A Norman castle was built near the confluence of the Rivers Allen and Kenwyn and the small town of Truro grew beside this. By the beginning of the 14th Century, Truro was an important river port until trade collapsed due to a recession brought about by the Black Death and this resulted in the town being largely abandoned. During the Tudor and Elizabethan periods, trade returned and the town grew. During the mining boom of the 18th and 19th centuries the town prospered and was known as the "London of Cornwall" in Victorian times. Following the building of the cathedral, it was granted city status in 1877 by Queen Victoria and is the only city in Cornwall.
The open leat system running through the streets of Truro was created by the Victorians to supply drinking water for horses and for washing down the streets. Along many sections of the leat are steel eyes set into the granite using lead, which are thought to be where horses were tied up when people visited the shops. The leats were originally fed by the weir gate system below Victoria gardens. Water is now extracted without a gate to minimise the risk of flooding.
The main line railway through Cornwall was originally conceived as a means to link the port of Falmouth to London. However, whilst funds were being raised for the railway, much of Falmouth's Packet trade was transferred to Southampton. The line was built to Truro instead but initially failed to make money and was bought up by Great Western. Once established, the new railway allowed rapid exports of perishables to London including fresh flowers and fish. It also made large-scale tourism possible and the term "Cornish Riviera" was coined.
Although it has become a pejorative nickname for tourists, the term "emmet" (from a Cornish dialect word for ant) was originally used quite generally to refer to a crowd of people seen from a distance. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the quarrymen scaling the cliffs on ropes were referred to as emmets. In Victorian times when tourism to Cornwall became popular, the term was also applied to the tourists on the beaches, seen from the cliffs. As quarrying either became uneconomical or mechanised, the large numbers of workers on the rock faces vanished and now use of the term for tourists is the only one surviving.
Prior to Victorian times, visitors had been coming to Cornwall in small numbers for hundreds of years and consequently the Cornish language also contained a pejorative word for the less gracious of these: tervyajor, which transliterates to "tumultuous voyager" i.e. "disruptive visitor".
Wild garlic grows along the shady areas of the path near the stream.
Wild garlic has been found in settlements dating as far back as the neolithic period which given its springtime abundance and aroma is not that surprising. Its culinary use was eventually overtaken by domesticated garlic which first arrived with Mediterranean traders and had the advantage that the bulbs could be stored for relatively long periods.
Young squirrels suffer a high mortality rate in the wild and less than one in three make it to adulthood. The ones that do, live on average for about 6 years, although a lucky one can live to about 12 years old. In captivity, where there are neither predators, cars nor cold winters to contend with, they can reach 20 years old.
You may remember from school geography lessons that the faster-flowing water around the outside of the bend causes a meander in a river to slowly grow as the outside edge is eroded and sediment is deposited on the inside by slower-moving water. At this point, your school geography teacher probably got excited about ox-bow lakes and never got around to explaining exactly why the water flows faster on the outside in the first place. So that you don't go to your grave feeling short-changed, an attempt at an explanation follows...
Flowing water piles into the outside of the bend and creates a higher pressure there. Close to the riverbed, water is moving very slowly so the high pressure pushes water across the bottom from the outside to the inside. This drags the faster-moving water across the top of the river to the outside to take its place. This spiralling current both erodes the outside edge with faster-moving water and also transports the sediment back across the bottom to the inside
The settlement of Coosebean is Cornish for "small wood" and was first recorded around 1400. There was a mill here which was originally a "blowing house" used for smelting ore. During the 19th Century it was converted into woollen mills and paper mills. By 1827 it was one of the largest paper mills in Western England and employed 40 people but was destroyed by a fire in 1848. After this it was rebuilt as a corn mill.
There are some nice examples of herringbone walling along the lane. At the end of the wall on the right just before you reach the stile, look out for a Celtic cross shape built into the stone tower at the end of the wall.
The "herringbone" style of walling built with tightly packed alternating diagonal slate courses, is unique to Cornwall's heritage.
Traditionally, hedges (stone boundary walls) were built with whatever was cleared out of the fields, whilst buildings were constructed from stone that was quarried and cut. On a long wall, the herringbone sections are often between "towers" of flat-laid slate (built from the larger and squarer stones) which helped to prevent the wall slumping sideways.
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.
For such a widespread tree, the oak is surprisingly inefficient at reproducing naturally. It can take 50 years before the tree has its first crop of acorns and even then, the overwhelming majority of the acorns that it drops are eaten by animals or simply rot on the ground. Squirrels play an important part by burying acorns and occasionally forgetting a few which have a much better chance of growing than on the surface.
