Competition results

This has been a hectic 3 weeks during which I’ve done a huge amount of catching up with the world but very little on the aftermath of the walk, apart from reassuring enquirers that I’ve recovered and that my feet are fine whilst revelling in relative thinness and marginal fitness. These will change, and soon.

But I am now in a position to reveal the winner of the competition which, you will remember, was to generate a mnemonic that would enable someone to remember the order and names of the Pennine dales that I crossed on the walk either going north or going south. These, from the north, were Tyne, Wear, Tees, Swale, Wensley, Wharfe, Aire and Calder.

I had 11 entries. I decided that, because I knew all of the people who’d sent them, I shouldn’t also be the judge so I took the opportunity of yesterday’s visit from four friends and a dog to have an independent judging session in which I didn’t participate.

The agreement was that a number of the entries failed in that, although they identified the order by, for example, capital letter, they didn’t distinguish Wear from Wensley from Wharfe or Tyne from Tees. The mnemonic has to make it possible to accurately write down the names of the dales in order and these entries did not make that possible.

They also said that none of the entries was perfectly foolproof though a couple came very close. Choosing between these prompted a lot of debate between the judges, interspersed with cups of tea, exhortations to the dog to sit down and decisions about what and when to eat and drink. The final consensus was that the entry

Tiny weary teabags swell when warfare called

posted by River Rat of Suffolk on 21 August was the winner although it only worked fully if there was a hyphen in warf-are and the mnemonic only worked fully if spoken  (so that connections between, for example, Tiny and Tyne and between swell and Swale became clearer).

The judges were entertained by the free verse of the 28 August entry but, though highly commended for originality, it did not work well as a mnemonic.

Congratulations to the winner, to whom socks will shortly be sent, and thanks to everyone who entered. We have all been entertained by this small exercise in wit and wisdom.

Retrospective

Let me go back to Wednesday and the walk from Zennor to Lands End. In hindsight it was a bit optimistic to try to walk that distance (about 16 miles) against the clock. I made it, but only just which was better than my last day in 2012, walking from Wick to John O’Groats, when I had to call in to say that I’d be an hour late. Also as in 2012 I started the last day in rain; I soon got wet in a persistent drizzle but, believing that it was about to stop, I didn’t bother with the waterproofs and was very wet within the hour.

Following a coast path should be easy. Not for me on Wednesday! I drifted off-route twice and probably lost half an hour getting back. One of those errors cost me some serious ploughing through brambles and bracken as well as an encounter with an electric fence (where even the wooden posts had become live in the wet) so that, as midday arrived I had still only done 8 miles. Fortunately the path became rather easier as I came past Cape Cornwall and towards Lands End but for most of the afternoon I was hammering along as fast as I could.

I’d arranged to meet Jenny (whom we’d stayed with on Tuesday evening) at Sennen Cove and I got there almost dead on 4pm, as arranged, but needing a break before doing the last mile or two. Then, somewhat recovered, we walked to the welcome at Lands End – first from two excited grandchildren and then from the rest of the family and friends. I am posting some pictures taken on that last physically and psychologically draining day. These include a few of the places I passed on the way.

 

It was all too easy to take up Jenny’s invitation to stay for another night in St Just and we had a wonderfully relaxed evening (the gin helped). But my eyesight was clearly getting worse again and by the morning it was bad enough for us to call our health centre at home to get an urgent appointment. There the doctor decided that I needed to be referred to the eye hospital and we were there for the best part of 4 hours but came away with a reassurance that the problem would resolve itself with the aid of some medication. This it is doing so, although I’m still peering at everyone through a sort of haze, it now all hurts less and I expect to be back to normal myopia by early next week.

I have an awful lot of people to thank for their support for this walk. Viv and my family first of all – I’m not going to do this again – ever! Then to Chris Jadav, the Christian Aid organiser for Cornwall and Penny Haynes from the Southampton office for all their support – in particular to Penny for getting accommodation for me from so many CA supporters. With additional offers from friends about a third of all my nights were spent with these kind people.

Then to everyone from Stoke Climsland and the surrounding area who have been so supportive, sending good wishes as well as donations. And finally to everyone who has donated – the real reason for this walk has been to improve the education of children and young people in poor countries and I thank you on their behalf.

