St Breward church claims to be the highest in the county. The tall tower can be seen easily, for many miles around. The church dates from the Middle Ages (1278).
If you are crossing a field in which there are horses:
Swallows migrate to India, Arabia and Africa for the winter. Swallows cover about 200 miles in a day when they are migrating. Journeys of over 7000 miles have been recorded.
Large amounts of calcium are needed when birds lay eggs to create the eggshells. Female birds store calcium by growing a special type of leg bone which has a high density of calcium. Similar calcium storage leg bones have been found in female dinosaur species only distantly related to birds which indicates this was a general approach used by dinosaurs.
The Ramblers Association and National Farmers Union suggest some "dos and don'ts" for walkers which we've collated with some info from the local Countryside Access Team.
Do
Don't
Fields used for grazing, such as these, provide a good habitat for wildflowers, particularly where livestock are released into one field at a time, so the wildflowers in the latter fields have more time to bloom before being munched.
Dandelion is a corruption of the French dent de lion (lion's tooth), which is thought to refer to the shape of the leaves. The plant is a member of the sunflower family.
Cows are very gregarious and even short-term isolation is thought to cause severe psychological stress. This is why walking along the hedges of a field to avoid splitting a herd is so important to avoid a cow bolting in panic to rejoin its friends.
Cows are thought to have been domesticated in the Middle East around 8,500 BC. By about 6,400 BC they were being traded into Neolithic Europe. This is just about the point where the land bridge between Britain and Continental Europe (known as Doggerland) flooded with rising sea levels, so the first few cattle may have just managed to walk across.
Whereas many plants rely mainly on bitter chemicals to avoid being eaten by herbivores, thistles have gone one step further and evolved spikes. Grazing livestock will understandably avoid them which allows them to accumulate in pastureland and become a nuisance. One thistle plant produces thousands of seeds dispersed by the wind which can remain viable in the soil for up to 10 years.
The word cattle is from the same origins as "capital" and was originally a word for any portable wealth. Later it came to mean specifically (any) livestock which was still the understood meaning in Tudor times. It is only in relatively recent times that the scope has been limited further to just cows.
The farm building on the right with a pretty doorway was a chapel built in 1840 during a large Methodist revival in the area. However this quickly fizzled out and the chapel was only used for about 10 years.
During the 18th Century in Oxford, the Wesley brothers began practising their rigorous holy lifestyle which was mockingly referred to as Methodism by their peers due to their methodical practices. John Wesley began open-air preaching to recruit followers to his movement and formed small classes for each community where followers would receive ongoing religious guidance. Wesley always advocated the practise of Methodism as an extension of the Anglican faith and encouraged his followers to attend the parish church regularly. Nevertheless, senior figures within the Church of England feared the effects (or perhaps popularity) of Methodist practices, suggesting that an overdose of the Holy Spirit might be unhealthy for weak minds.
If there are sheep in the field and you have a dog, make sure it's securely on its lead (sheep are prone to panic and injuring themselves even if a dog is just being inquisitive). If the sheep start bleating, this means they are scared and they are liable to panic.
If there are pregnant sheep in the field, be particularly sensitive as a scare can cause a miscarriage. If there are sheep in the field with lambs, avoid approaching them closely, making loud noises or walking between a lamb and its mother, as you may provoke the mother to defend her young.
Sheep may look cute but if provoked they can cause serious injury (hence the verb "to ram"). Generally, the best plan is to walk quietly along the hedges and they will move away or ignore you.
In the farm at Treswallock, a mediaeval granite stone was found which is thought to be a "float stone" - a grooved stone which protruded from a smelting furnace. It is therefore thought that there might have been a smelting works (known as a "blowing house") here during mediaeval times.
Blowing houses were mills used for smelting tin and are documented in Cornwall as early as 1402. A pair of bellows was powered by a water wheel, and was used to drive air into a furnace. An account from the late 18th century describes the operation:
The fire-place, or castle, is about six feet perpendicular, two feet wide in the top part each way, and about fourteen inches in the bottom, all made of moorstone and clay, well cemented and clamped together. The pipe or nose of each bellows is fixed ten inches high from the bottom of the castle, in a large piece of wrought iron, called the Hearth-eye. The tin and charcoal are laid in the castle, stratum super stratum, in such quantities as are thought proper; so that from eight to twelve hundred weight of Tin, by the consumption of eighteen to twenty-four sixty gallon packs of charcoal, may be smelted in a tide or twelve hours time.
The molten metal drained from the bottom of the furnace into a granite trough from which it was ladled into stone moulds. A stick was inserted into each, which burned away to leave a hole which could be used to lever the ingot from the mould.
