There were 4 large pilchard cellars built in Port Gaverne at the start of the 1800s which can still be seen at the bottom of the hill leading up to Port Isaac. In their heyday, in the early 1800s, it is suggested that they could have processed 1,000 tons of pilchards in a week.
Industrialisation of fishing and the introduction of rail transportation during Victorian times led to over-exploitation of the Cornish pilchard stocks to meet an insatiable demand from the Italian market and the population crashed. Possibly as a knock-on consequence of the lack of availability, demand from Italy dried up and this has allowed pilchard stocks to recover.
Port Gaverne, the tiny settlement and inlet neighbouring Port Isaac, was more prominent than Port Isaac in the past. In fact, the settlement at Port Gaverne dates back to mediaeval times, being recorded in the 1300s. The sheltered inlet made it a good place to launch boats and it is still a popular place to launch small craft today.
The name was previously recorded as Port Kerne and on maps from the 1800s as Port Keverne. One of the quirks of the Cornish language is that "k" often transforms into "g" when placed after another word, which might have resulted in "Porthgeverne" (which is not far from how some of the locals still pronounce it).
During the summer, particularly at weekends, Port Gaverne is a popular spot for Pilot Gig racing.
The six-oared elm boats known as Pilot Gigs were general-purpose work boats, but one of their uses was to transport the pilot to and from a ship, which resulted in the name. The first boat to meet a ship gained the business of transporting the captain (and thus being paid) and thus a "race" came into being, with different boats competing for business. Today, Gig Racing is of a recreational nature, but the boats are still built to the exact well-documented specification of the originals. Elm wood is highly resistant to water, so much so, that town water mains were made of elm before the widespread availability of iron.
Look out for Fulmars which nest along the cliff faces. You'll often see them soaring over the tops of the cliffs as they circle in to land.
The fulmar is a grey and white bird related to an Albatross although it can be mistaken at a distance for a gull. Close up, the beak is the giveaway: the fulmar has a tube on its beak which is visible as a black bar across the beak at a distance. The tube is a gland for excreting salt from the seawater that they drink. As a defence mechanism, the fulmar regurgitates foul smelling oil from its stomach - the name comes from the Old Norse for "foul" (full) and "gull" (mar). The oil disrupts the waterproofing of predatory birds' feathers in a similar way to a crude-oil spill, so they avoid preying on fulmars.
All along the North Cornish coast, the use of shell-rich sand to fertilise the acidic soils was a major part of the local economy until the end of the 19th Century. At Port Gaverne in Victorian times, the local women and children could earn as much as their seafaring men-folk by digging the sand at low tides and placing it above high water for the farmers to collect.
The road from Port Gaverne which joins the Delabole road was quarried out in the early 1800s by the Delabole Slate company and known as "The Great Slate Road". Around 100 ships a year came to Port Gaverne to collect slate, each capable of carrying 50-80 tonnes. It would take thirty wagons, pulled by over a hundred horses, to load a sixty ton ship. The slates were loaded by women, who then packed them in straw to protect them on the voyage. The incoming ships also brought coal from Wales and limestone, for the local limekiln, which was used to whitewash the cottages.
Gug is a North Cornish dialect word for a coastal inlet or cave. It is related to the mining terminology vug for a rock cavity. Both derive from the Cornish word for cave now standardised as gogow but previous forms included vogga. The word for a man-made underground chamber found in prehistoric settlements - fogou - also derives from this.
Gurnards used to be extremely common in Port Isaac Bay - it was almost impossible not to catch one if you were dangling some bait on the sandy seabed in the 1980s. There are still some around but since they were "rediscovered" by the catering industry, their numbers have declined noticeably.
Gurnards are a family of spiny fish that live on the sea bed. The rays of their pectoral fins have evolved into something approximating fingers which they use to feel their way along the sea bed and find any worms or shrimps. Plymouth aquarium have some gurnards as they are quite entertaining to watch trundling along.
