The name means something along the lines of "beach with sand dunes". During the 20th Century, dunes have suffered erosion from large numbers of beachgoers. To help restore the dunes, residents donated their Christmas trees and these have been buried in the dunes to help hold the sand in place and give vegetation a chance to re-establish.
At low tide, a number of coves join together to form a mile-long sandy beach, and on a low Spring tide it's just possible to walk all the way to Chapel Porth along the beach.
On 28th November 1897 a coastguard spotted wreckage and then bodies in the huge waves breaking on the cliffs at Porthtowan. With the help of volunteers, six bodies were brought ashore and the name of the vessel was identified from their clothing. In total, there was a crew of eleven and the remaining bodies washed ashore in the following weeks. The ship had been driven onto rocks and the emergency flares had been hidden by lightning from the storm.
Thrift is tolerant of metals such as lead and particularly copper in soil so it is able to colonise coastal mine tips. It has been suggested that the heavy metal tolerance may be partly down to not transporting much dissolved metal up the shoot of the plant (since thrift grows in a desiccating salty environment, there is less water to transport it than in many other plants). However thrift also has mechanisms to sequester metals and excrete them through its roots and leaves.
Gorse is present as two species along the Atlantic coast and size is the easiest way to tell them apart: Common Gorse bushes are up to 10ft tall whereas Western Gorse is more of a mat - less than 1ft tall. Common Gorse flowers in spring whereas Western Gorse flowers in late summer - early autumn.
Keep a look out for choughs which are sometimes seen on this stretch of coast as their range begins to spread further east.
If you think you've seen a chough, take a photo if possible and email choughs@cbwps.org.uk to report the sighting. This will help the "Chough Watch" team keep track of the growing population.
Porthtowan's tidal pool is at the bottom of the cliff. From the beach, it's quite hidden by the surrounding rocks so not many people on the beach discover it.
Ravens can also sometimes be seen on the coast here.
Ravens are the largest member of the crow family and have a bigger wingspan than a buzzard. They are most easily distinguished from other members of the crow family by their very large black beak which has a hooked top. Other members of the crow family have straighter beaks. Their call is a deep croak.
Heather plants can live up to 40 years and over time they form woody stems. This provides them with a way of excreting heavy metals that they absorb by locking it up in the layers of dead wood (found by researchers as the areas in the plant with the highest concentrations). Their woody stems have also found many uses over the centuries including fuel, thatch and ropes. One other use has made it into the genus name for heather - kallune is Greek for "to brush".
The sandy seabed is used by flatfish for camouflage.
Flatfish such a turbot and plaice are sand-coloured on their upper surface so they blend into the seabed and can both ambush passing prey and hide from predators.
Flatfish begin life as a normal (non-flat) fish with one eye on each side of their head. As they mature, one eye gradually migrates over the top of their head to the other side. They then spend their whole adult life lying on their side.
Wheal Charlotte was a copper mine first opened in the late 1700s and early 1800s to mine the shallow deposits where the lode meets the surface (known as the "strike" in mining jargon). In the late 1820s, the mine was reopened under the name Great Wheal Charlotte and the engine house was built to pump out a deep shaft which met the lode further underground (which is why the engine house is back towards Porthtowan) and tunnels followed the lode underground.
The mounds are the remains of earlier mining activity before the engine house was constructed.
The mounds alongside the coast path approaching Chapel Porth from Porthtowan mark the presence of rocks bearing copper ore. The seam of ore-bearing rock (known as a lode in mining jargon) hits the surface along the line of heaps and then slopes down into the ground towards Porthtowan. The copper minerals can be seen as orange stains on the white bedrock within the cliffs.
Deep in the earth's crust where there is lots of sulphur and little oxygen (hence the smelly sulphur compounds around volcanic vents), copper occurs as crystals of sulphide compounds. Nearer the surface, chemical reactions with air and water form brick-red oxide and blue-green carbonate compounds and also copper sulphate. The latter is the blue stuff from school science lessons which you may vaguely recall is soluble in water; thus it became concentrated at the water table. In the Ice Ages that followed, Cornwall was scoured by glaciers which bulldozed away many of these concentrated deposits. Early copper mining took place on the few remaining areas of these surface layers, but it was not until innovations in pumping technology that copper mining could be carried out on the deeper sulphide deposits and these account for the bulk of the ore mined. The most common ore (called chalcopyrite) is a copper-bearing version of "fool's gold"; when pure it looks like gold but where it meets air and water, patches of iridescent green, blue and purple form and so it was known as "peacock copper".