What next?> I don’t really know but I have a small mountain of tasks to do before I can even think about follow-up. But if you know of anyone who might like to know about the walk and, better still, might be willing to support it with a donation, the website will remain open for the foreseeable future so please tell them to take a look. And thank you for reading this blog.

I made it!!

Yesterday afternoon at about 5pm I crossed the finishing line. What a relief!

I was met by a small posse of people and pictures were taken. it was the end of a very hard day, hammering along the coast path from Zennor against the clock in an effort not to be late. I am deeply grateful to everyone who came to meet me, to all those who sent good wishes and to all who supported the walk in any way.

I’m sorry that this post is late. I was very tired at the end of yesterday and Viv and I stayed down in St Just with our friend Jenny. Matters were complicated by a recurrence of the eye problem and I have spent this morning being delivered back home via the Callington Health Centre and am about to go to the eye hospital for a chckup. I am typing this with some difficulty but expect to be able to give you a fuller account tomorrow of the end of the walk.

In the meantime, celebrate with me and thank you for keeping in touch.

Last day but one

This was the penultimate day and it went well, like all penultimate days should. It started in Camborne and ended at Zennor with some good tracks, footpaths and minor roads in between. And it went through places that I’d not visited before which was a bonus. I have to say that visiting this far end of Cornwall (which I don’t often do) is rather like visiting foreign parts like Wales or Scotland or even Yorkshire. Even the stiles are different.

This is the part of Cornwall where they grow fields of vegetables for consumption across the UK and where citizens of other EU countries come to harvest and process the crops for us. I walked through unbelievably large fields of broccoli (not my favourite vegetable) that I may see wrapped in plastic in Tesco next week. And I stumbled through a ploughed field where small potatoes, which I assume missed the harvest, laid there in the sun. Enough for a meal? Oh yes, if I’d stopped to pick them up. And I was followed by a herd of bullocks that eventually stampeded away across the field, their excitment for the day complete.

I had to skirt the Hayle estuary and I chose to miss St Ives, so I didn’t see the sea until I was on the approach to Zennor. If I discount the Severn estuary this was my first sea since day 1 when I sat on a beach near Skirza in Caithness and ate my lunch. That’s a long time ago and a long time to be out of touch with the sea; slightly strange in Britain where the sea is such an important influence on the country.

Viv has joind me for this last evening of the walk where we are staying with a friend in St Just. Jenny was a professional colleague of mine in the days when we were both involved in the conduct and analysis of results from experimential educational tests. Not wildly exciting, you may think, but this is a significant part of the education industry in this country, especially in an era when such undue emphasis is placed on performance in tests and other assessments. We both have other interests now and it’s very good to be catching up with her now; we last met at Lords in 2014 when England narrowly lost a one-day game to Sri Lanka despite some inspired batting by Jos Buttler.

So what are my thoughts as I face the very last day of this walk? Mostly relief that it’s over. Some sadness that it’s not been quite as inspired and quite as successful in raising funds for education as the 2012 walk, but a certain smug satisfaction that I’ve arrived (or nearly arrived) in good order and on time. There is no doubt that this will be the last walk of this type that I will do – to take another long period away from home would be grossly unfair on my family and inappropriate at this time – there are more useful things that I can be doing. But the need is as great as ever and we still have a huge responsibility to children and young people in the developing world to provide the best educational opportunities that we can. I hope that others will take up this task. Me, I’m just looking forward to arriving at Lands End tomorrow!

Sun and chimneys

I’m typing this in Camborne, home of the celebrated Richard Threvithick, having had a much better day than yesterday. No rain for one thing, an interesting route for another and improving eyesight for the third.

The start was mixed. I had hoped to wake up to find my eyes more or less cured of their infection but they weren’t. Instead they were still painful, very tearful and over-sensitive to light. On the plus side, however, I was still the giest of Chris, Mark and family in Truro, with memories of a very satisfying evening that mixed good food, interesting people and stimulating conversation. This morning they were going off on a beach breakfast so I was photographed and then despatched first.

I did struggle with my sight for the first few miles but it soon became clear that things were gradually improving to the point where, as I type, things are almost normal. The day became progressively brighter and sunnier and some of the direct sunlight was too much but even my reaction to that was almost normal by the time I arrived in Camborne.

My route out of Truro took me past County Hall and into country lanes then footpaths across fields. There was one frustrating episode with a field of maize that involved me in climbing two heavily overgrown walls and getting scratched and stung for my pains. There was definitely not a navigation error on my part and I hope that this will be my last brush with bad land ownership.