Gurnards have quite a large head and thin body. The relatively small amount of edible flesh and small bones meant they were not popular to eat, and consequently it was one of the most widely discarded fish from trawlers seeking more lucrative bottom-dwelling species.
Gurnard has been rediscovered recently as a culinary fish as the flavour and texture of the flesh are both nice and has been championed by a number of celebrity chefs. It is quite a fast-growing fish which bodes well for a sustainable fishery.
Ocean sunfish can sometimes be seen on hot summer days basking on the surface, with their fin flapping out of the water as they lie on their side sunbathing. They are extremely weird-looking fish, resembling a large round dinner plate with no real tail, just two large fins at the top and bottom and two smaller ones on the sides (doing the flapping). The average weight of a full grown adult sunfish is a tonne - the largest known bony fish, which is particularly impressive on a diet principally of jellyfish.
Jackdaws can be distinguished from other members of the crow family by their short black beaks and grey necks. They are smaller than all the other black birds in the crow family and are only slightly larger than jays.
Because bluebells spread very slowly, they're considered to be an indicator of ancient woodland sites. In areas where trees are not very old, the fact there are bluebells around can indicate that there has been a wood on a site for a very long time. Even if there are no trees there at all, bluebells tell us that there was woodland there some time in the past. The bluebells along the coast are a relic of the gnarled oak woodland that used to grow here before it was cleared for grazing. There is still a patch of the ancient oak woodland left along the coast at Dizzard.
The common name "foxglove" dates back many hundreds of years but the origin is unknown. The "gloves" almost certainly refers to the shape of the flowers, and the Latin name Digitalis (finger-like) is along similar lines. The curious part is the "fox" and many different suggestions have been made as to where it came from. It is possible that it is a corruption of another word. One suggestion is "folks" which was once used to mean "fairies".
There are more than 20 breeding pairs of peregrine falcons along the coast from Bude to Padstow.
The peregrine falcon can reach over 322 km/h (200 mph) during its hunting stoop (high speed dive) making it the fastest member of the animal kingdom. In 2005, a peregrine was measured at a top speed of 389 km/h (242 mph). The air pressure at this speed could damage a bird's lungs. However small bony tubercles on a falcon's nostrils guide the powerful airflow away, enabling the bird to breathe more easily while diving. In Cornish dialect, these falcons are known as "winnards" and local expressions include "shrammed as a winnard" (meaning chilled) and "rumped up like a winnard" (meaning huddled).
As you walk along the coast path, you'll likely see a number of gulls gliding along the cliff edges. The large ones, with black feathers all along their back and a red mark on their bill, are Greater Black-backed Gulls.
The Greater Black-backed Gull is the largest member of the gull family and a bird of formidable size, with a wingspan of nearly 6ft. Unlike other gulls, the Greater Black-backed Gull is highly predatory. Young birds are a significant portion of its diet and it tends to live amongst other seabirds where it can eat the neighbours. It has also been known to swallow whole rabbits and even eat young lambs. It often steals food from other seabirds using its large size to intimidate them into dropping it, and consequently it is sometimes referred to as a pirate.
The beach at the bottom of the cliffs is Barrett's Zawn.
Barrett's Zawn is a remote beach on the rugged coast between Port Isaac and Tintagel. It is located just north-west of the farm hamlets of Hendra. The beach can only be accessed by sea or via the now disused tunnel on the north side of Delabole Point which was known locally as the "Donkey Hole", because it was once used by donkeys bringing up slate from the beach quarry below.
It is still just possible to crawl through the tunnel to the beach but part of the tunnel roof has collapsed and it is now not recommended to go through the tunnel as the high cliffs above are unstable. If you do decide to risk it, be aware: there is one narrow squeeze in the tunnel where you'll need to get down onto your belly to slide over a rock, though the rest of the tunnel is reasonably tall; you will also need a torch as it's pitch black in the central section of the tunnel.
