Day 33: Pensilva to Bodmin 17 miles

We have an excellent breakfast at the Wheal Tor hotel, together with a visitor from Pittsburgh who’s understandably struggling with the narrow Cornish roads, then set off down the track away from the hotel. The views are panoramic and there is a real feeling of the land beginning to narrow. Much of Bodmin Moor is open access common land so there are few marked paths. We elect, therefore, to head for the road but soon find ourselves walking on a grassy trail pointing in the same general direction. We will spend the whole day picking a fragmented course along the edge of the moor. The weather is again stunning and the morning has started well.

We join the road just short of a hamlet called Crow’s Nest, perched on the hillside. It has an inviting looking pub, but it is not yet open. Generally, the villages today seem quite affluent and well kept. We follow the road a bit longer then turn off towards the village of Common Moor. We are currently on the Caradon Trail, a road route that encircles Caradon Hill. Caradon Hill was once home to the UK’s largest copper mine, but this has long since closed and the hill is now home to a television transmitter.

As we walk through Common Moor village, we see coffee and cakes advertised in the Village Hall and can’t resist popping in. The villagers are chatty and welcoming and tell us about how they bought this old Methodist chapel for the community. Built in the late 19th century, the local people are renovating it to maximise its utility. Visitors from neighbouring villages also join in the bingo and quiz nights there. We could have stayed longer, but we’ve taken our break early and must move on.

Replete with coffee and buns, we follow a footpath out of the village and across the hillside. The route starts well but is soon far from clear, not helped by the fact that the path on the ground is different from what is marked on the map. Rich tells me this sometimes happens on open access ground. The other confounding factor is that the paths are also used by cattle strolling through the trees. These both obscure turnings by congregating at junctions and churn up the ground underfoot, making progress difficult. I exit the path onto the road with extraordinarily muddy boots. Richard’s, of course, are completely dry.

The path takes us past King Doniert’s Stone. Like every other marked ancient monument so far, this is completely unidentifiable from the path (though can evidently be seen if you step up off the road below). The path takes us down to the road to cross the river Fowey, heading towards Golitha Falls. Here we can smell the very busy Inkie’s Smokestack and Saloon, but it’s way too soon to stop again, so we press on up the steep road and down the other side to Draynes.

We climb out of the valley and take a path across a lawn that leads to the grassy, open hillside. The views are stupendous, the terrain underfoot is lovely and sheep and bullocks are grazing in the shade beneath the trees. It’s all wonderful apart from the increasingly high and rickety stiles between the fields, occasionally laced with an electric fence. They become so difficult to negotiate in places, that we start throwing the map down from the tops. I ask Rich if we’re struggling so much because we’re old and sh*t. ‘A bit like the stiles,’ he replies.

We reach a farm track and as we leave, the farmer stops in his 4x4 to check that we’re OK. It’s uphill again to a road and at the summit, we take another path across the moor land. We are evidently on the Two Valleys Walk here. This is a 5.1 mile circular walk from St Neot through the valley of the rivers Loveny and Fowey. This section goes up through a prehistoric settlement which, yet again, we cannot identify. We can, however, see Caradon Hill, the site of Wheal Tor Hotel. I think it still looks quite close and Rich is pleased by how far away it is, so at least we’re consistent.

We then walk down into the deep valley to cross the river Loveny and then back up the hill to locate a footpath back onto the hillside. Unfortunately, the path is not identifiable from the road but we head off into the woodland and find it eventually, though it’s somewhat overgrown. The path leads up to Trevenna, the location of a wedding and event venue. There are lots of place names round here starting with the prefix ‘tre’ which means homestead or settlement in Cornish. We find a sunny patch of grass here and settle down for a Cornish pasty lunch. After lunch, it’s steeply downhill again to Pantersbridge to cross the river Warleggan.

From here, we climb up again, finally arriving at the village of Mount. Here we see a sign stating Bodmin 5 1/2 miles. Rich says that’s just by road, but I can’t see that our route is any shorter. We meet some villagers working on their cars who reassure us that Bodmin is not that far and it’s all downhill, once we cross the next hill. One of them advises us to take the left hand fork, which confirms our next bit of route.

We follow the road until Gwel-An-Nans farm then pick up a track that takes us steadily downhill. We are disgorged onto the road at the base of the track, a few hundred metres from where we should have been. We decide to follow the road into Bodmin, rather than embark upon a forest walk up and down. Again, we meet a helpful local who chats through her car window while offering to give us a lift.

The unclassified road leads us onto the A38 and I’m relieved to find that there is a pavement here. Alarmingly, this disappears before we take the bridge across the A30 and the traffic chunders past, scarily close to us. This lack of pavement continues as we walk towards the town, resulting in a car screeching to a halt in front of Richard after it rounded a corner at speed.

We are soon through the industrial estates on the outskirts of Bodmin, and finally locate a pavement as we stroll down into the town. Cathy calls us as we’re walking and, when we stop, a passerby checks that we don’t need any help. People are honestly really lovely round here.

We arrive at the Westberry Hotel just before Cathy, who is on a mercy mission to us to bring me a laptop for a webinar tomorrow, and check in for the night. It’s been a long day, but it’s worth it to see Cathy who is just back from Australia. That’s both Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor now crossed.

Total distance: 456 miles