The settlement New Mill(s) was originally known by the Cornish name Melynnewyth which is how it was recorded in 1366. By 1748 it had been translated into English as Newmill. Locally it is still referred to in the singular but it appears pluralised on the OS map. The footbridge beside the ford is thought to date from the 18th Century with the iron railings added in Victorian times. The bridge consists of two clapper sections and a causeway linking them as it crosses both the River Kenwyn and the mill leat.
The River Kenwyn passes along a culvert beneath the centre of Truro. If this becomes blocked or overwhelmed, the streets in the centre of the town flood and this has happened a number of times over the years. In 1988, Truro was unlucky enough to be flooded twice, seriously damaging the city centre with a cost estimated at £2 million. Following this, flood defences have been constructed around the city, including the emergency dam at New Mill and a tidal barrier on the Truro River. There is also regular cleaning and a debris screen for the culvert to ensure its capacity is not diminished through silting.
Particularly if you're doing the walk in summer or early autumn, it's likely that there might be some nettles along sections of the paths for the next two directions. Therefore whilst you're walking along the road, look out for a stick for clearing any in the path later on.
The footpath for this and the next direction is "silver" status which means it is only cut if reported as needing it.
To report an overgrown path, on the directions screen in the app tap on the ☰ menu next to the direction number for the problematic path (or tap on the direction number on the map screen to get the ☰ menu) and select Report Footpath Issue. The app will use the direction number to work out the parish and path number at that location and then create an email to Cornwall Council’s Countryside Team so they can contact the relevant Parish Council. If possible, take photos and attach them to the email as that will help the countryside team to see how bad it is and prioritise it.
Footpaths in Cornwall are graded "gold", "silver" and "bronze" (bronze paths are normally dead-ends that don't link up with other paths).
For parishes that take part in the Local Maintenance Partnership, gold paths are normally cut routinely once or twice each year. Routine cuts on gold paths are typically done in May/June, and any second cuts are usually in July - September.
Paths graded as silver are cut at the discretion of the Parish, so these in particular need to be reported to the Parish Council (via the Countryside Access Team - countryside@cormacltd.co.uk - who have the contact details for each parish council) if they start to become overgrown. Also gold paths which happen to be in parishes who don't participate in the scheme are less likely to get a routine cut, but the Countryside Team can cut these themselves if they get badly overgrown.
Nettles grow along the area of path below the overhanging tree and on the last section of path before the farm so carrying a stick for this section is advisable. Ensure your fellow walkers are stood well back if you a swinging a stick to avoid raining nettle leaves as well as the stick itself.
The idea of eating something that can sting you seems wrong until you realise that nettles lose their sting as soon as you cook them, and they taste like spinach. Nettles are extremely nutritious, containing high levels of vitamin A and C, large amounts of iron and even a significant amount of protein.
The settlement of Treworder dates from the Dark Ages and was first recorded in 1327. Other than Tre- (Cornish for farmstead), the rest of the meaning is not known.
The wind turbines to the left are part of the Four Burrows wind farm.
A typical large onshore wind turbine can produce enough power for over 1,000 houses. The wind turbines being built offshore are larger and benefit from it being windier much more often, so each one can power thousands of homes.
Many of the trees in the hedge on the left are hazel.
The rods cut from coppiced hazel shoots were woven into fences, used as thatching poles and as the foundation for wattle-and-daub walls. Baskets and traditional lobster pots were made from the thinner shoots. Hazel rods were also used to make clothes pegs and witches wands.
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
Ferns produce neither flowers nor seeds and rely on the tiny spores for their reproduction which are most commonly distributed by the wind. This allows them to colonise some quite random places such as rocky ledges that heavier seeds might not reach. Since the spores come from just one parent fern, the offspring is a genetic clone.
Tarmac was discovered by accident in 1901 when a barrel of tar fell and burst open on a road and then waste slag from a nearby furnace was used to cover up the mess. The resulting smooth surface was noticed by a surveyor for Nottingham County who patented the idea, formed the Tar Macadam Syndicate and registered Tarmac as a trademark.
This has been adopted into the English language initially as tarmacadam and increasingly now as just tarmac. When used as an adjective it gains an extra "k" (i.e. tarmacked).
Penrose Water Gardens was created in the 1970s and consists of 6 acres of marshland with 40 lily ponds and informal nature ponds fed by springs. The gardens host more than 100 varieties of aquatic plants including lilies that helped to win a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show. Bird life includes kingfishers and moorhens as well as quite a few very happy ducks.
