Cornwall's Hidden History Blog
Bodmin Moor feels like a place with secrets and stories to tell. Perhaps it’s the wildness, the wide open spaces and the distance that makes the visitor feel that this is a place that you will never really know completely or quite understand. I do know that it is under my skin. If I didn’t live […]
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Carwynnen quoit has fallen more than once. It’s giant stones have been raised up again and again, the first time 5000 years ago, then again in the 19th century and the last time in 2014. Yes, unfortunately it has taken me this long to get around to visiting but the twisting back roads led me to a impressive […]
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One of my favourite walks takes me on a lovely loop from Trevalga along a stunning stretch of coastline up through Rocky Valley and back to Trevalga via Trethevy. The Rocky Valley walk is quite famous in these parts and it’s close proximity to the surfing mecca of Newquay means that it gets plenty of […]
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Bees are fascinating creatures and what they give us (a little unwillingly!) is one of the world’s most delicious natural gifts. But like so many foods these days we as consumers know little about how it gets to our toast. I could tell you all about how many bees it takes to make a teaspoon of honey or how […]
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I really don’t remember the last time that I visited Lands End, for me the famous point that so many travel to see has been turned into some kind of strange theme park, expensive and overcrowded. I do however still love it’s sister headland, Cape Cornwall. In the summer it also has it’s fair share of visitors […]
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In an earlier post I wrote about the Cornish word Hireth, which means a longing for somewhere, and how many people can feel a deep affliation or connection to a place. For me, Bodmin Moor with its mysterious relics, wild landscape and wide horizons is one of those places. Canon Elliott-Binns’ 1955 book Medieval Cornwall contains this description – “The […]
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I have always loved the mystery that a ruined place creates. They are on one hand like a blank page on which I can jot down any story that my imagination likes and then on the other they of course already have a real history to discover. Real characters and real events. The past halted in time […]
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John Knill loved St Ives. And more than 2oo years after his death St Ives is still remembering him. This rather eccentric philanthropist (sometimes smuggler) wanted to provide for the people he had grown so fond of. And to also guarantee that his name would be remembered for all time in the town that he made […]
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Roughly around 20 years ago I bought an old camera, second hand at a flea-market, it was a Minolta SR-7. I don’t remember what I paid for it but I wasn’t earning much at the time so it can’t have been expensive. I had fun with it for a few years and then the speed and light-weight […]
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Grandpa Dale was a quiet, stern looking man who always wore a shirt, tie and waistcoat on the farm, even on the sunniest days. He was hard but never unkind and I adored him. I followed him about the farm like a puppy, getting under his feet. He always carried a roll of blackcurrant fruit […]
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