Luxulyan Valley Walk

I almost always come home a little wiser from our walking days; there's always something to learn. One lesson I took from last Sunday's expedition was never to rely on the driver knowing where we are going, even if he 'has' got SatNav! I'd quite deliberately decided that it wasn't necessary for me to look up the details of where the meet was - the person who'd kindly offered me a lift had decided he'd rely on my local knowledge and hadn't bothered to check the exact destination to programme into his machine. As a result we actually went past where we should have stopped and spent some time wandering around the village of Luxulyan trying to find the Treffry Viaduct, which was a mile or so back down the road. We'd been so busy concentrating on whether to turn right or left at the bottom of the hill (Ms Garmin was silent on the subject) that we hadn't even noticed the carpark!

I'm not all that enamoured of the SatNav, anyway. On Sunday it took us to the village, yes, but along the very narrowest of lanes with grass and 'cornish hedges' ( high vegetation covered rock walls) either side. There are wider, more travelled, signposted lanes to choose from. Later, when directing us to a nearby village for lunch, the SatNav chose a lane so narrow that there wasn't quite room for a toddler on a pony on a leading rein to squeeze past the wing mirrors of our stationary procession of three cars, and a man in a hi-vis jacket and a stetson leapt up the 'hedge' rather than risk us driving past! What was wrong, I asked myself, in going up the hill to Luxulyan and then taking the signposted lane to Lanlivery - single track it may have been, but at least it had passing places.

But I digress. We went for a walk. The fog was thick and the air was icy in Saltash, but at Treffry Viaduct the sun was shining and the sky was blue and it was almost warm enough to take my gloves off! Luxulyan Valley follows the river Par deeply and steeply down to the coast. There were quarries there and tramways to take the granite and the clay out. Quite a lot of work has been done there on improving paths, clearing leats and making some of the industrial remains safe, making it a pleasant place for a walk even in midwinter. One's boots got muddy, of course, but the mud was china clay white, which is much superior to the usual brown stuff... The Friends of Luxulyan Valley have a website at www.luxulyanvalley.co.uk with photographs and a history lesson which I wish I'd looked at before we went.

We were six people and four dogs on Sunday. At one stage the conversation turned to wondering how many dogs made a pack and whether our motley group of collies-and-a-spaniel would count. Almost immediately afterwards our path was crossed by a 'real' dog pack - seven identical golden retrievers bouncing around in a friendly manner, accompanied by four or five assorted humans.

We followed one tramway down from the viaduct on the left side of the valley, starting high above the river and the railway line, descending steeply past cataracts, water wheels and mysterious remains of buildings, to meet another tramway which took us back up alongside the boulder strewn white water rapids they call the river Par to our starting point, in nice time to repair to the Crown at Lanlivery for an excellent and very welcome Sunday lunch.