The acidic soil in the Tintagel area was fertilised with lime-rich beach sand from nearby Trebarwith Strand, where the golden sand is largely composed of sea shells which are mostly calcium carbonate (chemically identical to chalk and limestone).
The sand at Trebarwith Strand was also put to another use: to avoid several tonnes of slate in a wagon going down the steep road through Trebarwith Valley resulting in horse paté, the slate wagons would be loaded with sand from Trebarwith Strand and this would be scattered on the road on the way back up, to act as a braking system.
The trade in sand and slate quarrying led to road improvements in the early 19th century and for one reason, or the other, or possibly both, the Trebarwith Strand to Condolden road is known as "Sanding Road".
Trebarwith stream rises on Condolden moor and runs alongside the road (in underground culverts and roadside channels for much of the way) until its confluence with the stream from Jeffrey's Pit somewhere beneath the road to the beach. This percolates though the slate tips on the opposite side of the road and then runs as an open stream to Trebarwith Strand.
Small trout typically feed on invertebrates whereas larger trout generally feed on other fish but have been known to eat anything of a suitable size unlucky enough to fall into a river. In fact in New Zealand, mouse-shaped lures are sold for trout fishing!
The Trebarwith Nature Reserve has a rich diversity of wildflowers and a thriving stream community in its unimproved meadow land. The area of Trebarwith Valley which is now the Nature Reserve was first used as agricultural land in the post-mediaeval period. It is likely that the path that runs through the reserve dates from this time, perhaps linking farmsteads to the parish church.
Gull Rock lies approximately 500 metres offshore from Trebarwith Strand and has given its name to RR Gordon's crime thriller set in the area. It is made of a very hard volcanic material that has withstood the sea whilst the slate around it has been worn away. On the seaward side, where a chunk of the rock has cracked off, the tightly folded volcanic rocks within can be seen.
Recently the rock has turned green during the spring and summer due to rock samphire colonising the side facing the beach which is sheltered from the westerly winds, helped by fertiliser provided by the seabirds also colonising the sheltered side of the rock.
In the 1800s, the rock at Trebarwith (or "Trebarrow" as it was known then), was known as Otterham Rock, or Rocks, acknowledging the rocks to the side of the main rock which protrude a small amount from the water. Below the surface of the water, these are part of an extensive reef.
Goosegrass produces lots of small white flowers in summer which are quite noticeable in hedgerows, particularly in July. The sticky seeds then form in late summer - early autumn. The seeds germinate immediately so the seedlings can get started before the winter. They then overwinter as small (frost-resistant) plants, ready for a growth spurt in April once the weather warms up.
The vetches are a family of wildflowers that is a sub-group within the pea and bean family. Their pretty purple flowers are quite like mini sweetpea flowers. The leaves are also very distinctive, organised in a neat row either side of the stem. Common vetch is a wildflower but is also sown by farmers in some grazing fields to improve the nutrition for ruminants and to introduce more nitrogen into the soil.
It has been suggested that a law must have been passed in Cornwall whereby all offshore rocks must be renamed "Gull Rock"! There are examples at:
It seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon as many reports from the 1800s use different names for the rocks now named Gull Rock.
In the local dialect, the word "orestone" was used to describe such offshore rocks. An object was described as "orey" if covered in seaweed (oarweed being another name for the commonest kelp found around the Cornish coast).
Treknow (which in Cornish means "the valley place") is perhaps one of the oldest "industrial" settlements in the area dating back to Mediaeval times, based mainly on slate quarrying with some early metal mining. The physical structure of Treknow - its bowl-like formation, in parts literally carved out of the rock - could be the result of early slate excavations. It was in direct response to the needs of industrial workers, in the expanding quarrying industry of the early 19th century, that the rows of cottages were constructed. The use of slate for roofs, chimneys, walls and paving, which contributes so greatly to their character, is further testimony to the dominant role of the local industry.
The woods in Trebarwith Valley provide an ideal habitat for buzzards.
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 deeply-cut holloway from Treknow to Trebarwith Strand provided access to the harbour and a route for the pack animals to bring lime-rich sand from the beach to neutralise the acidic soil.