Through Frogpool and Gwennap and I was into the area where, in the mid 19th century, enormous wealth was created through the mining of copper and then, later on, through tin mining at greater depths, thanks to developments in engineering and mining techniques. I had hoped that I’d see Gwennap Pit where John Wesley preached in the mid to late 18th cenury but hadn’t realised that it is some way from the village of Gwennap. Something for another day.

The route eventually took in the trackbed of the Tresavean Railway opened in 1837 to serve local quarries and mines. It was the western end of the Hayle Railway that took the ore and stone to Portreath or to Hayle via Redruth and Camborne. A good section of the railway was incorporated into the main line railway through west Cornwall; the rest is now dimantled. Like the railways on south Bodmin Moor, the rails were fastened to granite blocks set in the trackbed, rather than to wooden sleepers laid on top. This produced a rigid and durable track that was, however, unsuitable for fast and heavy trains but adequate for slow goods. There are sections where the granite blocks can still be seen, as there are on the Moor.

The route took me past many disused mines, their chimneys and buildings, all now part of Cornwall’s own World Heritage Site. Part of my route followed a heritage trail but, without explanatory literature, it was difficult to interpret the area. Some of the display boards were far too complex for the occasional visitor, some were in a poor state and all were set far too high to be comfortable to read (and consequently quite inaccessible to children). The supporting frame for one had also been used to support a dog poo bin, making reading on a hot day fairly unpleasant. A big lack of imagination all round, I think.

Redruth and Camborne are interesting places but the poorest in Cornwall. Some years ago Viv and I were forced to spend a day in Redruth while a repair was done on our motorhome. We walked into the town centre and discovered a heritage trail, so we got a leaflet and followed it. Suddenly, what at first sight looked simply a run-down place became very interesting and I’m pretty sure that Camborne will have something similar. But these are still poor areas, lacking employment opportunities and by-passed by most tourists, anxious to find bucket-and-spade land. Let’s hope that the World Heritage Site status will have some impact on this.

Tomorrow is the penultimate day of the walk, from here to Zennor. I hope that it, and the day afer, will be as gloriously sunny as today.

Eyes down

This was a nothing-quite-right sort of day. I had much enjoyed Doreen and Tony’s very kind hospitality in Fraddon (it was a return visit – they hosted me in 2012) but had a bad bout of an eye infection that has dogged this walk but not been as bad as it was last night. I had hoped that a good night’s sleep would settle things back down but it didn’t and I left in the gloom of a damp morning, blinking in the light.

It drizzled a bit but there was one bout of real rain where I foolishly delayed putting on the waterproofs until it was too late and I was good and wet. It was mostly country lane walking and the weather gradually cleared but, as the light got brighter, so my eyes hurt more. I dried out slowly, ate some lunch sitting on a log in the forestry norinh of Truro, and walked into the city in passable bursts of sunshine. There, Sunday shopping was in full swing and I found a pharmacy and bought some antibiotic ointment the first helping of which has now been inserted. Then to Costa for a reviving cappuchino and caramel shortbread.

I do hope that this ointment works its magic quickly. The infection makes me intolerant of even modestly bright light and I’m fed up with stumbling along between squints. I even resorted to wearing my sun hat for the first time on this walk but it wasn’t much help, it made my head hot and makes me look like a donkey ride attendant at Blackpool. But not miserable – oh no!

As I said, nothing went quite right today but I will soon go to meet my hosts and that will almlst certainly improve thecay. In the meantime I’m considering another cappuchino.

Elephants, boots, music, misery and junk

Before describing today”s walk I need to deal with two issues.

The first concerns me looking miserable in photographs. It may be true but that doesn’t mean that I’m miserable all the time. In fact, I may make a point of looking miserable in pictures just to provoke responses – a blog with no comments is no more than a rant. On the other hand, if I did the whole walk grinning all the time they might lock me up. But just to satisfy everyone, here is a picture with me not looking quite so miserable. If it looks posed that’s because it is.

The second concerns boots. I started out with a nearly new pair od Salomon boots. By the fime I got half way one was leaking but not seriously and I was prepared to put up with that, particularly since the weather was improving. Then, whilst waiting for Viv to pick me up in North Petherwin a couple of days ago I saw that one of the lace eylet rivets had pulled out. So, when home, I swapped those boots for the pair of Salomons that did the second half of the 2012 walk and which still have a few miles in them. But they do have the disadvantage that they leak quite a lot! When I get back I will be taking the new boots to Cotswold and complaining since they are still in warranty (though looking quite worn after over 1000 miles).