The beach and surrounding coastal land at Chapel Porth is owned by the National Trust who run the café and toilets in the car park. The beach is a narrow gully at high tide that opens out to a mile long expanse of sand at low tide. Due to the shape of the beach, it is very easy to get cut off by the rising tide. There are are a number of caves along the length of the beach arising from a combination of mining and erosion by the sea of faults in the ore-bearing rocks.
The route continues to the right to the path leading along the valley, but first you may wish to visit Chapel Porth beach/café.
Once back on the route, follow the path along the valley until you pass the engine house and reach a waymark post with blue and yellow arrows.
The remains of a building on the opposite side of the stream was an ore processing area, probably for Wheal Freedom.
Wheal Freedom was a small Victorian copper mine which straddled the road to Chapel Porth. The mine included an engine house (now demolished) and probably the dressing floors in the valley near the stream, the remains of which can still be seen. The mine was worked alongside East Wheal Charlotte, located further up the valley.
The Engine House slightly further up the valley marks the remains of the Charlotte United Mine.
The Engine House beside the stream in Chapel Coombe marks the remains of the Charlotte United Mine (not to be confused with the mine of the same name at Perranuthnoe). An older mine known as New Wheal Charlotte had previously worked the area from the 1830s onwards. The shaft was built in the 1870s to mine the copper lodes which run across the valley. The mine was not very productive as the concentration of copper ore was quite low in this section of the lode compared to those near Wheal Charlotte on the top of the hill. It is thought that the mine was a speculation on the concentration of copper increasing in the direction of Wheal Charlotte, but this gamble did not pay off and the operation under the new name only lasted a few months.
Make sure you stick to the path as there are unfenced mineshafts in the valley on either side of the path. The wooden poles with small black-and-white signs depicting a figure disappearing into an abyss do indicate this but approaching one to read it more clearly is not a good idea!
Cornwall's iconic engine houses were built to house huge beam engines - a type of steam engine with a pivoting beam. This configuration was particularly suited to powering pumps to stop the quarry pits and mines from flooding as water trickled into them from above. Inside the engine house, steam from a boiler would push up a piston, causing the beam to tilt downwards, pushing the pump down into the shaft. The steam would then be shut off and cold water would be used to condense the steam within the piston back into water, creating a partial vacuum. Atmospheric pressure then pushed the piston back down into the vacuum, raising the beam and lifting water out of the shaft. The valves to apply the steam and cold water were mechanically automated, maintaining a steady rocking motion of the giant beam.
Hart's tongue ferns thrive in shady places and are tolerant of the lime used in mortar so are sometimes found growing in old walls. It's an evergreen so leaves can be seen all year round but there's usually a flurry of new growth in mid March when new leaves can be seen gradually unfurling over a number of days.
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.
All parts of the plant are edible by humans and the flavour of the leaves is relatively mild so they can be used in recipes in place of spring onions or chives. They are at their best for culinary use from November to April. By mid-May, they have flowered and the leaves are starting to die back.
The long leaves can be mistaken for bluebells or daffodils which are both poisonous but do not smell of onions. However, fingers that have previously picked 3-cornered leeks also smell of onions and so mistakes have been made this way.
Crocosmia was first recorded in the wild in 1911 and since then has spread, particularly along the west coast of Britain. It is extremely invasive and classified as a "Critical Risk" by Plantlife. In western Ireland the spread is even more extreme, with miles of roadside verges obliterated of any other plants. It is now a criminal offence to cause it to grow in the wild.
The Old English name for the blackbird was osle and up to the 17th Century this survived as in alternative names for the blackbird ranging from ouzel to woosel. One of these is used in A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare: "The Woosell cocke, so blacke of hew, With Orenge-tawny bill".
The valley is known as Banns Vale although the "vale" is redundant as Banns (originally the name of the farm from which the hamlet has taken its name) means "hollow" in Cornish.
Before Christianity, the Pagan Celtic people of Cornwall worshipped wonders of the natural world. Where clean, drinkable water welled up from the ground in a spring, this was seen as pretty awesome. The sites were seen as portals to another world, and is why fairies are often associated with springs. Where the springwater dissolved minerals, for specific conditions (e.g. deficiency in a mineral) or where the minerals present had antibacterial/fungal properties, the water appeared to have healing powers.
Lesser celandines are common plants along woodland paths recognisable by their yellow star-shaped flowers. Despite their name, they are not closely related to the Greater Celandine. Lesser celandines are actually a member of the buttercup family and, like buttercups, they contain the poisonous chemical protoanemonin.
