Day 34: Bodmin to St Dennis 13 miles

We join Cathy for breakfast at 7:30, then say goodbye for the next two days, until we get to Truro. We leave the bustling, commercial town of Bodmin initially via the A389. It’s busy but the west of town is more residential compared with the industrial estates of the east, so there is a good pavement.

Needless to say, Bodmin is on a steep hill, so it was up out of the town then down the other side on a reasonably quiet unclassified road. It’s another beautiful, sunny morning. It’s very up and down again, but we make good progress to reach and cross the A30 at Reperry Cross. This monument is one we can actually see.

We are now briefly on the Saints Way. This is another coast to coast trail from Padstow to Fowey, but it’s only 27 miles as Cornwall is so narrow at this point. The route was developed after some walkers found some forgotten crosses in 1984. These were the markers for pilgrims making their way from Wales and Ireland to Brittany and into Europe. It is sometimes known as the Mariners Way, as it was also used as a commercial route. In this way, pilgrims and traders alike avoided the treacherous waters off Land’s End.

We follow the road past Mena and Mena Moor until we arrive at the small settlement of Conce, where we pick up a track and our first footpath of the day. The plan is for the rest of the day to be spent on an intricate network of footpaths (though this is always a risk as paths are not always in a passable state). Following the usual combination of a stile over the modern fence with a precarious stone ladder over an ancient boundary wall, this path works beautifully and we walk happily along passing a herd of handsome cows basking in the sun. We then cross the A391 and take a track to Savath, where we stop for our mid-morning break.

We next take a footpath towards Criggan. This has a phenomenal double stile, which appears to have handrails to help across the high, wide boundary wall. Unfortunately, the first handrail has rotted at its base and is more of a hazard than a help.

We then take a track to another path across marshland, which appears unkempt, but unfolds invitingly around every corner, with walkways laid over the boggier sections. It transpires that this area is being restored to encourage the Marsh Fritillary butterfly.

We then pass under a railway bridge and find ourselves on a disused railway track below. The railways served the extensive china clay mines which, by 1910, supplied half the world’s china clay, 1 million tonnes. China clay, also known as kaolinite, is an ultrafine granite powder. The naturally occurring mineral has significant impurities, however, the removal of which resulted in piles of waste that litter the St Austell countryside. The abandoned chimneys also still remain.

We walk along a short stretch of unadopted road then take a path towards the village of Trezaise. On the way, we stop in a field on the hill for lunch with a view of the 15th century chapel built into the granite of Roche rock. From where we’re sitting, this seems to have an Easter Island statue profile (we’re obviously quite tired/hallucinating).

In Trezaise, we turn right to head towards the road leading to next footpath. A sign says the road is permanently closed, however, and we don’t want to risk going up there and having to turn back, so we reverse our steps and arrive at a road that isn’t even on the Ordnance Survey map.

We cross a new roundabout and walk up to the next footpath, but that is blocked and the access to it is locked, so we head down to another new roundabout, which at least has a path running alongside it.

We go over the roundabout and turn downhill to reach another footpath. For the third time in half an hour, we come up against a closure, so turn back up the hill and head back onto the road and into the oncoming traffic. We turn right at a T-junction in the hope of finding another smaller road into St Dennis. It looks fine on the OS map, but we check Google maps as well, just in case. This shows that the road we are actually walking on is closed, so none of our navigation aids seem to be much help. We risk it and, fortunately, this time it goes.

From there, it’s a bit longer on an unadopted road and then a footpath into St Dennis and Commercial Inn, our stop for the night (and the site for my talk on the Royal College of Surgeons Parents in Surgery webinar).

Total distance: 469 miles