Bowithick and Buttern Hill

 The weekend weather forecast was not brilliant so we took advantage of a clear spell for a Saturday afternoon jaunt. But where to go? Somewhere new and we headed for one of those hidden parts of Bodmin Moor where you would almost have to be lost in order to find. Bowithick was our destination on the West Moor, just a touch to the east of our last walk in these parts. And a first for us was following a route using the i-Walk Cornwall app. Normally we use my GPS but this walk seemed worth a trial of the phone app.

We started at the base of Bray Down by a ford and took a circular route up and over Buttern Hill. There is a lot of water in these parts as it encompasses the sources of both the Fowey (flowing due south as indicated) and the Inny (flowing due east). Our route took us between (blue dot) the source marshes of both and ensured that we did not end up wading through blanket bog. At 4.3 miles, and not particularly strenuous, it was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. And we did not see anyone else all the way around. 

From where we left the car, we headed up through areas of large granite boulders. I couldn't see any signs of the boulders being ever worked so it must be a natural distribution.

I don't think this Highland cow fully understands the rules of 'Hide and Seek'.

Our Highland cow guide taking us through some of the remains of the processing area of Buttern Hill Mine.

A leat is always a giveaway for some sort of industrial action - in this case, the Buttern Hill mine.

The phone app said to head for a large cuboid boulder on the edge of the mine. Not quite cuboid but this is it. Mrs P does not look convinced.

Buttern Hill was an open cast mine from which tin ores were extracted. It really is a big site and would, most probably, have been built over a place used for mediaeval tin streaming.  During both the 1st and 2nd World Wars the mine was worked by German Prisoners of War, with the nearby farm at Bowithick being the site of the P.O.W. Camp.

A satellite view gives a much better idea of the size of the mine - it's that half mile long enormous scar in the landscape. The dark lines on both sides are leats bringing vital water to power wheels etc. At the top right are the lighter roads which took material to the various processing areas - buddles, smelting etc.

To the north are the gleaming spires of the Davidstow Creamery, makers of Cathedral City cheese. Bodmin Moor has neither a cathedral nor anything that vaguely resembles a city - or town, for that matter.

As we headed up the rather featureless side of Buttern Hill, Brown Willy loomed larger and larger.

As we approach the summit, the first of a linear grouping of reasonably well defined cairns comes into view. The first one was about 12 ft across and had the typical 'robbed out' appearance. Not bad at all. From this cairn it was a short walk to the larger cairn that crowns the summit. Even from this close all we expected to find is a low pile of stones, albeit larger than the previous cairn. 

How wrong could we be! We were not prepared for the 'contents' of the primary cairn. Its low bank, about 30 to 35ft across, surrounds a cist with all four walls intact and the capstone perched over it. The cist is about 6ft long and 3 ft wide with a solid granite floor. How come we have not read about it before? This is one of the best preserved cists we have found on the moor, and Dartmoor for that matter. It's Bronze Age but is it a stone coffin or a burial chamber? Originally, it would undoubtedly be covered with stone and soil and would have appeared as a large mound, visible from all angles and for miles around.

This aerial view gives the relationships of the cairns on the top of Buttern Hill. Look very closely and you might just be able to make out the outline of a circular embankment that encompasses them all.

We are heading for that clump of trees in the distance but the direct route would take us right through the large marsh where the Inny begins. We have to keep to the high ground and loop around to the left.

We start by heading for the first dip from the left on the horizon and then dropping down to a track that becomes obvious once more height has been gained. This part was open moorland and we had to pick our own route for the direction we wanted.

The top of Brown Willy in the distance. We’ve realised that we’ve never actually been up there but we will rectify that omission in the near future.

Now, these are what I call fence posts! I couldn’t help but wonder why these were used instead of wooden ones. I’m presuming it was all down to the ready availability of the raw materials and cheap labour.

A 'sheep creep' that enables sheep to get from one field to the next. There was a time when the hedge posed a more formidable barrier that it does now.

A 'fish creep' that enables fish to get from one part of the nascent River Inny to the next. It is a very important way of maintaining valuable fish stocks.

Three ways of getting to the other side of the Inny - a ford, a rather modern footbridge and an older multi-arched stone bridge (originally designed to take wagons from the mine). Mrs P is wondering which one would be best to take. In the end, she cleared the Inny in a single leap. Impressive but ultimately a waste of energy as I drove through the ford in the car and met her on the other side.

Circular walk from Mary Tavy Church, with a watery theme.

