iWalk Cornwall

The Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty has the same status and level of protection as a National Park and is subdivided into 12 regions. The walks on iwalkcornwall are now catalogued with these regions (for the walks that fall into them): Hartland Pentire Point to Widemouth The Camel Estuary Trevose Head to Stepper Point St Agnes Godrevy to Portreath West Penwith South Coast Western South Coast Central South Coast Eastern Rame Head Bodmin Moor The AONB region now appears in the "Walks nearby" section in the right-hand column of the walk page, so that you can easily browse walks in the same region. You can follow the Cornwall AONB team on Facebook or Twitter for news of what's going on in these areas and they also have a blog . The also run a photo competition (closing end of Jan 2016).

Version 3.5 of the iWalk Cornwall app has just been released this morning: iWalk Cornwall app for Android on Google Play iWalk Cornwall app for Apple in the App Store The latest release includes a few extra features: The summary page now includes links to tide times, bus times, ferry times, opening times, etc. specific to the walk. You'll need a wifi or 3G signal to access these, so recommended before setting out on the walk. There is now a second-level menu (launched by "..." button) which includes a few "handy" items... One of these is a new "Camera" button (thanks to Ryan White for the suggestion) so you can quickly photograph something on your walk (e.g. wildlife) before it disappears, without having to fiddle about switching between apps to use your phone's camera. Another is a "Pause GPS" button. This allows you to reduce the battery consumption of the app during picnics etc. by manually suspending the app's use of

We have released a new version of the walks app for Android. The new app is now on Google Play: Download the new app from Google Play This is a single app from which all the walks can be purchased (similar to the current Apple app, where the app itself is free and the walks are purchased from within the app). The walks retail price will be the same as Apple at £1.49 (we charge 87p for each walk to help cover our costs, the rest is charges from Google and VAT). The new Android codebase also contains a couple of bugfixes and improvements and the unified codebase will allow us to release further improvements much more quickly. The new app architecture will also allow us to release updates to the walks much more quickly if e.g. footpaths are re-routed or we add new research to a walk. What about any "old" single-walk apps I purchased? We have removed the single walk Android apps from Google Play to prevent confusion. Any walks that have already been purchased as sing

You may have noticed that there is a lag between photos from walk testing appearing on social media, and the finished walk being published. It typically takes around three months for each walk to go through the “production” process; the photos on social media are usually from mid-way through that process. The reason that it takes this long is partly that we are usually working on several at once, and below is an outline of some of the work that goes into each one. Where to go As you’d probably guess, the first step is to plan a route. In doing so, we juggle a number of factors which are sometimes pulling in opposite directions: A circular walk, where at all possible, so that you don’t need to double back along the same route Availability of parking near the start of the walk Placing steeper terrain towards the beginning of the walk so that it gets easier as you get more tired Placing the terrain likely to involve more exploring (e.g. beaches) in the first half of the walk

The Woodland Trust run a Nature's Calendar website where they ask voluteers to record the first sightings of "indicator" species, and this is also featured on BBC Springwatch. The datasets gathered provide scientists with a better understanding of the climate over time and the differences across the country. Being the furthest south and west part of Britain, Cornwall is often the first place where these indicators appear - or to look at it another way, Spring reaches Cornwall before anyone else! One of the indicator species is hawthorn, which is fairly easy confuse with blackthorn as both have thorns and white flowers which appear in Spring. There are a few things to look for to tell them apart. As a general rule, blackthorn starts flowering on bare stems whereas hawthorn has leaves before it flowers but as you can see here the blackthorn can put on some leaf pretty fast in the sunshine to make that distinction trickier. The colour of the pollen is quite a goo

The storyline of Poldark may seem romantic, but the history of the places where it was filmed is in many cases even more dramatic than the fiction that is portrayed there. For some of the main locations featured in the Poldark series, we've crafted a circular walk where you can see the scenery that appears onscreen first hand, and also delve into the history of the area. All of the walks below are available via the iWalk Cornwall GPS-guided walks app which guides you around the route and tells you about the history and wildlife at your location. The Gunwalloe coves St Winwalloe Church at Church Cove was used for filming the funeral of the daughter of Ross and Demelza. The wrecking scenes in Poldark are shot at Dollar Cove. Fiction is not far from historical fact here, as a number of ships containing valuable goods have been wrecked along this stretch of coast. When the Portuguese ship San Antonio was wrecked in 1527, its cargo was worth the equivalent of tens of millio