Bracken is both poisonous and carcinogenic to many grazing animals which will avoid it if at all possible. Eating bracken is not recommended as it is thought that the carcinogenic properties may also apply to humans based on the circumstantial evidence that Japan, where young bracken fronds are a delicacy, has the highest levels of stomach cancer in the world.
The beach at Trebarwith was recorded as "Trebarrow" on maps in the 1600s and even during the 20th Century, it was called this by some locals. By Victorian times it was recorded on OS maps as Trebarwith Strand. Several small beaches span the bay and at low tide these all join to form a mile long ribbon of golden sand.
Trebarwith Strand is in the centre and is the lifeguard-patrolled area. It's sandy on the left and, to the right side, there are more rocks including some good rock pools. The large pool beside the rocks on the right side of the beach is known as "Horse Pool" from when horses were used to transport slate and sand, and this provided somewhere for them to cool off from their heavy work.
If the tide is out, there are some rockpools on the right-hand side of Trebarwith Strand towards Lill Cove.
Rockpool fishing is quite a popular childhood pass-time as a number of species can be lured out from hiding places by a limpet tied on a piece of cotton (leave a trailing end as if anything swallows the limpet, very gently pulling both ends of the cotton will cause it to release the cotton-tied limpet from its gullet). If you are intending to put the creatures into a bucket: ensure it is large, filled with fresh seawater and kept in the shade; ideally place in a couple of rocks for the creatures to hide under; do not leave them in there more than a couple of hours or they will exhaust their oxygen supply; ensure you release them into one of the rockpools from which you caught them, preferably a large one (carefully removing any rocks from your bucket first to avoid squashing them). Species you're likely to encounter are:
In 1886, an iron-hulled sailing ship, named the "Sarah Anderson", got into difficulties off Tintagel Head in a violent gale then blew up and sank off Trebarwith Strand. According to one source, the ship was carrying a cargo of 966 tons of manganese ore and 15 tons of dye. According to another source, it was hinted that she might also be carrying copper, silver and gold. Due to the huge waves, the Port Isaac lifeboat was unable to launch and the ship was out of range of the marine rescue rockets brought to the shore at Trebarwith Strand. All the 14 crew and 4 passengers (2 women, including the captain's wife, and 2 children) perished. Divers report that the hull is now almost entirely gone. One section (presumably the stern) stands about 3m high and is separated from the main wreckage; the remainder consists of the ore cargo with the odd piece of steel protruding.
The beach at the bottom of the cliff to your left is Lill Cove.
A small water-powered copper mine existed on the cliff slopes above Lill Cove and was worked until the early-mid 19th Century. A hollow in the cliff was dammed to form a reservoir which was fed by a leat; the reservoir in turn was used to drive a waterwheel to pump out the groundwater draining into the mineshaft. Little remains now as some massive landslips on this part of the cliff have obliterated the majority of the mine workings.
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.
There are 9 slate quarries along the coast path between Tintagel Church and Trebarwith Strand. Slate quarrying began here in the early 14th Century and ended just before The Second World War. The slate was exported from Tintagel Haven and later from boats moored along Penhallic Point.
Cutting the stone and loading it onto boats was harsh work and could be lethal. A local man - Alan Menhenick - recalled in the 1920s: "we worked with the tides, around the clock. I've been at the quarry at four in the morning. When the tide was in, we blasted; when the tide was out, we went down and collected the slate". In 1889, three men vanished into the sea when the face that they were boring sheared off the cliff.
The Lanterdan and West quarries above Vean Hole and Hole Beach at Trebarwith Strand were once some of the biggest in North Cornwall. In Lanterdan quarry there is a tall, distinctive, pinnacle of rock. This was left behind as the slate in the pinnacle was not of a sufficiently good quality; shorter pinnacles were left in West Quarry for the same reason. These chunks of inferior-quality slate were known locally as "scullocks".
The quarry workings never reached the shoreline as there is a fault along the base of the quarry, known as the Trambley Cove Formation. This is made of volcanic lava which was no good to the quarrymen. Lanterdan Quarry is now owned by the National Trust and is a site of geological interest for two reasons. The first is that it contains brachiopod (shellfish) fossils. Second, a rare mineral called monazite is present which contains rare-earth (lanthanide) metals.
The headland ahead is Penhallic Point.
