St Germans put-in

The reach dries on the approach to St Germans Quay: a sailing pilot for the river records at least 1.5 metres of water to the quay for only around two and a half hours either side of high water, with the final approach drying to about two metres below chart datum. Low water exposes mudflats across the reach. In spate, the ebb on the upper river can run at up to five knots, carrying floating debris.

The estuary here forms part of the Lynher Estuary Site of Special Scientific Interest, notified for saltmarsh and mudflats that hold nationally important numbers of wintering wildfowl and waders, including up to around 5,000 wigeon on the Lynher marshes alongside dunlin, curlew, oystercatcher, redshank and a nationally important flock of black-tailed godwit. It also lies within the Tamar Estuaries Complex Special Protection Area and the Plymouth Sound and Estuaries Special Area of Conservation. Kingfisher, otter, dipper and avocet have all been recorded on the water and banks, and triangular club-rush grows along the shore.

St Germans Quay, immediately downstream of the put-in, is a former nineteenth-century trading quay that handled timber, coal and limestone and is now home to the Quay Sailing Club. Directly above it, the thirteen-arch stone railway viaduct of 1908 carries the Cornish Main Line across the Tiddy, on the site of an earlier timber viaduct built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1859.