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Poldark - the walks

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 millions of pounds today. The King of Portugal accused some prominent local gentry of robbery with violence. The outcome of the court case is not known but the estates of several prominent families grew considerably after this event.

Dollar Cove got its name from the two tonnes of Spanish silver dollars (pieces of eight) which were lost in the bay. Some elaborate recovery schemes were attempted during Victorian times but these failed; coins still occasionally wash ashore.

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Porthgwarra

The beach of Porthgwarra is still part of a large private estate - the landowners are very welcoming to visitors and provide year-round public toilets and café (open mid Feb - end Oct). The tunnel to the beach, which features in Poldark, was dug by tin miners from St Just to provide easier access to the beach for the local fishermen, and so that local farmers could collect seaweed and sand from the beach by horse and cart for use as fertiliser. The sand is composed of fragments of seashell and therefore a source of lime to counter the acidic granite soils.

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Levant and Botallack Head

In Poldark, Levant mine is cast as Tresidders Rolling Mill and the Crown Mines engine houses on Botallack Head also feature as Wheal Leisure. The Wheal Owles engine house was partly reconstructed for the filming, which was captured in a nice photo by Tim Martindale.

During the 20th Century, a number of the flooded mines were repaired and drained and the Levant mine was connected to the workings of both the Geevor mine and the Crown Mines on Botallack Head, forming a network of over 60 miles of tunnels beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In the upper levels of Crown Mines, the sound of the sea could be heard rolling pebbles along the sea bed.

In the 19th Century, the Wheal Owles workings unexpectedly connected with those of another mine which was abandoned and had therefore flooded. The water rushing into Wheal Owles caused a blast of air that blew out the miners' candles and then filled the shaft at an average of 1 foot every 2 seconds. Within 20 minutes, 75% of the mine was filled with water and the bodies of 20 miners are still somewhere in the lower levels.

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St Agnes Head

Another mining area, around St Agnes Head, is cast as the Nampara Valley in Poldark. The engine houses of Wheal Coates at Chapel Porth were connected to Vugga Cave on the beach via an adit which was used to drain the mines above sea level. The pumping engine lifted the water this far and then it ran down the adit and through the cave. If you venture to the back of the cave, you can see the adit where water still drains out of the mineshaft which is now flooded below this level.

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Porthcothan

In Poldark, Porthcothan is used for Nampara Cove. The area around Porthcothan was notorious for smuggling and many of the small inlets between Treyarnon and Porthcothan are named after the goods that were landed there. On Porthcothan beach, Will's Rock is named after a Customs officer who was left there to drown by smugglers, but survived to tell the tale.

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Charlestown

Used as Truro harbour throughout Poldark, Charlestown was built to export copper from the mines around St Austell and was later used for China Clay. Today it is often frequented by tall ships and Hollywood films such as Pirates of the Caribbean also use it as a filming location.

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Porthcurno and Pedn Vounder

The huge sandy beach of Pedn Vounder appeared in the first series of Poldark and its more well-known neighbour, Porthcurno, appears in the second series.

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Stepper Point

The entrance to Camel Estuary near Padstow is featured in the first series. The high cliffs of Stepper Point were treacherous for sailing ships as they could become becalmed and drift helplessly onto the Doom Bar, where they would be rolled over by the breakers. Rockets were used to fire lines to the shore and capstans were used to winch the ships to safety, but despite this there have been several hundred wrecks in the estuary and, occasionally, one appears from beneath the sand.

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Holywell Bay

Holywell Bay features in the second series of Poldark with Ross and Eleanora galloping their horses across the beach.

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Port Quin

Port Quin features in the second series of Poldark and was also used extensively in the 1970's Poldark series. The name is also the basis of Port Wenn - the fictional name for Port Isaac in Doc Martin and means "white cove" in Cornish.

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Bodmin Moor

The bleak moorland and rugged tors of Bodmin Moor feature heavily in Poldark. Cradock Moor near Minions is featured at the start of Poldark and the walk to the tor known as The Cheesewring overlooks this.

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The whole moor is scattered with prehistoric remains including stone circles, standing stones, tombs and the remains of huts. We've picked out a walk to Cornwall's two highest tors, which includes a good selection of prehistoric remains and a holy well.

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If you'd like to explore other parts of the Moor, there are another 16 Bodmin Moor walks.

Places and names mentioned

Some of the places and names mentioned in Poldark are historical, and there are some walks involving those too.

Illogan and Lord Bassett of Tehidy

Lord Bassett (who shot himself in the first series of Poldark) was the owner of the estate of Tehidy. The port of Portreath was one of the most important in Cornwall for the export of ore, and was connected to the mines by a horse-drawn tramway. On the beach at Portreath you can still see the bathing pools that Lord Bassett had cut into the rocks so that his daughter could "safely" bathe in the seawater. The walk also includes the woods of Illogan, home of the boisterous miners in Poldark.

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Trenwith

Wheal Trenwith was a mine in St Ives, where lots of seemingly useless black ore was dumped on the tips as an account from 1843 documents:

Pitch-blende occurs in great abundance among the copper ores of Wheal Trenwith, and was long carefully collected, and thought to be black copper ore. The low prices obtained for the ores with which it was mixed, and the inferiority of the metal they yielded, equally disappointed the miner and the copper-smelter; until a specimen of the copper was examined by Mr. Michell of Calenick, and found mixed with uranium in a metallic state. The ores were then inspected, and pitch-blende being discovered among them, its nature and prejudice to the copper ores were explained to the workmen, by whom it has been, of course, since rejected. Was there ever an instance in which an acquaintance with Mineralogy and Chemistry would have been more useful ?

Once its value was realised, nearly 700 tons were recovered, mainly from the waste tips. Today it is the site of St Ives car park and Leisure Centre but it is reported that pieces of the ore can still be found around the edges of the car park.

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