Penhallic Point is the long headland along the northern edge of the bay at Trebarwith Strand. In the late 1800s, a wharf (which has now been taken by the sea) was constructed at Penhallic Point where the cliff edge was trimmed to form a 100ft vertical face. Ships could lie against this face as there is a natural deep-water berth alongside the point. The slate was lowered by crane down into their holds.
A path from the top of the point zig-zags down to a grassy platform where there is a lifebuoy. It's possible to get down onto the rocks from here, but only in the summer when the rocks are dry.
If there are sheep in the field and you have a dog, make sure it's securely on its lead (sheep are prone to panic and injuring themselves even if a dog is just being inquisitive). If the sheep start bleating, this means they are scared and they are liable to panic.
If there are pregnant sheep in the field, be particularly sensitive as a scare can cause a miscarriage. If there are sheep in the field with lambs, avoid approaching them closely, making loud noises or walking between a lamb and its mother, as you may provoke the mother to defend her young.
Sheep may look cute but if provoked they can cause serious injury (hence the verb "to ram"). Generally, the best plan is to walk quietly along the hedges and they will move away or ignore you.
The footpath comes out on the lane between Treknow and Tregatta which was part of the mediaeval route which led to the castle at Tintagel.
Where tracks met in a T-junction, this presented a challenge for horses and carts as these didn't have a tight turning circle. The triangular islands often visible on junctions of tracks and small lanes today were formed by the cartwheels cutting the corners of the junction. Eventually these cut corners were formalised as surfaced tracks with a grassy triangular island in the centre.
The area of the Atlantic between North Cornwall and Ireland is also known as the Celtic Sea - a name first suggested in the 1920s. The newfangled name has caught on more in academic and surveying circles. The public generally use "Atlantic" where "the bit of it near here" is automatically implied.
Celandines grow either side of the path.
Another name for celandine is pilewort as the tubers of the plant are said to resemble piles. Based on the "doctrine of signatures" (i.e. a plant that looks a bit like something must be a cure for it), the resemblance suggested to mediaeval herbalists that celandines could be used to cure haemorrhoids. This was done by applying an ointment containing crushed celandine leaves to the relevant area. Since celandine contains a poisonous compound, some attempts to ingest celandine in an effort to cure piles have not gone too well.
Most waymarks you'll encounter are yellow, which is the convention for marking public footpaths, of which there are over 2000 miles in Cornwall. Permissive paths often use other colours such as black, white or green. Red and blue are reserved for byways and bridleways, respectively.
As well as being environmentally-friendly, wool fibre has a number of technical properties that synthetic fibres lack including fire-resistance and the ability to absorb and release moisture. Some novel high-tech uses are now being found for it including biodegradable ground cover matting to control soil erosion. As concerns grow over the effects of plastics in the environment and micro plastics turning up in all kinds of unwanted places (such as 80% of the human blood samples tested in a study), this may also lead to a renaissance in natural fibres including wool. It may therefore not be too long before demand increases and fields are once again full of neatly-shorn sheep.
The word "crow" is sometimes used to refer to the whole crow family (including jackdaws, rooks and ravens) and sometimes specifically to the common (carrion) crow. Carrion crows can be distinguished from their cousins by being totally black (jackdaws have grey heads, rooks have pale beaks) and having a slender and fairly straight beak (i.e. not the broad beak with a hooked top that a raven has). Biologists use the word "corvids" for "crow family" to avoid ambiguity, or to show off.
Jackdaws are very adept vocal mimics and have been known to sing virtually anything including opera and Madonna! They can be trained to copy the human voice but only for single words or short phrases.
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
As well as grazing in some years, the fields here are sometimes used for arable crops such as barley.
Unlike wheat, where the grains pop out fairly easily from their husks and simple threshing will release them, the husks of barley are firmly stuck to the grain. A mechanical dehulling process is used to free the grain which is then known as pot barley. This is often then steam-processed to remove the bran to create a polished form of barley grains known as pearl barley which contain less of the fibre. Despite being more expensive to produce, pearl barley seems to be sold at cheaper prices for human consumption than pot barley presumably due to higher levels of demand.
