Can you drink from a fresh water stream?

Stonedofmoo

Stonedofmoo

Stonedofmoo

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Me and the GF are spending the weekend at Dartmoor in a small place called Princetown and one of the reasons we came was so we could go cycling.

So we ended up going on this 4 hour bike ride down the bridleways when at the far end our water was beyond half drunk. As we happened to be standing by a fresh water stream I jokingly said we could fill up there

It got me thinking afterwards though. Could we drink from a freshwater stream? I know we did in the old days but would our bodies readily accept it now and the microbes in the water or would it make us sick?

Quite intrigued really. Anyone tried drinking from a stream lately? :)
 
You're probably safe enough on Dartmoor drinking water (lucky bugger. I can see part of it from my desk at work and it looks lovely and sunny up there at the moment) - fairly close to the source and the only bad thing that could be in it is pony poo.
 
Usually you can but you need to be very careful, there could be a dead decaying sheep lying half a mile upstream.

If you boil it you should be safe enough.
 
As long as it is fast flowing you should be fine.
If you're staying in princetown you should get a curry from the 'Plume of Feathers' (I think) pub. Ate there about 5 years ago and it was SO nice.
 
It all depends if the stream is always running and if there is nothing upstream other then national park right up til the very start.


The cleanest water i know of from a stream is on Fraiser island i think.
Its apparently so clear its like glass and you can see the grains of sand on the streams bed in perfect detail:cool:
 
I'll drink from a fast running stream high up in the mountains - there aren't many sheep up high and you can often see the source.

Lowland places like dartmoor - I probably wouldn't without a filter, if your interested look at the filters that are built into drink bottles, they should filter out anything you're likely to find in streams out there.
 
You can count on one hand the number of water sources in britain that you can drink directly from without a high likelihood of any ill after effects, and none of them are in Devon...

Streams, whether fast flowing or not, will carry bacteria, waterborne viruses and possibly cysts and protozoa and the particuarly nasty ones could kill you. I would not reccomend drinking from such a stream without first filtering to remove sediment, some heavy metals and the larger bacteria and then purifying the water to remove the other nasties. Filtering can be achieving by passing the water through a piece of mesh cloth with a tight weave, I have used a sock in the past. Purifying is most commonly achieved with iodine, whether in tablet or liquid form, which you can find in most camping shops.

There are some commercial 2-in-1 filtration and purification pumps on the market that do both through the use of an activated charcoal filter - but they aren't cheap!
 
Stonedofmoo said:
Me and the GF are spending the weekend at Dartmoor in a small place called Princetown and one of the reasons we came was so we could go cycling.

So we ended up going on this 4 hour bike ride down the bridleways when at the far end our water was beyond half drunk. As we happened to be standing by a fresh water stream I jokingly said we could fill up there

It got me thinking afterwards though. Could we drink from a freshwater stream? I know we did in the old days but would our bodies readily accept it now and the microbes in the water or would it make us sick?

Quite intrigued really. Anyone tried drinking from a stream lately? :)
Click to expand...


I wouldn't touch it. What if an animal died in the stream further up. Then your drinking the water, bad times.
 
Most of the times as long as its fairly fast flowing you will be fine. Used to do it in cadets all the time, water was brown but when you have been walking for hours on end you really don't care!
Never done me any harm, just make sure you wash it down with some beer later ;)
 
If i'm out and about in the country I usually have a small bottle of iodine tablets incase I run out of water. Done the job on many occasions (including some dodgy streams in Morocco and the alps) with no ill effects. And if you don't like the hospital taste or the brown/red colour of the water the neutralising tablets work a treat.

Frogskin
 
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