Walking with wild ponies

(picture by Vanessa)


Bodmin moor wild ponies aren't quite as wild as they're supposed to be. This one - the shortest, gingerest, hairiest of them all - has quite obviously worked out that the Foredown car park is the most likely place to profit from the visitors. It is the first car park past the cattle grid, coming out of Liskeard on to Bodmin moor, and very popular with walkers, kite flyers and people with interesting things in their pockets.

Yesterday, Sunday, was shining spring - three days of nonstop rain (good for the gardens) gave way to proper spring weather, and Caradon Hill beckoned. Round it rather than up it, a nice long moorland walk with proper Cornish mine workings (the picturesque stone kind) ponies, sheep, buzzards and skylarks, pools full of frogspawn, streams full of weed, ankle deep mud, gorse in flower, new grass being nibbled as fast as it can grow.

We started at Foredown, and as soon as we opened the car door the pony trotted over. Nose to nose it went with Ty, pony and dog breathing each other's breath for a good five minutes before Ty turned his head away. I got the treatment next, being thoroughly investigated in all the places I could possibly have pockets (all empty, alas!). I eventually gave in and gave the pony half a dog biscuit for sheer cheek, although I know this is not to be recommended, gets them into bad habits, etc. Duly rewarded, it strolled off and was last seen nudging a young girl in pink three cars down.

So to the walk. Five people, four dogs, from Foredown anticlockwise round Caradon Hill. The plan was to go to Crow's Nest but we got diverted by some really attractive mineworkings and the dogs' insistence on playing in every pool, puddle and stream we came across, so went up past Gonamena instead to Minions.

Minions itself was very busy with parked cars and serious mudrunners in lycra, but we had a very welcome pasty and cuppa sitting outside the teashop before moving on. From there we made our way back to Foredown along the old dismantled railway track to complete the circuit. Ty's friend had wandered on by then but been replaced by other equine panhandlers...

The weather wasn't perfect, or even very consistent. One moment the sun was blazing down and fleeces were being tentatively unzipped, the next the clouds came over and the cold wind made its presence felt - hats back on! Bracing, I think they call it... To complete a very pleasant afternoon we had a couple of hours sitting on the terrace at the Copley with Ron and the Old Codgers until the sun went down.

I think it may be spring, finally...

Mid-march, and finally the weather is turning. Skylarks, primroses and heavily pregnant sheep were the outstanding natural features of today's walk, far outweighing (for me, anyway) the 'sights' we went to see. No hat, no gloves, boots worn but not necessary (no mud); I wimped out and changed my fleece for a waterproof in the car park as we assembled because a Big Black Cloud appeared overhead, but it went away again and we had glorious spring sunshine and a gentle breeze. Lovely. What Sunday morning walks 'should' be, but so often aren't...
We assembled in the car park of the Miner's Arms at Hemerdon for a walk planned to include a visit to the workings of Hemerdon Mine before lunch. It was a one-way walk rather than circular so involved a bit of logistics carrying eight walkers (and one dog) to our planned starting point in a helicopter flying field. Model helicopters, but definitely flying, which led to minor misgivings in the part of our drivers as to what precisely they'd tell Churchill if we came back to find one of the whirlybirds had whirled into a car!
Uphill from there across a long stretch of recently burnt moorland. Surely they don't burn it deliberately this time of year? Skylarks show up astonishingly well against a black background, anyway. Then down through woods to a ford and back up again to the old mine. My expectations of old mine workings have become Cornish, it would seem - I was expecting stone buildings and chimneys, perhaps a waterwheel or two - but Hemerdon was a tungsten mine of 20th century origin, all broken concrete and metal reinforcing, crumbling but not at all in a picturesque way. There are, apparently, plans to expand and renew the mine on an open cast basis in the near future, so our walk leader kept reminding us that this could well be the last time we could walk that way.
All downhill from there back to the Miner's Arms, across a couple of fields of pregnant sheep, through pretty woods which are, apparently, a paintball jungle (complete with forts, graveyards and other scenarios to satisfy the inner cowboy or indian that all men hide within them) and down a quiet lane to the pub for lunch.
The Miner's Arms looks from the front like a typical old stone country pub, although it has a suspiciously large car park - and the bar part is old, traditional, flagged floors, low ceilings, the lot - but there's a large modern restaurant built on to the back. When the weather is slightly warmer than today they open the glass wall up and serve food on a big terrace as well. We'd not realised the significance of the date when we booked it a couple of months ago, but of course it was Mother's Day and therefore very busy. With a special Mother's Day Menu or nothing. The food was lovely, though, and the company as always even better.
It's been a long winter, this. Flowers, trees, birds, tadpoles, all delayed waiting for the sun. And today it happened, at last.

March Winds and Daffodils

"March comes in like a lion..." is the saying. This year the wild winds are a couple of days late arriving, but here with a vengeance this morning. A pair of woodpigeons are trying to build a nest high in an ivy-covered alder right at the top of the coombe as it sways in the breeze. Down at the creek the tide is just retreating from its highest of the year, leaving behind a thick mat of twigs and vegetation funnelled in by the wind. And there where the coombe is steepest, nearest the shore on the south facing slope, the first daffodils are in flower. Always there first, but within a week they'll be flowering everywhere. Spring is definitely, positively, on its way!