There are over 280 species of hoverflies in Britain. As the name of the family implies, they are very good at hovering completely stationary in flight and can switch from very fast flight to a perfect hover in the blink of an eye.
A thick outer bark on a tree helps to protect it from frost damage during the winter. The bark, which is often textured to trap air, and forms an insulating "buffer zone" that shields the living part of the tree, keeping this above freezing when there are sub-zero temperatures outside. The mass of dense wood inside the tree also acts as night store heater, absorbing heat during the day which is gradually released at night.
A mature tree can absorb tens of kilograms of carbon dioxide each year adding up to a tonne over a number of decades. However, burning one litre of petrol produces just over 2kg of carbon dioxide so it takes about half an acre of trees to absorb the average amount of carbon dioxide produced by one car in a year. When trees die and decompose, the majority of the carbon is gradually released back into the atmosphere depending on how fast the various bits of tree rot (the woody parts take longer).
Plant nutrients like phosphates and nitrates are used to improve the fertility of soils to make crops grow well. These chemicals dissolve easily in water and can wash into rivers where they stimulate the growth of algae. This uses up the oxygen in the water, suffocating the other aquatic life.
Phosphates are also used in many laundry and dishwashing powders. These cannot be fully removed by the sewage treatment process and the remainder is discharged into rivers, causing serious damage. You can help to reduce this by switching to low or phosphate-free dishwashing and laundry detergents (Ecover brand is particularly good and their dishwasher tablets seem to work amazingly well). Other things to be on the lookout for around the home are waste pipes that go into drains instead of sewers (these don't get any sewage treatment so any phosphates go straight into rivers). It's worth ensuring cesspits/septic tanks are emptied regularly otherwise all kinds of nasty things including phosphates will seep from these through groundwater into rivers.
The mine workings on the hillside on your right are the remains of the Tywarnhale Mine.
Tywarnhayle (which means "House on the Estuary") began as Wheal Rock in 1750 and was renamed United Hills in 1809, finally becoming Tywarnhayle in 1906 when a company was formed with the intention of using new technology to extract the copper from the surface dumps and part-drain the mine in order to work the remaining ore in the higher areas. A building housed the world's first froth flotation plant - a method used to extract small amounts of copper from large amounts of rock (such as the mine waste) - which has since been widely employed by the mining industry as they have been forced to mine deposits of decreasing concentration. Meanwhile Cornwall's first submersible electric pump was used to drain water from the mine. Unfortunately, the sulphide ores react with water in the mine to form sulphuric acid and this quickly corroded the pump. Despite the innovative technology, the operation failed to make a profit and was aborted. After this the mine was used as a training mine by London's Royal School of Mines and there are some videos from the 1980s of mining students in action on the Imperial College website.
Early copper mining took place on surface deposits that were of relatively high concentrations. As these were used up, mining moved onto deeper and increasingly less concentrated deposits requiring ever more sophisticated techniques to be developed, to sift the ever-lower concentrations of copper ore from the tonnes of surrounding rock.
The waste tips from early mining are becoming of increasing interest as these contain copper ore at a concentration which was uneconomical to recover during Victorian times, but with increasingly sophisticated techniques, recovery may once again become economically viable.
One such method is to use sulphuric acid to dissolve copper out of the mine waste in the form of a very weak copper sulphate solution (the blue stuff familiar from school chemistry lessons, but in this case so weak that it wouldn't be noticeably blue). Special bacteria can then be used to precipitate the very low levels of copper out of the solution which can then be recycled for use on the next batch of mine waste.
The tall trees higher up the valley and engine house chimneys make good perches for buzzards, which hunt for small mammals in the low scrub on the valley floor.
In a natural habitat, buzzards perch at the top of trees to survey the surrounding fields. Their brown-and-white pattern camouflages them quite well so it's quite common for walkers to inadvertently disturb what turns out to be a huge flapping monster just feet away. Telegraph poles provide a perfect alternative to trees without any cluttering branches so buzzards can often be seen perched on the top, unfazed by cars passing beneath.
The engine house with the castellated chimney marks the site of Wheal Ellen.
The engine house with the castellated chimney on the left side of the road from Mount Hawke to Porthtowan marks the site of Wheal Ellen. Wheal Ellen was a copper mine created in 1834 by a merger of two former mines. Over 24,000 tones of copper were sold before the mine closed in 1862. The engine house was built for a re-opening in 1866 but a nationwide financial crisis resulted in the project being aborted. The engine was never fitted and it is rumoured that the builder of the engine house was never paid.