Coastal slate quarries are confined to a small area of about five miles either side of Tintagel and relatively little is known about their history. In order to work the vertical cliff face, strong points were built from stone above the working areas. From these, ropes were dropped down the quarry face. Men were lowered down the faces on these ropes to split blocks of slate from the face. The slate was hauled up the cliff face on these cables which were wound using "horse whims" - capstans powered by horses or donkeys walking around a circular platform. The stone was split and shaped on "dressing floors" on the cliff top, originally covered with sheds. The remains can be seen as level terraces and are marked by screes of waste rock on the cliff below. Splitting was (and still is) done with a bettle (hammer) and chisel, hence the name of the pub in Delabole.
Electric fences are typically powered from a low voltage source such as a car battery which charges a capacitor to release a periodic pulse of high voltage electricity. This is often audible as a quiet "crack" which is a good indicator that a fence is powered. As with the high-voltage shock caused by static electricity, the current is not high enough to cause serious injury but touching an electric fence is nevertheless unpleasant. If you are answering the call of nature in the vicinity of an electric fence, be mindful of the conductivity of electrolyte solutions!
The Ramblers Association and National Farmers Union suggest some "dos and don'ts" for walkers which we've collated with some info from the local Countryside Access Team.
Do
Don't
Although it's obvious that you should ensure any gates that you open, you also close, what about gates you find that are already open?
If the gate is fully open then leave it alone as it may well be providing livestock access to a water supply, and by closing it you could end up killing them.
If the gate is ajar or swinging loose and not wedged or tied open then it's likely that the gate was left open by accident (possibly by another group of walkers). Properly closing the offending gate behind you will not only bring joy to the landowner but you can feel good about saving lives in a car swerving to avoid a cow in the road.
If you encounter a gate doubly-secured with twine that can be untied or a chain that can be unfastened, it's normally there because naughty animals have managed to undo the gate themselves at some point (e.g. by rubbing against the bolt), so retie/fasten it afterwards.
The three farms of Higher, Middle and Lower Hendra date from mediaeval times. They were recorded individually in the mid-14th Century.
Hendra is a common Cornish place name meaning "home farm" (from the Cornish word hendre which itself is based on the words hen meaning old, and dre is equivalent to tre). Hendra was also used as a boy's first name with the meaning literally "from the family farm".
During late winter or early spring, if you encounter a patch of plants with white bell-shaped flowers, smelling strongly of onions, and with long, narrow leaves then they are likely to be three-cornered leeks. Once you're familiar with their narrow, ridged leaves, you'll be able to spot these emerging from late October onwards.
Three-cornered leeks are native to the Mediterranean and are first recorded as being introduced to the UK in 1759. By Victorian times, they had become well-established in the wild. They thrive in the moist, mild climate in Cornwall and are salt-tolerant so will grow almost anywhere, even on the coast.
Scientists have found that adding a cupful of red seaweed per day to a cow's diet reduces the amount of methane that the cow burps out by about 80%. Due to the relatively short lifespan of methane in the atmosphere and the strong greenhouse effect from methane, this has the potential to make a quite quick but significant reduction to the rate of global warming, whilst the more tricky accumulative problem of carbon dioxide is being worked on.
Brambles grow all along the road to Port Gaverne.
A project to analyse blackberries picked from busy urban roadsides vs quiet rural lanes found that there was a slightly elevated level of lead in the blackberries from busy roadsides which is thought to have accumulated in the soil when leaded fuel was in common use. Surprisingly, commercial blackberries from supermarkets also showed higher levels of lead than the wild blackberries from rural lanes.
Bramble seeds are spread very widely by being attached to a tasty blackberry. Mammals, birds, insects and even some fish will eat blackberries. Bramble seeds can survive up to 100 years in the soil, which helps them to colonise recently-cleared land.
There are over 4,000 farms in Cornwall covering over a quarter of a million hectares. Over 70% of Cornwall's land is farmed.