 Well, the weather forecasters got this one wrong. Our Plan A walk was to take us up onto the high moor near the Warren House Inn but, because of a dismal forecast, we switched to Plan B, which was a lower level, in altitude terms, walk from Mary Tavy church in Devon. In the event, we had blue skies almost all of the way around and no rain. It was an enjoyable walk for the eight of us who turned up. I had left my 'proper' camera at home because I didn't want to get it wet so all photographs were taken with my 'phone. And for all those who get hung up on mindfulness and connecting with their inner selves, try going for a walk.

We start in Mary Tavy and headed up onto Dartmoor, via Axna and Kingsett. From there, we dropped down through Zoar and Hill Bridge, along the leat to Horndon and back to Mary Tavy passed the Elephant's Nest. It came in at a smidgeon under 6 miles. Drier than I thought it would be but still very sloshy underfoot in parts.

Our starting point, St Mary's church at Mary Tavy - not to be confused with St Peter's church at Peter Tavy. Or St Totty's church at Totty Tavy. 

Lots of water coming down the Cholwell Brook. This runs passed Wheal Betsy and Wheal Friendship and, although some water was extracted from it to support mining activities, it was not a major source of energy. The main reason for this is that it flows below where it was needed and raising water was a big issue at the time. Hence, as we came across later, the need for leats taking water from afar and producing a head of pressure for productivity.

A rather muddy track takes us through the fields and woods to Axna, once the home of the Moorstone Brewery, which closed in 2018.

Heading up onto Kingsett Down from Kingsett Farm on the old drove road to and from the moor.

Cox Tor to the right and White Tor on the left, Roos Tor in the middle. 

Looking across Kingsett Down to Gibbet Hill. Legend has it that to deter highwaymen from attacking travellers along the road between Tavistock and Okehampton, captured highwaymen were hanged and their bodies 'displayed' in a gibbet here.

The Wheal Jewell Reservoir is situated on the top of a hill, it is constructed of concrete and earth banks and was built in 1937. The top water level of which is 1000ft (305 meters) above sea level. The reservoir holds 6½ million gallons (29,500 cubic meters) of water and provides an operating head of water of 500 feet (152 metres) for the Mary Tavy power station. This system comprises three Pelton wheel-driven generators, each of 650 kW capacities. The reservoir is fed by the Reddaford Leat which was built around 1800 to bring water to the mines at Mary Tavy. It starts from the Tavy just below Tavy Cleave and takes a circuitous route around the contours of Nat Tor, Willsworthy and Wheal Jewell. In over 4.5 miles it only drops 26 feet - quite an accomplishment. Sometimes it seems as though the leat water is running uphill - an optical illusion caused by the contours of the land. Today the leat stops at Wheal Jewell reservoir. In earlier times the leat served the mines of Wheal Betsy and Wheal Friendship before being returned to the Tavy south of Mary Tavy. It is built on what was the site of Wheal Jewell but very little of this remains to be seen.

The tors in the distance are White Tor, Nattor and Ger Tor. The side of Ger Tor drops off into the Tavy Cleave, from whence the Reddaford Leat emerges.

A verdant lane.

The River Tavy in full spate over the fish ladder by Hill Bridge. Following all of the recent rains, it was running brown with the peat washed off the moor. Because of its drop from its source/s on Dartmoor, it is one of the fastest flowing rivers in the UK. The power of its water is harnessed along its length, from the Reddaford Leat being taken off in the Tavy Cleave, the Hill Bridge/Wheal Friendship Leat, the hydroelectricity scheme at Mary Tavy, the Tavistock Canal and its associated hydroelectricity station at Morwellham and numerous mills and smaller mines. That's the way water has been always used. Will we return to it? And, if not, why not?

A verdant lane with Dora the dog.

Giant Funnel - Aspropaxillus giganteus - growing alongside the river. The photograph does not really give a good idea of their size. The one of the top left was about 8 inches across. They are edible, allegedly, although they do cause severe stomach cramps and diarrhoea in some people. Mmm, not much of an inducement there to try them.

The Hill Bridge or Wheal Friendship Leat - another example of the use of water power.The leat is taken off at a weir immediately below the bridge. at Hill Bridge. It originally served Wheal Friendship mine, about 2 miles away, to power a water wheel that drove the flat rods to Bennett's Shaft. It partly runs through a tunnel from a point south of Midlands northwards to Axna, where it emerges again and runs across the fields to the mine. The walkable stretch is about a mile long and is very pleasant, no matter what the time of year. Long after the mine was closed, the leat was re-used in the 1930s for hydro-electric generation at Mary Tavy. And there's Dora again.  

It's such a pleasant change to see a welcome sign - this one is to Creason wood, managed by the Woodland Trust. Not that there's much in the way of active management as the wood is regenerating itself naturally. It offers quite a different experience compared with walking on the nearby open moor. The leat passes above most of the wood.

