A few posts back I related how I fell into a gorse bush in North Devon, scratching face, hands and legs, and leaving me with a potential scar on the front of my face, between nose and upper lip. I'm happy to say that nearly all the scratches have now healed, and that any facial blemish will be unnoticeable. It's already nothing to worry about - and of course nobody can see my rapidly-healing wounds underneath my mask when I go shopping, or fill Fiona up with fuel.
I'm now tempted to think that I had become a trifle hubristic about my mountain-goat abilities! For only four days previously I had been clambering around on massive granite boulders on the south-eastern edge of Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, and I accomplished that without falling. I suppose there was one key difference: I wasn't wearing my ultra-stout Alt-Berg walking boots, but my lighter and more stylish Dubarry boots, which are essentially posh leather wellies, and at their bottom end far more like a conventional shoe, able to flex, and not nearly so clumpy to wear. I wouldn't want to walk very far in them, not as much as five miles, but for shorter distances in cool weather they are fine. I've never yet stumbled while shod with them, and didn't on this occasion on Bodmin Moor. Here's my feet with the boots on. I bought them in 2011, and they have lasted very well.
So what was I doing on Bodmin Moor? I wanted to take another look at the remarkable stone circles known as The Hurlers (last seen on a cold, wet, very misty afternoon on 27th December 2010) and then walk over to the amazing natural pile of stone boulders called The Cheesewring, perched above a disused quarry on nearby Stowe's Hill, which I had never visited before. All of this was close to a village called Minions. Here are some location maps:
Minions was once the centre of an important mining and quarrying industry in this part of Bodmin Moor, and hosted a network of tramways established in the 1840s to take the extracted goods away, known as the Liskeard & Caradon Railway, as shown in these screenprints of an old six-inch Ordnance Survey map from 1907 (regard them as joined together to form one map):
By 1907 industrial operations around Minions and Caradon Hill were already in decline, as revealed by the number of 'disused' shafts, pits and quarries shown on the map. The whole tramway system north of Moorswater near Liskeard was abandoned in 1916. The truncated line at Moorswater, which had china clay traffic and connected to the Looe Valley line (and Looe quay), carried on, and still operates. A train from the main line goes there once a week on Wednesdays to collect the clay via a weird steep loop from Liskeard station. I was parking Fiona at Liskeard station on 23rd September, and actually saw this mineral train without realising what it was, although a linesman explained its purpose to me shortly afterwards. My adventures at Liskeard - or more particularly Coombe Junction down in the valley at the other end of that loop - are coming up soon in another post.
Strangely the 1907 map doesn't name The Hurlers, nor the outlying pair of stones known as The Pipers. But it does show The Cheesewring.
That winter afternoon at Minions in 2010 had been something of a disappointment. Weather conditions were dire. It was bitterly cold, misty, the light was failing, and the ground was squelchy from a thorough and prolonged soaking from melted snow. There was even some unmelted snow here and there. I was determined to get some good shots of the stones, but had to admit that my efforts were not successful. They were defeated by the mist and the dull light:
Minions itself is just a small village in a semi-bleak setting, a focus for outdoor types with dogs to walk, and those interested in industrial archaeology, as well as the more conventional sort of archaeology. Normally you can get tea and cake here, and visit the Heritage Centre (which I didn't find, but I think was in a conspicuous old engine house with a chimney, in the moor north of the village centre). Here's a flavour of Minions, including a shot of a house that made reference to the Minions in the movies. (Not my sort of movie, you'll understand)
The approach was easy. Literally just a walk through the rough grass, vaguely following where others had trod. The Cheesewring is a pile of flattish or pillow-shaped granite stones balanced on top of each other in a stack arrangement. Presumably the eroded remains of a jointed and fissured rock outcrop, now seen after a very long process. It's perfectly solid and stable, but with further erosion - or a local earthquake - might become less so. It now stands on the edge of a man-made cliff, one side of a quarry hewn out of the rock. Its not the only pile of stone slabs up there, but it's the main one, and it caught the eye as I came ever nearer.
Then I had to make my way carefully over the rocks, on rising ground with no very obvious path to follow, and then steadily upwards to The Cheesewring. It wasn't difficult, but it took a good effort, and it felt like a proper achievement to finally get there, as you can see from my expression!
The Cheesewring, at last. Massive rocks, certainly. Astonishing to think that they must be the weathered remnants of something much bigger. I took photos from various angles.
I have said that The Cheesewring was natural, but I couldn't help thinking that a rocky pile like this could be made with discarded quarry stones and a big strong crane! Perish the thought.
I then went over to another pile of rocks nearby that stood at an even higher point on Stowe's Hill. I thought that I might as well get to the summit, and survey the landscape around. I climbed up only so far, nearly onto the topmost slab but not quite. It was too much of a step up, and besides the wind up there was fierce, and I wanted to avoid being blown off. Great views all the same.
