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Showing posts from February, 2015

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 millio

The most southwesterly walk

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

New walk at the Gunwalloe coves

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 walk: Mylor to Flushing

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 .

Help us to create a list of snowdrop walks in Cornwall

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