Hawthorn berries have traditionally been used to make fruit jellies as they contain pectin and have an apple-like flavour. A reason for making seedless jellies is that the seeds in hawthorn berries contain a compound called amygdalin, which is cyanide bonded with sugar. In the gut this is converted to hydrogen cyanide.
There are two species of hawthorn found in the UK. Common hawthorn (also known as one-seed hawthorn) has a single seed in each berry. The other species - known as midland or woodland hawthorn - has two seeds per berry (and 2 stigmas in the flower rather than one). In Cornwall, the "midland" species is - as you might guess from the name - not that common.
The moorland to your left is known as the Treswallock Downs and the tor at the summit is Alex Tor.
Tors started out as a lump of granite beneath the surface, which cracked vertically into squares and then part-way through horizontally to form something resembling a stuck-together stack of square pancakes. Millions of years of weathering then gradually rounded these off and widened the cracks between the layers to result in a more burger-like appearance.
In some cases the horizontal cracks didn't go all the way through so the layers are still joined (the skewer through the brioche bun to stretch the burger analogy to its limit). In the cases where they did fully separate, a massive rocking stone such as the famous Logan Rock at Treen could be created, or the whole lot could collapse into a pile of huge rocks.
The "basins" on the tops of some of the tors are also the result of repeated freezing and thawing of water which has collected on the surface.
The word is from the Celtic language but is likely to have come from the Latin turris, meaning "tower", derived from a similar word in Ancient Greek.
As you reach the top of the hill, there are some remains of prehistoric hut circles on the hillside, in the direction of the farm to your right.
The low stone walls remaining as hut circles were once the foundations of a round house. The granite foundations were likely to have been set into cob (mud and straw) walls which provided insulation and draft exclusion over bare-stone walls. A conical thatched roof on a timber frame rested on top of the walls. Heating was via a central fire which required some care with the thatched roof - presumably roof fires were not unheard of! These buildings varied in size from a just over a metre in diameter up to 10 metres. Some had walled enclosures attached and a few also had internal partitions.
Looking across the barren granite landscape of Bodmin Moor, it may seem strange that so many settlements can be found here from the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods. About 10,000 years ago, Bodmin Moor was almost entirely covered in forest, and the Neolithic tribes would have lived in forest clearings. During the Bronze Age, the majority of forest was cleared for farmland. The burning and grazing, over several thousand years, has resulted in poor soils which are naturally quite acidic due to the granite rocks. This, together with the exposure to the wind, is why the few trees on the moor today are generally stunted.
Several species of heather grow in Cornwall and are most easily recognised when they flower from July to September. The one with the most brightly coloured (purple) flowers is known as bell heather due to the bell-shaped flowers. This is the earliest one to start flowering - normally in June. Bell heather is usually interspersed with ling or common heather which has much smaller flowers which are usually paler and pinker and come out at the start of July. A third kind known as cross-leafed heath is less abundant but can be recognised by the pale pink bell-shaped flowers that grow only near the tips of the stems, resembling pink lollipops. A fourth species known as Cornish heath grows only on the Lizard and has more elaborate flowers which are mostly pale with a dark purple crown at the front.
The area of Bodmin Moor designated as an Outstanding Natural Beauty also has an International Dark Sky designation due to an exceptionally high quality night sky. Cornwall Council has committed to protect this as part of its Planning considerations.
King Arthur's Hall is a rectangular enclosure on the downs near Casehill, which are consequently known as King Arthur's Downs. It has been known as King Arthur's Hall since at least Tudor times, and is marked on maps drawn in the early 1600s. Historians are scornful of the King Arthur connotations, but are unsure of its exact purpose. Many think that due to the standing stones, it was a ceremonial site. It has also been suggested that it may have had an altogether more practical purpose - as a cattle compound. Estimates date the structure to around 2000 BC, in the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age.
Facing out from the enclosure entrance, the complex of buildings directly ahead is Ivey Farm, used for filming Nampara cottage in the BBC's Poldark series. The moorland between here and the cattle grid into the property is Access Land, but note that beyond the cattle grid is private land.
There are 33 designated National Landscape regions in England many of which were created at the same time as the National Parks. In fact the AONB status is very similar to that of National Parks.
A single Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) was established in 1959 and is itself subdivided into 12 sections. 11 of these are stretches of the coastline and the 12th is Bodmin Moor. In 2023, the AONBs in England and Wales were renamed National Landscapes to better reflect the similarity in their status to National Parks.
The walls are built from the pieces of granite removed from the fields to make them easier to cultivate.