When the acidic solution containing dissolved metals from mines (known as Acidic Mine Drainage) meets other water, it is diluted and the reduced acidity causes dissolved iron to precipitate out as orange or yellow hydroxides, colouring the water and sticking to anything in the watercourse. In the case of copper mines, copper stays dissolved in the water and at higher levels this can be toxic to wildlife, particularly fish.
Where there is a large amount of water coming from a mine which is not rendered harmless by natural dilution, reed beds have been found to be very effective in treating the acidic water. Plants and bacteria in the reed bed convert the dissolved metals into insoluble compounds that are trapped within the reed bed. There are even suggestions that the metals may be commercially recoverable after they have been concentrated in the reed bed over a period of time.
Ice Cream is made at Tremedda Farm using milk from their dairy herd (whom they term the "Moomaids of Zennor") combined with Rodda's clotted cream, which itself is made from local milk including that from Tremedda. The Tremedda cows have names that range from the traditional (Daisy and Primrose) to the less traditional ("Sid Vicious").
Vugga Cave is at the northern end of Chapel Porth, which can only be reached at low tide. The name is from an old mining term vug which the Chambers English Dictionary defines as "a Cornish miners name for a cavity in a rock".
The natural cave connects to a network of mine workings. Subsequently it was adapted into a mine drainage adit: at the far end of the adit is a waterfall where it connects to the Towanroath mineshaft, draining the water out of the shaft. The vertical shaft continues below sea level, which is now flooded.
The World Belly Boarding Championship (WBBC) started in 2002 as a memorial contest to a regular visitor with his wooden board at Chapel Porth. There are now over 300 people who take part in this delightfully eccentric and quintessentially British contest involving surfing, tea and baking. Surfing is rigorously old-school with no wetsuits, fins or other modern nonsense allowed. Under-sixties must compete in the "juniors" category, and prizes are awarded for prettiest surfboard, as well as "best surfing trick" and "longest ride" (amongst many others); there's also a bake-off. The WBBC takes place on the first Sunday in September at Chapel Porth.
Dragonflies were some of the first winged insects to evolve, around 300 million years ago in the "age of amphibians" before the dinosaurs. Fossils of early dragonflies have been found with wingspans of up to two feet across.
Dragonflies are named after the way they hunt, as both the larvae and adults are carnivorous predators. Mosquitoes form a large part of their diet both for adults and particularly for the larvae (nymphs). One dragonfly can eat tens of mosquitoes in a day and an average of over 100 per day has been recorded for the nymphs of some species. It is thought that this is an important factor in keeping the mosquito population under control. Dragonfly nymphs have a massive lower jaw to engulf their prey (a bit like an Angler Fish) and are also able to propel themselves by shooting a jet of water out of their anus.
Their two sets of wings beat out of phase, and the frequency, amplitude and the angles of each set of wings can be controlled. This allows dragonflies to hover in a completely stationary position for over a minute, perform extravagant aerobatic manoeuvres and even fly backwards.
Himalayan Balsam is a tall plant with very pretty pink flowers that can often be seen lining footpaths in the summer and early autumn. It was introduced as an ornamental species in 1839 and unfortunately the plant is now a major ecological problem. It can grow from a seed to 9ft high in a few months, forming dense thickets and wiping out other plant species. It is also extremely invasive as the seed pods open explosively, launching around 800 seeds per plant up to 7 metres and the seeds are also adapted to travel by water. It is a nuisance on riverbanks as its roots are shallow and allow the sediment to become easily eroded into the river. It can be identified by its bright pink flowers and it has a characteristic sweet smell.
Although fruit-flavoured ice deserts are known to have been consumed by the elite at least as far back as the 2nd Century, the use of cream to make a frozen desert is thought to have been developed in Italy in the 16th Century. By the 17th Century, "Cream Ice" was a popular royal dish in England.
During the Industrial Revolution, the ice cream machine was created and ice carried by ship from Norway was used to chill it until mechanical refrigeration was invented at the end of the 19th Century.
The ice cream cone is thought to be a Victorian English invention, first recorded in Mrs Marshall's Cookery Book in 1888.
"Cornish ice cream" is made with clotted cream and was popularised by Kelly's.
Kelly's Ice Cream began with an Italian who settled in St Austell in the 1890s. His son-in-law took over the business and had the first ice cream van - a horse and cart.
He changed his Italian surname (Calicchia) - and the name of the business - to "Kelly" as this was easier for English people to pronounce. The first motorised ice cream van was converted from a milk float in 1928. By the early 1950s they had a fleet of 40 vans all over Cornwall.
The business moved to Bodmin in the 1970s and, following large investment from a new parent company, by 2015 it had become the sixth largest ice cream manufacturer in Britain.
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