Cornwall Report - Day 4

[kmusser]

Today we stay nearby, visiting Bodmin Moor which is just a few miles away. The moors are interesting to me, visually they are sort of similar to the American West, miles of open landscape, rolling and not so rolling hills - with a key difference - they’re wet. The ground is kind of spongy, it’s just weird to walk across. Adding to this landscape are the remains of the once ubiquitous tin mining industry, ruins of abandoned mines literally dot the countryside. We stopped in the pictured building here which had a nice little exhibit about the mining.

Also scattered across the moor are pre-historic monuments, a short walk brings us to The Hurlers, a series of stone circles - not as massive as Stonehenge, but here we have the circles mostly to ourselves (though a few folks do ride by on horseback - which prompts a bit of envy, riding across the moor looks awesome). The setting definitely adds something, I just imagine they’re often shrouded in fog - if I was going to make a portal to some other dimension this seems like a good place for it. Besides the stones there are also barrows and ruins of ancient settlements. Signs that what is now desolate was once a busier place. A nearby rock formation is called the Cheesewring - now the name of my String Cheese Incident cover band.

A most excellent lunch is had at the Caradon Inn and then we’re ready for more hiking. We stop to take a look at King Doniert's Stone, a Celtic cross being guarded by cows. Then we go down a path that follows the River Fowey through an area at the edge of the moor called Golitha Falls, a series of rapids, quite pretty. Supposedly includes otter habitat, but we didn’t spot any. Dinner is back at the cottage and we make it an early night as we have an early launch planned for the morning.

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