A circumnavigation of Caradon Hill in the sunshine

A sunny Sunday afternoon and where better to be than walking around Caradon Hill on the south-eastern edge of Bodmin Moor? It's a walk that we've done several times but it never disappoints. About 4 - 5 miles taking in far reaching panoramas and a 300 year industrial heritage of mining and  quarrying. We started in Minions (highest village in Cornwall), followed an old mineral railway and then skirted the hill to come back up through the Gonamena Valley to our starting point. An afternoon to savour - and look forward to repeating. Allow me to share some of it with you.

Within a few yards of our starting place and we are already into the industrial archaeology and the views. Ruins of an engine house to the left and its associated chimney to the right. And in the distance we have what some regard as a dark and scary place.

A view commonly held in Cornwall. I only partially subscribe to it.

That lump in the centre is Kit Hill, about 8 miles away. We live half way up it, sort of leftish. Dartmoor is just about visible in the hazy background.

It may be hard to imagine but at one time this was a very busy junction of two mineral railways. That to the right leads down to the mines in the Marke Valley and that to the left leads up to the mines and quarries of Bodmin Moor. They both date from around 1800 and were horse powered before the advent of steam.

Things found by the wayside Part 302: I've no idea what it is. All (polite) suggestions welcomed.

A newly 'consolidated' chimney stack. Eventually all of them will have had this treatment. It's an attempt to conserve them without doing too much to spoil them by making the repairs too obvious.

And this is what some of them look like before they are 'conserved'. It won't take long for the ivy to really degrade this stack.

The mining landscape in the Gonamena Valley. If you like this sort of thing (and I do! Oh yes, I do), walking around this area is a real treat. Leats, reservoirs, shafts, ore dressing floors, buddles, chimneys, engine houses - a wonderland for the curious anorak. Romantic ruins? Not really, I'm all too aware of the human cost in making the vista the way it is. A remnant of incredibly hard times for those concerned.

The old mineral tramway that predates the previously mentioned railways by many decades. These are the granite sleepers on which the original rails run. The house to the left (partly derelict now) was the site of the stables for the horses used to haul the trams back up the hill - they went down by gravity.

Are these the highest alpacas in Cornwall?

Goodies for sale! Their website tells an interesting tale of the owners, who are living the 'good life' and getting back to the basics. No alpaca steaks though.