Bosvean is the Cornish for "small dwelling" which is likely to be a description of what stood there in the early Middle Ages when Cornish was spoken widely. The settlement has gradually spread to create Bussavean (the result of Cornish not being spoken!) and Lower Bosvean.
Ninnis Farm dates from mediaeval times and is from the Cornish an enys meaning "the island" because the farm is situated on a spur of land with rivers either side that meet in a confluence. In 1327 it was recorded in Latin as "De Insula".
Cornwall has at least 8 different words for "valley".
The boxes with holes are for bees.
Not all bee species form breeding colonies like the honey bee. Many are solitary where each female raises her own brood of babies. Bee nest boxes (also known as bee hotels) can provide a safe and suitable environment for solitary bees to raise their young. There are dozens of solitary species ranging from bumblebees to tiny bees only a few millimetres long, so nest boxes often include a range of hole sizes. By locating the boxes in dry, sunny, well-ventilated locations and cleaning them regularly, mould and build-up of parasites can be minimised which are both bad news for baby bees.
If you are crossing a field in which there are horses:
The Birdsfoot Trefoil has yellow flowers tinged with red that look like little slippers and appear in small clusters. They are followed by seed pods that look distinctly like bird's feet or claws. Common names referring to the flowers include "Butter and Eggs", "Eggs and Bacon" and "Hen and Chickens", and to the seed pods, the delightful "Granny's Toenails".
It is a member of the pea family and is poisonous to humans (containing glycosides of cyanide) but not to grazing animals and can be grown as a fodder plant. It is the larval food plant of many butterflies and moths including the common blue and silver-studded blue, and an important nectar plant for many bumblebee species.
The River Kenwyn rises just south of the A30 near Four Burrows and takes its name from the parish through which it flows on its way to Truro. In 1259 the name was recorded as Keynwen and is from the Cornish words keyn (meaning ridge) and gwen (meaning white).
Dragonflies were some of the first winged insects to evolve, around 300 million years ago in the "age of amphibians" before the dinosaurs. Fossils of early dragonflies have been found with wingspans of up to two feet across.
The bramble is a member of the rose family and there are over 320 species of bramble in the UK. This is a big part of why not all blackberries ripen at the same time, and vary in size and flavour.
Common knapweed (also known as black knapweed) is most easily recognised by its bright purple thistle-like flowers but without spiky leaves. It's actually a member of the daisy family and is often seen along paths and roadside verges. Other names for the plant include "hardhead" (used in Cornwall in Victorian times) and "loggerhead" due to the sturdy flower heads. "knap" is from the Middle English word for "knob" and consequently another name for the plant is "knobweed".
It is an important plant for pollinating insects and was rated in the top 5 for most nectar production in a UK plants survey. In terms of plants that produce both nectar and pollen, it is rated as the top producer overall, producing a good amount of each.
Hazelnuts can be found beneath the trees in September and October and are a favourite with squirrels so you'll need to forage those that haven't already been nibbled. Once harvested, the nuts need to be dried before shelling and eating. Wash and dry the nuts first to reduce the chance of them going mouldy. Then lay them out on something where the air can circulate and dry them for 2-4 weeks. An airing cupboard is a good place. You can tell that they are ready when the nuts rattle in their shells. Once shelled, the nuts can be stored in a fridge or even frozen for a couple of years.
Hazel was once a popular firewood as it burns quickly and without spitting. It was also used to produce the charcoal used by blacksmiths and for smelting metals until coal became more widely available in the 18th Century.
Common agrimony is a native plant and a member of the rose family. It prefers less acidic soils which limits its range in Cornwall but can be found in a few places along the coast. It is recognisable by yellow 5-petal flowers on a spike which gives rise to another of its common names: "church steeples". It is also known as sticklewort as the seeds have burs that stick to passers-by. The leaves have distinctive toothed edges rather like a saw blade.
The collared dove is a fairly easy member of the pigeon family to recognise. The clue is in the name: they are pale with a thin black ring at the back of their neck.
Before 1930, there were no collared doves in Western Europe and the most easterly part of their range was Turkey and The Balkans. Within just 20 years they colonised most of continental Western Europe and in 1955 they bred for the first time in Britain. They have since become one of the top 10 most common birds in British surveys.
Their rapid spread seems to be down to both their ability to make epic journeys of over 400 miles and their ability to breed all year round if the weather is mild. They will even start building a new nest whilst there are still chicks in the current one, and take breaks from incubating eggs in the new nest to nip back to the old nest to feed the recently fledged young. They feed on seeds and grain so arable farming has provided a supply of food.