It's not often that we see Brentor from this angle and it looks much steeper than it does from the other side. The church on the top is dedicated to St Michael de Rupe.

The remains of the miners' dry - the only one remaining on Dartmoor - at Wheal Friendship. It was here that miners changed and dried their clothes. There would have been some lodgings here for miners as well who lived away but stayed locally when they worked. Wheal Friendship had the reputation in the mid 1800s for being a relatively healthy place to work in compared to other mines.

And it was back to St Mary's. I was looking forward to exploring this church but, as it was when we've walked this way previously, it was closed. I always feel cheated when this happens as, to my mind, churches should remain open.

Not quite a babbling brook but don't you just love the sound of running water?

And they claim to speak in our names? Not mine.

 

A recent headline in the Guardian was: 

"Perfidious Albion: why French faith in Boris Johnson has nosedived."

It's ages since I last heard that phrase. It has a very long history (and an equally long justification). Otto, the Bishop of Freising in Bavaria, used a similar phrase in 1191 to describe the untrustworthiness and bad faith of the English monarchy following a dispute between the crowns of England and Austria during the Crusades. However the phrase really started to gain traction after the French Revolution to the extent that, by the 19th Century, French writers could refer to “la Perfide Albion” as a well known old saying.

The French revolutionaries had been inspired by England’s so-called Glorious Revolution a century previously which saw the Westminster Parliament curtail once and for all the absolute power of the monarchy and replaced the Stuart dynasty with the Hanoverians. The French revolutionaries originally sought to establish a liberal constitutional monarchy along British lines. However, Westminster, and the British crown, soon turned on the French revolutionaries and allied themselves with Europe’s reactionary and absolutist monarchies in a bid to bring the revolution down.

It says a lot about a state that a phrase referring to its supposed proclivity for treachery, deceit and bad faith becomes elevated to the status of a stock phrase. It says a lot, and it says nothing good. Perfidious Albion is the other side of British Exceptionalism. What British nationalists see as the special nature of Britain, which elevates it above the rules and norms that apply to lesser nations, others perceive as an untrustworthy deceit and a willingness to go back on the terms of deals previously agreed. It’s an important lesson that many will heed: you cannot reach a meaningful or lasting agreement with a state which is founded upon the belief that it is beyond the normal standards of honesty and decency that it expects of everyone else.

Examples of the untrustworthiness and bad faith of the Westminster Parliament are abundant. Just restricting ourselves to recent history, the latest example in a long series of British perfidy is the shameful way that the British Government is willing to trash the Northern Irish protocol which it agreed with the EU in order that Boris Johnson could go into a UK General Election and tell the supporters of British nationalism that he’d got Brexit done. Dominic Cummings (OK, not someone who can claim to occupy the high moral ground) now tells us that the Johnson government never had any intention of abiding by the terms of the deal. It was only ever a short term tactical lie, designed to allow the Conservatives to get through a short term political problem. 

Johnson has form for this. He supported Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement at a third Commons vote in March 2019 despite the fact that he had resigned from the cabinet in protest about it. A resignation which was itself cynical and tactical, aimed at burnishing Johnson’s credentials with the Brextremist frothers in the Conservative party who would later elect him party leader and give him the keys to Downing Street. He voted for May’s deal, tactically and cynically because it was expedient at the time. His goal was to agree a deal in bad faith and then once the UK was out of the EU to kill it off from the outside. After May lost the Commons vote, she resigned, Johnson became Tory leader and the lying and deceit which was previously merely a strong tendency of the Conservative party became official British government policy. The UK has now shown the international community its true colours as a bad faith actor which cannot be trusted to keep an agreement. This is an important lesson for all those dealing with or who might have faith in Johnson's government: Perfidious Albion will lie, cheat, and say anything to get its way. 

 

Bodmin West Moor and Leskernick Hill

 A rather more ambitious Sunday afternoon stroll this week as we headed up onto the West Moor from Trewint. This part of the moor is perhaps the most isolated we have ever visited. It doesn’t have the sites like Rough Tor or Brown Willy, there is no Cheesewring or Hurlers or Gonamena Valley to attract visitors. It is a place for 'proper' walkers, amongst whom I rather immodestly place ourselves. I think we will come here again as it looks like the place to listen to the chorus of the Skylarks as they rise and dip and dive above the windblown open spaces.

Here's the route for this jaunt. We started and ended in Trewint and headed out to Leskernick Hill via Westmoor Gate. Then we went across West Moor to the gate near South Carne and walked back to Trewint across fields. My GPS logged this at 6.7 miles so it was a good stretch of the legs in very decent weather.

