The joy of Devon’s fake lake

The vast lake snaked onwards – a collage of headlands, forest and silver water that appeared without end. The scene at Roadford Lake looked, to my uneducated eye at least, as ancient, natural and unchanging as any ‘wild’ part of Britain.

So it was disorientating to read on my pink-jacketed OS map, which I still considered more or less contemporary, that this vast Devonian lake