When a cereal grain germinates, enzymes are released which break down the starch into sugars to feed the new plant. By allowing grains to germinate and then quickly stopping this by heating and drying them before sugars in the grains are consumed by the plant, the sugars can then be extracted. This process is known as malting and the sugary syrup (malt extract) that is produced is used for brewing beer and to sweeten the honeycomb in Maltesers. The sticky syrup also gives malt loaf its squishy quality.
The first record of the settlement of Tregeath is from the mediaeval period - it was documented in 1298 as Tregeth. The "tre" suggests a farmstead dating from the Early Mediaeval period (the "Dark Ages" before the Norman Conquest) when Cornish was still spoken widely by landowners. Other than this, nothing is known about the origin of the name.
Some locals call this lane Menadue (since it goes to Menadue Mill and Farm) although on maps it's Trenale Lane.
Menadue is the name of a farm and mill on the downs above Trewarmett. The place name Menadue is possibly from the Cornish word meneth which means hill, and due is the word for black, i.e. "Black Hill". The hill in this case is the one that overlooks Tintagel with Condolden Barrow at the summit.
Park Farm was derelict in the 1970s; when it was converted into holiday accommodation, the fields still contained many farming implements of the 19th century including horse-drawn ploughs and carts. Exactly how far the farm here dates back is unknown, though an axe-head from the Bronze Age was found amongst a pile of stones in the garden. The name is from the Cornish word Park which means "field".
The engine house on the top of the hill on your left was part of the Prince of Wales Quarry.
The engine house in Trewarmett is the only one preserved in North Cornwall. It was built in 1870 and the beam engine, installed in 1871, was used to drive a wire ropeway to haul slate, as well as pumping water out of the quarry pit (which is now a lake). You can safely wander around inside (there are grilles covering the pit which once contained the beam engine).
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.
The main building of the Port William Inn is recorded in its present location on OS maps from the 1880s but no use as a public house is recorded in this period. The more recently-added outdoor terrace and conservatories offer spectacular views of the beach and coastline for weary walkers to enjoy some well-deserved refreshment. The interior is decorated with various trophies recovered from ship wrecks such as brass propellers, lanterns and even half of a rowing boat!
A track shown on the 1880s maps ran past the buildings all the way to Port William beach and this was still usable in the 1980s. The 1973 film "Malachi's Cove" was filmed on the track and the beach. Since then, a cliff fall has buried part of the track near the beach and more recently a section of the track closer to the pub has been undermined by the sea so it is now closed to the public.
The "herringbone" style of walling built with tightly packed alternating diagonal slate courses, is unique to Cornwall's heritage.
It is known locally as "Curzy Way" or "Kersey Wave", based on the Cornish word kersy which means "reeds", perhaps referring to a square weave pattern. It is also sometimes known as "Jack and Jill" which is likely to be based on the falling down part of the nursery rhyme.
Traditionally, hedges (stone boundary walls) were built with whatever was cleared out of the fields, whilst buildings were constructed from stone that was quarried and cut. On a long wall, the herringbone sections are often between "towers" of flat-laid slate (built from the larger and squarer stones) which helped to prevent the wall slumping sideways.
Several beaches in Cornwall have a large rockpool known locally as the "Horse Pool": at Trebarwith Strand it's the large pool ahead of the entrance onto the beach and at Holywell Bay it's in front of the cave just before the Holy Well cave. Treyarnon and Porthcothan also have pools known by this name. The name stems from when working horses were given a wash off and cool down on hot days. In the case of Trebarwith Strand, many of the horses were involved in hauling slate from nearby quarries or sand from the beach.
Hemp agrimony is a fairly tall plant that grows in damp places and produces large number of tiny pink flowers from July to September, hence an alternative common name of "raspberries and cream". The flowers are rich in nectar so bees and butterflies are often found on them. It's one of the later plants to be in flower in the hedgerows so it keeps bees and butterflies going during the early autumn.
It is unrelated to hemp and also to plants in agrimony family. The reason for "hemp" in common name and "cannabinum" in the Latin name is because the leaves look a bit like cannabis. A name of "holy rope" has also been used for it which may be another reference to hemp.
The area around the gully leading down to Trebarwith strand is a volcanic lava flow which was metamorphised later on by the heat and pressure from continental collisions into the blue rocks. The ripples in the flow and the holes from bubbles can still be seen in the rocks.
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