Bindweed can normally be spotted in June to September from initially its trumpet-shaped flowers and on closer inspection, being wound around anything and everything. As well as being a nightmare for gardeners and farmers, in the wild it can have a negative effect on biodiversity by choking other native wildflowers and out-competing them for sunlight, moisture and nutrients.
The area now occupied by houses was once part of a mediaeval field system. The name Compringey Hill is from gweal clogh prennyer (Cornish for "gallows field"). During Tudor times this was the name used for a 16 acre field subdivided into two acre strips. There are a few narrow strips within the existing field boundaries that might be remnants of this.
Yellow archangel is a native plant and member of the dead nettle family (and it's also known as the Golden Dead Nettle). The flowers are pale yellow, hence the first part of the name. The second part of the name (including the angelic association) is because it looks quite like a nettle but doesn't sting.
Since the 1970s, a variegated garden variety of yellow archangel (sometimes known as "aluminium plant" due to silvery metallic areas on its leaves) has escaped into the wild where it is spreading rapidly, particularly in the Southwest. It can propagate from a small piece of creeping stem and also produces several hundred seeds. Once established, it forms dense carpets in shady areas which exclude other plants. It has been deemed so invasive that it is now illegal to introduced it into the wild.
Truro is where Cornish Fairings originated.
Cornish Fairings are a thin, crisp biscuit flavoured with ginger. Given Cornwall's long trading history, you may be lulled into thinking this was another ancient link with spice merchants but in this case it isn't. The name "fairing" was a word in use throughout England meaning "edible goods bought at a fair" and these included gingerbread as far back as mediaeval times. During Victorian times, biscuits became a popular gift that working class men would buy for their sweethearts, and a number of manufacturers produced ginger biscuits known as "fairings". The Truro baker John Furniss began baking and selling ginger biscuits in his tea room in the late 1800s and these were so popular that they were soon sold by mail order all over the country, establishing the "traditional" Cornish Fairing that we know today. John Furniss' recipe originates from a country fair, possibly from the Launceston New Year "maid hiring" fair.
Our recipe for Cornish Fairings is as follows: Whizz 250g SR flour + 6g bicarb + 8g mixed spice + 7-9g ginger (depending how much ginger heat you like) + 3g cinnamon + 125g golden caster sugar (or similar) with 125g salted butter (or unsalted butter + 3g salt). Tip into a bowl and mix in 150g golden syrup to form a sticky dough. Form into balls about size of chestnuts. Place at least 5cm apart on well-greased baking tray and press lightly to form a fat disc (don't squash too much otherwise they won't develop a craggy surface). Bake for 15-17 minutes at 150°C (140°C in a fan oven) until light brown (darker than golden or they won't be crunchy but be careful not to burn them as they will be darker underneath). Allow to cool for about 2 minutes then gently free from trays with a plastic spatula when still warm and soft before they stick, then leave them there a bit longer to harden. Transfer a wire rack to cool fully. Makes 25-30. They freeze very well.
The viaduct through Truro carries the main railway line from Paddington to Penzance. The original viaduct was built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1859, but was replaced with the larger granite structure you see today in the early 1900s. Five piers from the Brunel's original viaduct still stand beneath it.
Victoria Gardens were created to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1898. The fountain was originally in Boscawen Street and was moved to the gardens shortly after they opened. A Victorian hydraulic ram raises water from the leats to the top of Victoria gardens which is used to supply the fish pond and cascades though the gardens back into the leat.
Since at least 1259, and probably before this, there has been a Parish Church of St Mary located on the site of the cathedral. The cathedral architect, John Loughborough Pearson, cleverly incorporated the South Aisle of the 16th-century church into his design. Construction began in 1880 and the cathedral was consecrated and in use by 1887. John died in 1897 and the cathedral was finally completed in 1910 under the supervision of his son Frank who also went on to create a smaller version of the cathedral in Auckland, New Zealand.
The settlement of Penglaze was first recorded in 1327 as polglas. Both the Cornish words pol and glas were used to mean several different English words so the meaning could be anything like "grey pit", "green pool" or even "blue cove" (although much less likely in this location).
The settlement of Boscolla dates from the early mediaeval period and was recorded in 1302 as Boscolleith. The name consists of the Cornish word for dwelling, bod, and possibly collwyth meaning "hazel trees".