Land's End and The Lizard are well-known for being the most westerly and most southerly points on the British mainland, respectively. Gwennap Head - the most southwesterly point that forms the bottom-left corner of the British mainland - is much less of a household name, but equally dramatic. View Walk The walk starts at Porthcurno and climbs the headland to the Minack theatre, which was largely the work of one very determined woman who carried sand on her back from Porthcurno beach to built it. The route along the coast passes the remains of St Levan's chapel and holy well at Porth Chapel on the way to Porthgwarra, where a tunnel leads to the beach that was created by tin miners from St Just. As the path climbs onto the headland, the runnelstone buoy can be seen, as can the currents around the Runnelstone reef. The reef lies just below the surface and was a nightmare for shipping. Despite the conical markers erected on the shore, it was hit by at least 30 stea

View Walk The walk reaches the coast at the Loe Bar which is a deceptively dangerous beach with occasional large freak waves and shingle which caves in underfoot when waves dump onto it. It is said to claim one soul every seven years. The memorial beside the coast path is to the HMS Anson which grounded on the reef which is a few metres out from the beach. Despite the proximity to the shore, many of those aboard drowned in the breakers. The local residents were so moved by this that one man spent much of his live and personal savings developing rocket life-saving apparatus, whilst the local MP campaigned to change the law so that those drowned at sea received a Christian burial. The route continues along the Gunwalloe Coves, which feature in the BBC's new Poldark series. The fish cellars at Fishing Cove have been renovated for use as a filming location, and on the other side of Halzephron cliff are Dollar and Church Coves. Dollar Cove gets its name from the Spanish t

Our 160th circular walk is also our first in the Falmouth area. View Walk The walk starts at Mylor Churchtown and follows the Coast Path from Mylor Harbour along the edge of Carrick Roads. The Carrick Roads oyster dredgers - Europe's only commercial fishing fleet under sail - can often be seen. The local bye-law preventing the use of motor boats for fishing has been successful in preserving the Oyster stocks whilst many others in the UK have been fished out. Eventually you reach Flushing, which is said to be named after the place that the Dutch engineers who built the quays originated from. Flushing has excellent views over Falmouth Harbour and therefore was a popular location for ship's captains to live in order to keep an eye on activity in the port. Some of the houses even have turrents with windows at the top, from which the harbour could be surveyed. The walk is also now available as a guided walk app for Android and in the iWalk app for iPhone .

One of the first flowers to emerge from the winter gloom are the snowdrops which have been storing energy in their little bulbs to race ahead in the first glimpse of sun and get their flowers open for any hungry bees. They were introduced into Britain during Tudor times and over the 400 or so years we have been busy inventing amazing technology to send pictures of cute kittens, they have settled in and spread through seeds where they can find a bee that's not too sleepy and bulb division when the bees aren't buzzing. When I've been out testing our walks over the last couple of years, I've seen some lovely displays of snowdrops which have brightened up my day and so I've started compiling a list of our walks with nice displays of snowdrops so others might enjoy them too. The list of snowdrop walks so far Without winning a Nobel Prize in Quantum Mechanics, it's tricky to be everywhere in Cornwall at once, so the rate I can add to this single-handedly is a b

This is a circular route of just over 5 miles, between The Merry Maidens, Lamorna Cove and St Loy's Cove in the far west of Cornwall. View Walk Parking for the walk is at either of the small, free car parks by the Merry Maidens stone circle. Rotating the walk to start at Lamorna Cove is another option but note the awkward access and the controversial parking regime which sadly seems to dominate most Tripadvisor reviews of the cove. The Merry Maidens circle was restored in Victorian times which resulted in the gain of an additional maiden. Lamorna Cove's crumbling quay was ripped apart by storms last February and now looks rather sad, but the towering granite cliffs along the east side of the cove are as impressive as ever. The walk along the coast path is fairly rocky, particularly leaving Lamorna Cove and some balancing and hopping between the boulders of St Loy's Cove is also necessary. The rewards are well worth the effort: the views from the coast path are ve

If you're considering a New Year's Resolution involving losing weight and exercise, but the idea of a gym full of sweaty people is not your idea of fun, how about instead spending your time admiring breathtaking views and discovering cool bits of Cornwall? A doctor once said to one of us that "walking isn't exercise". The doctor in question obviously hasn't been to Morwenstow! But even walking on even some of the less extreme terrain, you're likely to burn around 100 calories every hour. What is true, though, is that walking in Cornwall doesn't FEEL like exercise. There is simply too much to look at to even think about it. Despite a passion for cooking and a healthy appetite, I seem to have accidentally lost a stone and a half whilst testing walks. One little quirky fact is that you burn more fat by walking a mile rather than running a mile. When walking, your body has more time to break down fats so you burn less carbohydrate than when runni