Field mushrooms are very closely related to the familiar supermarket button mushrooms and are the most commonly-eaten wild mushroom in Britain. They usually appear in grazed fields between July and November but can be out as early as May. They can sometimes be seen growing in a ring. The gills start out pink and become brown with age and the cap is slightly downy, especially around the edges, often with a skirt left on the stem. As there are a few species of white mushroom that all look quite similar, care needs to be taken to avoid eating poisonous species.
In particular, the common but poisonous "yellow stainer" looks very similar to a field mushroom and consequently causes the most mushroom poisonings in Britain. If the flesh is of a yellow stainer is cut or bruised, particularly at the base of the stem, a yellow liquid starts to seep out (unless the mushroom is very dried-out). This can take a few minutes to be apparent so it might not be until you get them home that you notice yellow patches where the caps have rubbed against something. The yellow stainer also has an unpleasant "chemical" smell (sometimes described as an "elastoplast smell") which helps distinguish it from the more appealing "mushroomy" smell of a field mushroom. A small minority of people have been reported as suffering no obvious ill effects from (presumably accidentally) eating yellow stainers but for the vast majority of people they cause stomach upsets which can be fairly severe including cramps, projectile voting and diarrhoea.
Like other members of the pea family, gorse produces its seeds in pods. The seeds are ejected with a popping sound when pods split open in hot weather. This can catapult the seeds up to five metres. The plants are able to live 30 years and survive sub-zero temperatures, the seeds can withstand fire and remain viable in the soil for 30 years.
The Port Gaverne Hotel was originally the Union Inn frequented by crews of the slate vessels. It was built by shoemaker and fisherman James Stroat who "kept it and then spent all he had". His brother William was a Master Mariner and apparently "a good merry old toper". On the walls of the pub, there are lots of photos and paintings of Port Gaverne and Port Isaac from the 1800s and early 1900s.
Port Isaac is a pretty fishing village with narrow winding alleys running down the steep hillside to the harbour. Particularly noteworthy is the number of 18th and 19th century white-washed cottages and granite, slate-fronted houses, many officially listed as of architectural or historic importance. Port Isaac was a busy coastal port from the Middle Ages to the mid 19th century, where cargoes like slate, coal and timber were shipped in and out. The stone pier was built in Tudor times, and the rest of the harbour in the 19th century. The economy was also heavily based around the pilchard trade.
At high tide, the beach at Port Gaverne is a shingle which is mostly flint - unusual in North Cornwall where most beaches are a golden sand composed of slate and fragments of shell. The reason is that the flint was used as ballast for incoming ships collecting Delabole slate which was brought to the coast by horse and cart. As the tide goes out, a sandy beach is revealed.
Being one of the few sheltered ports on the North Cornwall coast, the beach is used by local fishermen to launch boats and preserving it for this purpose this was a condition of the beach being given to the National Trust by the family that previously owned the beach. Consequently the central area of the beach is not the ideal place for swimming as the rock platforms either side of the inlet give boats very little room for manoeuvre and once a boat coming ashore raises its outboard motor to prevent it grounding on the seabed, it is unable to steer.
Slate is formed when clay or volcanic ash is compressed under millions of years of deposits to form shale, and then the shale is subject to a (relatively low, in geological terms) heat and pressure transforming it into a harder, less-crumbly rock - slate. The heat and pressure can arise from an intrusion of molten magma into the sedimentary rocks or from the friction associated with collision of tectonic plates. Like shale, slate also has a layered structure, splitting into thin sheets which have proven ideal for shedding water from roofs without collapsing them under the weight of stone. However, the direction that the slate splits into layers is often not the same as the direction of the layers that were laid down in the original shale. This is because a reorganisation of the mineral components occurs during the metamorphosis, based on the direction that the pressure was applied. In other words, it's possible to have stripey slates.
