dungarth (died 875), was the last-recorded king of Cornwall. He is thought to be the 'Doniert' recorded on an inscription on King Doniert's Stone, a ninth-century cross shaft which stands in St Cleer parish in Cornwall, although he is not given any title in the inscription.
According to the ', he drowned in 875. His death may have been an accident, but it was recorded in Ireland as a punishment for collaboration with the Vikings, who were harrying the West Saxons and briefly occupied Exeter in 876 before being driven out by Alfred the Great. Philip Payton states that one must imagine that he drowned in the River Fowey, near King Doniert's Stone.

The Polbrock Canal, approved by Parliament in the 1790s but never built, would have provided a link between the north and south coasts of Cornwall by joining the River Camel with the Fowey at Bodmin.

Geology and hydrology

The upper reaches of the Fowey are mainly moorland giving way to woodland and farmland, predominantly livestock. This means that 63.6% of the catchment is grassland, with a further 18.3% woodland and 10.7% arable land. Of the remaining 7.5%, 2.6% is urban or built-up areas, 2.5% is mountain, heath and bog and the remainder is inland waters.

The catchment area of the River Fowey covers a total of consisting of granite (in part kaolinised) on Bodmin Moor, Devonian slates and grits, and peat and valley gravels. Data collected by the National River Flow Archive shows that average flow at the Restormel monitoring station is and is affected by the reservoirs at Colliford and Sibleyback and by abstraction of water for public supply.

Wildlife and conservation

The river runs through two Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), one of which is also part of a national nature reserve (NNR). The Upper Fowey SSSI is a floodplain on the southern slopes of Bodmin Moor and is designated for its wet heath vegetation and herbaceous valley-floor mire communities. Downstream at Golitha Falls, part of the woodland is designated a NNR and is within the Draynes Wood SSSI. At this point the river runs through a gorge and is of particular importance for ″lower plants″ such as liverworts, mosses and lichen

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