Watermills were first documented in the first century BC and the technology spread quickly across the Roman Empire with commercial mills being used in Roman Britain. By the time of the Domesday survey in the 11th Century, there were more than 6,000 watermills in England. During Norman times, the feudal system lead to a greater proliferation of mills with each manor being self-sufficient with its own mill.
The simplest design for a waterwheel is known as an undershot wheel where the paddles are simply dipped into flowing water. This works well in large rivers where there is a strong current.
However, in hilly areas with smaller streams (such as Cornwall), the overshot design is more common where the water is delivered via a man-made channel (leat) to the top of the wheel where it flows into buckets on the wheel, turning the wheel through the weight of the water. An overshot design also allowed the mill to be located slightly further away from the main river which had obvious advantages during floods.
Overshot wheels can achieve higher efficiencies than undershot wheels and can operate using a smaller volume of water which explains why they were generally preferred, particularly in steep-sided Cornish valleys.
A 2004 Civil Engineering publication concluded that high energy conversion efficiencies (of around 85-90%) were possible from overshot waterwheels and that if these can be manufactured cheaply, they could provide an environmentally sound means of small-scale electricity production.
The word "mill" is from the Old English word mylen which is similar to the Cornish melyn appearing in place names like Portmellon. By mediaeval times the "n" had been lost so the Middle English word was mille although the "n" survives in the surname Milner (but nothing to do with "milliner" the gist of which was "fancy chap from Milan selling fashionable items").
The origin of "mill" can be traced back further to a Latin word mola (which also gave rise to molars in dentistry) and further still to a word in the Proto-Indo-European language spoken during in Neolithic times which meant to crush or grind.
During winter, from November to March, winter heliotrope is visible along the edges of roads and paths as carpets of rounded heart-shaped leaves.
Winter heliotrope is native to Sardinia and North Africa. It was introduced to Britain in 1806 but only the male plant. The female plant has subtly different flowers with more rays.
Despite only having the male form in the UK (is and therefore unable to produce seeds), it can spread vegetatively through its network of underground roots. A small fragment of root can give rise to a new plant which allows it to colonise new locations. Within less than 30 years of its introduction it had been recorded in the wild in Middlesex. Roughly a century later it has become one of the most common plants along roads and bridleways in Cornwall.
From mid November to January, the plants produce spikes with pale pink flowers. The scent of the flowers resembles marzipan i.e. almond and vanilla. The chemical responsible for the scent (4-methoxybenzaldehyde) has been found to attract pollinators whilst also repelling ants. It is a very similar chemical compound to vanillin (hence the vanilla-like scent).
The name of the plant is Greek for "sun direction" because the flowers turn to follow the winter sun.
The leaf shape of winter heliotrope is similar to its close relative butterbur, but the leaf edges are more rounded than butterbur and the leaves are evergreen whereas butterbur puts up flowers before it has any leaves. Both plants spread via rhizomes (underground stems) and their broad leaves can crowd out other plants making them potentially invasive.
The two most common pigeon species are the wood pigeon and feral pigeon (domesticated rock dove). Wood pigeons are larger than rock doves. Rock doves have an iridescent green/purple patch on their necks whereas adult wood pigeons have a white patch on their neck (although this is not present in young birds).
The feral pigeons living in urban areas are descended from rock doves that were originally domesticated as a source of food. Dove cotes were built to house quite a large number as there is not much meat on a pigeon. Later, these domesticated birds were also used as carrier pigeons. Escaped birds have thrived in the food-rich urban landscape where the stone buildings resemble the rock outcrops they have evolved to nest on.
Despite their native habitat being woodland, wood pigeons are able to thrive wherever there is food. They have fared better than most birds with intensively-farmed crops and are particularly fond of oil seed rape. They are able to hoover up food quickly (up to 100 pecks per minute) and stuff large amounts into their crop (e.g. around 150 acorns!). They then digest this overnight.
During the 21st Century, wood pigeons have been migrating into urban areas where garden feeding has attracted them. There has also been an exodus from parts of the rural environment where changes to farming practices (e.g. daffodil growing or energy crops) has made fields less attractive.
There is no biological distinction between "pigeon" and "dove" although "dove" seems to now be used for the more elegant species and "pigeon" for the more unexciting ones. Due to the Norman ruling classes, it's relatively unusual in the English language for the French/Latin word to be the vulgar form and the Norse/Germanic word to be the "posh" form. It's is likely that the reverse was true in mediaeval times: pigeon meat was considered super-posh and the French word was used for the young, tender birds of the species that were eaten.