St Illickswell Gug may be named after a lost Holy Well. There is a spring recorded on OS maps just above the coast path before you reach the bottom of the valley so it's possible that this was the holy well of St Illick (or Illex). The name also appears in St Illex cottage and the St Illex cattle herd at the nearby farm.
There is a reference in a 1970 book on Holy Wells of Cornwall to a manuscript by one of the Roscarrock family from Port Isaac which mentions both a chapel and holy well of "St Electa" (which is thought possibly to be St Illick) and also that, according to legend, St Illick was female and came from Ireland in the mid 6th Century.
The well is marked on Andy Norfolk's map of Holy Wells in Cornwall which includes some more elaborate legends about the well from Roscarrock.
The large black birds nesting on offshore rocks, known colloquially as the cormorant and shag, are two birds of the same family and to the untrained eye look pretty similar. The origin of the name "shag" is a crest that this species has on top of its head and the cormorant doesn't. The cormorant is the larger of the two birds with a whiter throat. The shag's throat is yellow, and mature shags have a metallic green sheen on their feathers which cormorants lack.
The Sea Campion flowers from June to August and can be recognised by the white petals emerging from the end of a distinctive inflated envelope. Their grey-green leaves are fleshy, which protect them from drying out in salt-laden winds.
According to folklore, to pick a Sea Campion was to invite death. This might be something to do with the precipitous locations in which they grow! Consequently another name for the plant is "dead man's bells".
Blackthorn is a spiny type of plum which is more broadly a member of the rose family. It is native to the UK and common on old farmland where blackthorn trees were planted as hedges to keep out cattle. It is still common in Cornish hedgerows today and also common on the coast as it's tolerant to salt.
Given the right conditions, a blackthorn tree can live 100 years and grow to about 20ft in height. In harsher environments such as by the coast the bushes may be as little as 2ft tall.
The name "blackthorn" is just a general reference to the dark colour of the bark, rather than anything specific to do with the thorns which are not any darker than the rest of the wood. It's primarily a comparison with hawthorn where the bark is lighter (in fact hawthorn is also known as "white thorn" despite not having white thorns). Just to confuse things further, the flowers of blackthorn are whiter than hawthorn!
In mediaeval times, blackthorn was associated with evil. This may also tie in with the English word "strife" which has Celtic origins. Straif was the name of a letter used in Celtic Ogham script and was originally the word for "sulphur". Some of the other letters in the script corresponded to tree names. In late mediaeval times, a retrospective assignment of trees to the letters in the alphabet used for Ogham that weren't already tree names became popular (sometimes known as the "tree alphabet") and blackthorn was chosen for Straif.
The expression "Blackthorn Winter" is a rural expression for a final cold snap in late March or early April when the blackthorn is in flower. It was generally used in the context of not getting too carried away (e.g. planting crops) if there was a warm week in early March as more frosts may still be yet to come.
Blackthorn wood is very tough and hard-wearing. In order to form its thorns, the tree allows the tips of the tiny stems that make up the thorns to die. The dead wood in the thorn tip is harder and therefore sharper than the living wood.
Blackthorn stems are often covered in fungi or bacteria and if a thorn punctures skin, these can sometimes cause infection. Any splinters left in the skin can also disintegrate over time and result in an immune response. If a puncture wound becomes infected, it's a good idea to get it checked-out in a minor injuries unit in case antibacterial or anti-fungal treatment is needed to prevent it escalating.
Due to blackthorn wood's toughness, it was used to make tool handles, walking sticks and as a traditional Celtic weapon for clubbing people to death! It is still regarded as the ultimate wood for making walking sticks. Once cut and trimmed, the wood needs to be dried for at least a year (often several) which allows moisture to escape and the wood to shrink and harden.
A cordial can be made from blackthorn blossom by dissolving 100g of sugar in 1 litre of warm water mixing one large handful of blossom, scaled up to produce the quantity you require.
