Our companion, for the start of the journey was an old chap from near Camborne. His description led me to guess he came from Illogan and he seemed impressed by such knowledge and even more so that I could pronounce Illogan. In chatting he learned some of the reasons for what he took to be unusual knowledge in a grockle (visitor). Great grandparents were married at Illogan church so we knew where the place was. But I didn’t mention that one of my dream TV women was Angharad Rees as Demelza (née Carne) Poldark. I believe almost her opening words in that TV series was a reply to ‘where are you from?’ And the reply was something like, ‘Over t’ Illuggan’. I had always assumed, rightly, that such a wonderful looking person would have got her pronunciation right.
This chap was the seal spotter par excellence. He spotted them by the three before we’d seen any – but if we kept watching, he was right. He was a lovely companion for a little bit of our walk.
I could be tempted to caption this as ‘cows coming in for milking’. There was actually a line of the beasts, ambling along in just the way milking cows do. But clearly the leading bullock is not a milking cow and neither is the young heifer behind.
What changeable weather. Above the cows we see mostly cloud, yet minutes after there was a seagull in a clear blue sky.
We passed back by the ponies who had clustered together.
A cairn on the local high point.
We approached Hells Mouth in much better visibility than when we set out on the walk.
On the hills we have Carn Brea castle on the left and the Bassett Memorial on the high point.
That’s part of Redruth beyond Hells Mouth.
A young cow was keen to make our acquaintance.
Or maybe he preferred the finer foliage on our side of the fence.
We got back to Hells Mouth,
There was the little café and we paid for our parking by having an ice cream before making the drive home to Boscadjack.