Granite mostly contains slightly acidic chemical compounds, and consequently there is nothing to neutralise acids arising from plant decay and carbon dioxide dissolved in rainwater, resulting in acidic moorland soils.
The stream you cross is a tributary of the De Lank river.
The De Lank River springs from Rough Tor Marsh, between the two highest peaks on Bodmin Moor and joins the River Camel near Blisland. It is an important wildlife habitat, noted for diverse and abundant flora and fauna and its surrounding banks, woodlands and marshes have been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Special Area of Conservation (SAC). Together with the River Camel, the De Lank is an important habitat for the otter which is present along the whole length of the river.
The name is reported as being from a Cornish name which is recorded as Dinlonk. The Cornish word lonk means gully. The name of the riverside settlement Lank is almost certainly related.
The property was owned for a number of years by the singer Will Young who became famous after winning the X-Factor in 2002. His reason for selling it was that his career meant that he was unable to spend much time here and he felt this was a waste of a beautiful property.
The ponies on Bodmin Moor are semi-feral: they are all owned by farmers, but allowed to roam free on the moor. Many are not microchipped and look similar to others, so for people other than their owners, it can be difficult to tell to whom they actually belong. During the winter, natural food is scarce so the farmers supplement the ponies' diets; this prevents the ponies wandering off altogether.
The Beast of Bodmin Moor is a phantom wild cat. Bodmin Moor became a centre of sightings of panther-like cats with occasional reports of mutilated slain livestock.
A resident population of big cats is exceedingly unlikely due to the large numbers necessary to maintain a breeding population, plus climate and food supply issues would make survival in this habitat unlikely. One hypothesis is that alien big cats could have been imported as part of private collections or zoos, and later escaped or been set free. In these circumstances it's likely an escaped big cat would not be reported to the authorities due to the illegality of owning and importing the animals.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food conducted an official investigation in 1995 and found that there was "no verifiable evidence" of exotic felines loose in Britain, and that the mauled farm animals could have been attacked by common indigenous species. However it was noted "the investigation could not prove that a 'big cat' is not present."
Before the Industrial Revolution, gorse was valued as a fuel for bread ovens and kilns as it burns rapidly, very hot and with little ash. It was in such demand that there were quite strict rules about how much gorse could be cut on common land.
In more recent times, due to reliance on fossil fuels, this is now out of balance and gorse has increased in rural areas which have been abandoned agriculturally.
Rosebay willowherb is a tall plant with a spike of pink flowers in late summer which can often be seen beside paths and tracks. Their long leaves have a distinctive thin, white vein along the centre.
It is a pioneer species which is good at colonising disturbed ground as its seeds travel long distances in the wind and remain viable in the soil for many years. It was considered a rare species in Britain in the 18th century but spread along the corridors cleared for railways in Victorian times.
Cornwall had a number of its own peculiar units of measurement:
St Breward is on the northwest side of Bodmin moor and the parish covers both Roughtor and Brown Willy. The name of the village is said by some to come from the 6th century Cornish Saint Branwalader. Others say it is from a 13th century bishop of Exeter. Previously the village was called Simonward which, according to legend, was the name of the brewer to King Arthur's household although that might have been concocted in the Old Inn after a few ales.
The Old Inn in St Breward dates back to the 11th Century when it provided shelter for the monks who built the neighbouring church, and claims to be Cornwall's highest Inn. There is an open fire in winter in the 11th Century granite fireplace. The pub was used as the setting for the TV comedy drama, Doc Martin, when the baby was born to the main characters.
The little yellow flowers with four petals all over the moor in July are tormentil (Potentilla erecta). Its common names include Bloodroot and Flesh and Blood because roots yield a red dye which is still used as an ingredient for artists' colours (tormentil red). The roots also have very a high tannin content and have even been used to tan leather. Extracts from the plant have been widely used in folk medicine and is it still used as a remedy for diarrhoea and as a lotion for skin sores.
It is not fully understood what function the stone circles served, although excavation of some monuments has shown an association with burials. Some circles also appear to have been used to mark the passage of time and seasons, which is indicated by the alignment of stones with landmarks, to mark important solar or lunar events such as the sunrise and sunset at the winter or summer solstice. Where excavated, they have been found to date from the Late Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age (2400-1000 BC).
In case you're wondering why it's often misty on Bodmin Moor, it's due to what meteorologists call orographic rainfall. As moisture-laden wind blows off the sea towards the moors, it is forced upwards by the hills, into the cooler air a little higher up in the atmosphere. This causes the water vapour gas in the air to condense into tiny droplets of liquid and the result is fog and drizzle.
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