Scurvy grass has thick, flesh leaves that look a little similar to ivy leaves in shape and its flowers have 4 white petals forming a cross. It flowers around the same time as primroses - in March and April - and the flowers have a pleasant scent reminiscent of jasmine. It is a member of the cabbage family, related to rocket and horseradish and the flavour is hot like horseradish.
Scurvy grass gets its name as it was salted and carried aboard ships to help prevent scurvy during long sea voyages as it is rich in vitamin C. The saltiness combined with the powerful hot flavour might well have needed a daily ration of rum to wash it down!
Originally from the Mediterranean, fennel has naturalised in the UK, particularly in coastal areas and is recorded as far back as the 10th century.
The Greek word for fennel is "marathon"; the name of the sporting event originates from a battle which took place in a field of fennel.
The leaves, seeds and also flowers of the wild fennel can be used in cooking. Of these, the flowers are the most potent and also the most expensive to purchase.
Whizz half a red onion, a couple of sprigs of wild fennel leaves and a clove of garlic in a (small) food processor. Whizz in one fillet of smoked mackerel (skinned), juice of half a lemon and a pinch of salt + freshly ground black pepper. Finally whizz in some cream cheese (for a paté) or crème fraîche (for a dip) a spoonful at a time until the desired consistency (thickness) is reached.
Pollack spend much of their time around weed-covered rocks, ambushing small fish as sandeels. On offshore reefs and wrecks, pollack can grow up to a metre in length but close to the shore you’re most likely to see young fish of a few cm in length, which there was a word in Cornish specifically for: dojel.
Pollack is a member of the cod family but until recently was an unpopular culinary fish. There are two reasons for this: as well as having a name that sounds like an insult, when the fish is dead, its flavour deteriorates faster than many other members of the cod family, so fish which is not very fresh smells "fishy". However pollack is excellent to eat when very fresh, and since it is pretty much the only member of the cod family that hasn’t yet been overfished, has made more of an appearance in supermarkets in recent years. It used to be marketed as "coley" which was a fishmongers' collective term for either pollack or its close cousin, the coalfish, but more recently it has been appearing as pollack.
Mackerel come inshore during the summer and autumn to feed on prawns and small fish such as sandeels. They often occur in large shoals which at the surface can make the sea appear to "boil", often accompanied by excited seabirds. Although they cruise at a speed of around 2 knots, mackerel can reach 10 knots in short bursts.
Throughout the 19th century, mackerel was fished commercially off Cornwall and by the end of the 19th century, there were hundreds of drift netters. These decimated the mackerel stocks and by the 1930s, mackerel were so scarce that the fishery had virtually closed. By the 1960s, the mackerel had recovered and were plentiful for the next couple of decades. More recently, they have noticeably declined again which is thought to be due to intensive trawling in Scottish and Icelandic waters. The South West Handline Fisherman's Association operate a more sustainable fishing model, and readers are encouraged to buy line-caught fish.
Mackerel are excellent culinary fish, rich in essential oils, vitamins and minerals including omega-3 fatty acids. Mackerel is a reasonably bony fish but a little bit of effort upfront to fillet it makes it much easier to cook and eat.
To fillet mackerel, a sharp non-serrated knife is required. Professionals usually fillet from the head end but if your mackerel already have the heads removed, you'll find it easier starting at the tail and running the knife along the backbone, staying just above the fins on the back of the fish.
Trim off any fins from the fillets as the fins are full of little bones.
There are no bones in the tail half of the fillets but there will be a few bones along the rib cage at the head end which are easy enough to see. These can be removed by running the knife just under those bones to trim these areas.
There are also few hidden pin bones down the middle towards the head-end of the lateral line which can be located by running a finger along the middle of the fillet. There are 2 options for these:
The correctly-executed result is completely bone-free fillets of mackerel which are far more enjoyable to eat than picking the bones out of your food as you eat. With a bit of practice this can be done fairly quickly with minimal waste. Note that filleting is most easily done with fresh fish as defrosted fish tend to be a bit watery making trimming more difficult so ideally fillet before freezing.
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