Damselflies are predators similar to dragonflies but are easily distinguishable by the way their wings fold back parallel to the body when at rest whereas the dragonflies' wings are fixed at a right angle to the body. The Damselfly has a much smaller body than a dragonfly which means it has less stamina for flight. Nevertheless, it can hover, in a stationary position, long enough to pluck spiders from their webs.
Male damselflies have two sets of genitalia. At the start of mating a packet of sperm (spermatophore) is transferred outside of the male's body between the two and then passed on to the female who uses it to fertilise her eggs as she lays them. Female damselflies lay their eggs inside vegetation. For some species this is in water plants and the female can swim underwater for half an hour before returning to the surface to breathe. Males often guard the egg laying female to prevent a rival male from sneaking in and replacing the spermatophore with his own.
Damselfly eggs hatch not into damselflies but water-living nymphs which look a bit like a dull-coloured damselfly with a 3-forked tail instead of wings. The tail is actually a set of gills used to breath underwater. When the larva is fully developed, it climbs out of the water on a stem or rock. Its skin then splits open and a damselfly emerges with wings which need to be inflated and dry before it can fly.
The name "buttercup" is thought to have come from a mediaeval belief that cows eating the flowers gave butter its yellow colour. In fact this couldn't be further from the truth as the plant contains toxins which make it taste acrid and is therefore avoided by grazing animals.
The Latin name of the buttercup, Ranunculus, means "little frog" and said to be because the plants like wet conditions. It is thought it may have come via a derogatory name for people who lived near marshes!
There are a few different species of buttercup. One of most common is meadow buttercup (unsurprisingly found in meadows!) which is the tallest member of the family. Another common one is creeping buttercup which as the name suggests spreads through rhizomes so is more likely to be found in dense clumps in damp places. Its leaves are also more golden and glossy.
Meadow buttercups spread across a field relatively slowly as most seeds fall quite close to the parent and although it has a creeping root system capable of propagating new plants, this only extends a fairly short distance from each plant (unlike creeping buttercup which has a much more extensive root system). Because grazing animals avoid buttercups due to their acrid taste, this allows them to accumulate over time. The combination of these factors allows the number of meadow buttercups in a field to be used as an indicator of how long it's been used for grazing.
Buttercups produce a toxin called protoanemonin, which is at its highest concentration when flowering. It is thought that buttercups may be partly responsible for Equine Grass Sickness. Fortunately the toxin is quite unstable and drying of the plant in haymaking leads to polymerisation into non-toxic anemonin. Buttercups are also toxic to dogs, cats and humans. They have a bitter taste which puts dogs off eating the plants but pollen can collect on fur and be ingested, particularly by cats when they clean themselves. A man in France who drank a glass of juice made from buttercups suffered severe colic after four hours and was dead the next day!
The word "fairy" comes from an older English word faerie which itself is from the Old French faierie meaning "realm of the fays" (similar to modern French patisserie being along the lines of "realm of the cake maker").
faie was an Old French Romantic term for a woman skilled with magic or herbs. The alternative English word for fairy - fay - comes directly from this.
Electric fences are typically powered from a low voltage source such as a car battery which charges a capacitor to release a periodic pulse of high voltage electricity. This is often audible as a quiet "crack" which is a good indicator that a fence is powered. As with the high-voltage shock caused by static electricity, the current is not high enough to cause serious injury but touching an electric fence is nevertheless unpleasant. If you are answering the call of nature in the vicinity of an electric fence, be mindful of the conductivity of electrolyte solutions!
Where an electric fence crosses a footpath, it should either be covered by an insulating sheath (e.g. on stiles) or there should be a section that unclips with insulating plastic handles to allow access through the fence. Ensure that you re-clip this on passing through so animals cannot escape. The connecting cord/spring between the handles is often conducting so avoid touching this and be aware of any dangling rucksack straps.
The first documented use of an electric fence is by a woman in Cincinnati who invented it to protect a museum display from the public. This appears in her 1832 book "Domestic Manners of the Americans".
The application to livestock came roughly a century later. In New Zealand, an electric fence initially invented to stop a horse rubbing against the horse owner's car was being marketed commercially in the 1930s. The capacitor discharge approach to create pulses of electricity was also invented in New Zealand in the 1960s.
Grazing animals very quickly learn to avoid electric fences so that the fences can even act as effective barriers when not powered. Some animals have gone further in their learning and developed crafty techniques for breaking through electric fences. One is to push another animal through the fence so that it gets the electric shocks instead!
Full page maps cannot be printed due to copyright and terms of use.