The lane from Trewint leading up to Westmoor Gate. As I've observed previously Westmoor Gate is to the east of Eastmoor Gate. A misnomer or perhaps it is to the west of this part of the moor? Whatever, a small matter.

Here's a drone shot I came across recently and it gives a good idea of the walk. We came up the lane in the bottom left and headed onto the moor where the water is glistening. From there we headed top left, middle and then middle right. The terrain looks rather flat from this height but it was quite undulating and pock-marked with tin-streaming gullies and peat tracks.

Out onto the open moor and the first thing we come across is evidence of tin streaming in this massive 'gert'.

Imaginative Caption #344: Horse on a rock.

Looking over West Moor towards Brown Willy, Cornwall's highest point, at 1,378 feet (420 meters) above sea level. Its original Cornish name is Bronn Wennili, meaning 'hill of the swallows'.
There was a move a few years back to change the name of Brown Willy to stop people sniggering. But can place names simply be changed? Places are what people call them.  If we are to see, and be offended by, double entendres everywhere, what is to become of Great Cockup and Little Cockup in Cumbria; Crapstone in Devon; Penistone in South Yorkshire; Brokenwind in Aberdeenshire; Shitterton and Prickly Bottom Dorset; North Piddle in Worcestershire; Slack Bottom in West Yorkshire; Twatt on Orkney: Pratts Bottom in Kent and Titty Hill in West Sussex?

And while we’re about it, let’s change Bodmin Moor back to the original ‘Foweymoor’ (= Fo’ymoor) and name it after its river like ‘Exmoor’ and ‘Dartmoor’.  For one thing, ‘Bodmin Moor’ was an Ordnance Survey invention of 1813.  For another, linguistically ‘Foweymoor’ flows off the tongue, whilst ‘Bodmin Moor’ is rather lumpy.

Looking northwards towards Buttern Hill. Another place that deserves a visit - it's on the list.

Just over a mile along the track and we are looking down on Leskernick Cottage, nestling in the valley through which the nascent River Fowey runs. It's actually a holiday let and the website says this about it: "With its remote location, Leskernick is ‘off grid’. No mains services means a generator supplies the electricity along with a newly installed solar system, which means summer months on the moor are now powered by sunlight. Originally a one up/one down miner’s cottage built from local granite stone, Leskernick is now a Grade II listed comfortable home, providing a cosy refuge, whilst surrounded by the wilds of the moor. There are 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (one ensuite), a well-equipped kitchen, snug sitting room and wonderful dining room which features full height bifold doors, allowing you to ‘moor watch’ whatever the weather."

Moving up onto the slopes of Leskernick Hill, we came across this stone row. Orientated, or so it would appear, with Brown Willy.

In and amongst the stones and clitter on this side of Leskernick Hill, there is a large, late Neolithic/Bronze Age settlement complex consisting of 50 houses and ancillary structures separated by a corridor. The houses are associated with compounds and field boundaries straddling the lower slopes of the hill. 

Look closely and one of the enclosures can be made out.

On the ground, it is quite difficult getting an overall impression of the scale of the settlement. But a satellite image from Google Earth shows the true extent of the site. The blue dots show the track we took: the circle our snack stop.

All around amongst the clitter was evidence of granite working, no more so than this mill stone, replete with central axis hole. Pity it is split. Before or after completion? Before or after the stone mason had been paid for his/her labours?

On the horizon, from left to right, the profiles of Brown Willy, Rough Tor (pronounced Rowtor), Little Rough Tor and Showery Tor. In the mid-ground,  is a propped stone which, it is estimated, could date from 2000BC. The axis of the long top stone points in the direction of Rough Tor, but more importantly the small window created by the positioning of the stones forms a little portal through which the setting sun at mid summer can be viewed. And I know that must be true because a friend has taken a photograph of just that.

Another split mill stone. We saw a total of three. What were they used for or what would they have been used for if they had been finished? I'm no geologist but I don't think the granite in these parts is of top quality with regards to hardness and would probably not be good enough for flour milling. Possibly for grinding animal feed or, perhaps, crushing apples in a cider press?

One of the very few trees on this part of the moor, surviving because it was growing in quite a sheltered area. It was close to a structure of some sort but not something big enough to be a farmhouse.

The tree is almost at the centre of this image, right next to a massive stream-working line. Perhaps the structure was associated with this? Although the ground between the viewpoint and the structure looks pretty inocuous, it is, in fact, extremely marshy with stretches of blanket bog. Not a pleasant crossing and best walked around rather than through.

The OS map says 'ford'. Luckily there was a reasonable track to the left that removed the need to wade through. Note to self for future reference: try and keep to the high ground.

The spires on the tower of Altarnun church in the distance, with a couple of wind turbines further away.

Imaginative Caption #345: Robin on a fence post.