With a few fine days and the forecast looking good, I drove down to Mullion and parked in the National Trust car park at Gunwalloe Church Cove. While several dog walkers were heading for the beach, Eddie and I stayed on the path behind the beach and went up on the hill to look back down at the gorgeous little church tucked away in the corner of the cove, sheltered from the ravages of the sea. The view beyond was stunning on that day, with the morning sunshine showing all the villages around Mounts Bay, with Penzance and St Michael’s Mount being the centrepiece. Such fine weather had brought a good number of people out to the golf course on my left, and also into the sea, and on the beach at Poldhu Cove on my right, and it was still November!
I followed the signs for the coast path and just before the residential home I turned left to pick up the track for the Marconi museum, from where Marconi sent the first transatlantic radio signals to America in 1901. Before reaching the museum we turned away from the coast and took the stony track which eventually came out among bungalows on the edge of Mullion and, after a short walk along the main road, came to a very attractive thatched pub and then the church. I had read about the curiosity at Mullion church years ago but had never been to see it. In the bottom of the very thick oak door there has been cut a dog door which is now fastened shut but once would have been just like a large cat flap. There were two ladies inside the church who explained that the origin of the dog door was to allow farmers dogs inside to join their masters rather than sit outside and howl. I was surprised at how thick the oak was that made the pews - at least three inches thick, and thought to have come from the ancient oak forest that once covered Goonhilly Downs, where we now have the huge white satellite dishes.
After having a look around the village we came back to the church and shops before crossing the main road into Trewoon, which was traffic free due to the road being closed for repair, a nuisance for drivers but a real boon to walkers. We passed through the hamlet of Trewoon with a number of thatched cottages then through colourful beech woods on both sides of the road with the beautiful orange and yellows of autumn. At the bottom of a hill a small river ran under the bridge where we took the lane to the left and came to a very old mill looking quite run down with its rotting water wheel and getting overgrown with laurel, I felt as though I was intruding as the footpath passed right outside the front door and people were inside the house. Following the path through the bottom of the orchard on little more than a badgers’ track, with such long dew-laden grass that when I got to the gate out of the orchard I sat down and put my trusty Tesco freezer bags on my feet as I could feel my boots starting to get damp. I know it’s probably not the best thing to do but I really dislike walking in wet boots with squelchy socks.
Eddie was having a great time sniffing all the animal tracks in and out of the steep-sided lane we were now climbing, I really love all the old and ancient trackways that nowadays get hardly any use but were once the well-trodden highways of the day. I think of all the men who cut them into the rock and the beasts of burden that scrabbled and slipped on the irregular wet surfaces.
Once we came out of the valley and the view opened up, I could look across to Goonhilly and see for miles but the chilly easterly wind cut across the open farm land so I was soon on the move again, aiming in the direction of Cury church. I thought the church was quite ordinary although it has an interesting Celtic cross in the churchyard which, at about 8ft high, is one of the tallest in the county. The church was locked so I sat on a bench in the churchyard in the sun but, more importantly, out of the wind and ate sandwiches washed down with a flask of hot Oxo, outdoor dining at its best in my humble opinion! Leaving Cury we were once again walking across fields and along grassy lanes coming out at the top of a valley in which grew acres of reeds. These days the wetland is a nature reserve but years ago it would have produced a lot of reed for thatching and, given the number of thatched properties I had seen on this walk, it would have provided work for many local men.
Fortunately there were some good wooden walkways over the bogs but Eddie was full of energy and poking around in the muddy water when he realised he was getting deeper so he took a huge leap and because he was on very soft ground he only managed to get his front feet onto the bridge and slowly slid around before dropping off and into the bog. What a mess! He emerged like the monster from the black lagoon and I was finding bits of dried mud in his coat for days after.
Walking across more fields we had seen not one person since leaving Mullion until we reached the Halzephron Inn where people were sitting outside in the sun, eating and drinking, which, as I mentioned earlier, was good for mid-November. Crossing the road here we headed to join the South West Coast Path and came back to the car park where we had started that morning. What a great day for an autumn walk.
Erica