There’s not a huge amount to say about today’s walk. I walked from Bodmin to Fraddon along a mix of lanes and footpaths with no real problems. Most of the route was along the same lanes and paths that I used in 2012 and I did remember quite a lot of it. I saw a pile of junk that I photographed in 2012 and which is now a bit more rusty and much more overgrown than it was then. And I saw another pile that may be new; both piles were along green lanes and should not have been there.

That said, the most interesting aspect of today had nothing to do with the walk but everything to do with an elephant tooth. I stayed last night with two geologists who run a business making fossil replicas for use in schools, museum displays and the like. Dave is helping us at the cave studies centre to repair a display that was damaged during a break-in to one of the caves. One of the specimens that was stolen was the fossilised tooth of a juvenile straight-tusked elephant dating from about 100,000 years ago. This morning Dave brought along a replica of another tooth and it was remarkably good – certainly something that we could use in rebuilding the display.

And finally in this catalogue of largely irrelevant happenings, I saw a significant amount of television last night – my first (apart form odd snatches) for over 2 months. I don’t feel any great withdrawal symptoms but I do miss music and last night I happened on a recording from a prom concert that included Mozart’s clarinet concerto and Requiem, with the orchestra and conductor from Budapest and the choir from the Netherlands. A huge pleasure.

Camel and steam

I am tonight the sole occupant of a fine old town house in Lostwithiel. It’s a holiday let owned by Dee and Dave, great friends of ours whom I stayed with on my way through in 2012 but who had family visiting this week. However, the booking for their Lostwithiel house fell through at the last moment so they very kindly offered it to me. So I walked into Bodmin on the sunniest day of my walk so far and they picked me up and delivered me here. It’s palatial! An 18th century outbuilding in a conservation area skilfully converted and modernised, putting to shame the two-up, two-down holiday let cottage that we used to run. To prove it, here is a picture of the living room.

Today started in Camelford. Try as I might, I find it difficult to like Camelford which suffers awfully from the A39 running through the middle of it. But it yielded a good pub meal yesterday evening and a good early start on a day that became progressively sunnier and hotter.

A fine granite wall

A view across north Cornwall – sorry about the slope

The chirch at St Blisland is the highest in Cornwall (above sea level, that is). Ite earliest part dates from the 12 th century

Above the church porch – the first line needs careful reading

Camelford is on the River Camel (Camel is a corruption of the Cornish for ‘crooked’, reflecting its winding course – nothing to do with humps and deserts) and I more or less followed its course from there to Bodmin. First a series of footpaths and tracks up onto a corner of Bodmin Moor, then down through St Breward which is very much a moorland village, then down the line of the old Southern railway that now serves as the Camel Trial for cyclists and walkers and runs eventually to Padstow. The last few miles of this railway, which once carried main line trains like the Atlantic Coast Express from Waterloo, were described by John Betjeman as the most beautiful railway journey that he knew.

The advantage of the Camel Trail today was that it was in woodland almost all the way – a blessing on a hot day. I stopped at Wenford Bridge for a coffee and a piece of cake at the café there and, full of good cheer, marched off down the Trail, arriving at Bodmin far too early and calling my friends to get a pick-up at Bodmin station.

This station is on the Bodmin steam railway which uses the track that linked the Great Western main line at Bodmin Road to the town and to the Southern line to Padstow. The steam railway has plans to extend the line to Wadebridge although there have been objections to this, partly from the cycling fraternity. I have no idea whether the extension is likely to happen.

I have included some photographs taken along the way; they include two more examples of what I’ve previously described as scarecrows but these are plainly entries in local competitions (either that or some people have very starnge tastes in graden design). Tomorrow I will be returned to Bodmin and will walk to Fraddon.

Tales from Mumma’s Café

I’m sitting in Mumma’s Café in Camelford, sampling a pot of tea and a slice of cake. This is the way I like it: arrive early at the destination and have time for a bit of refreshment before going to the B&B. It also gives some time to start the blog in which I share with you some of the highlights of the day.

That’s where the problems start. There haven’t been many highlights today. Viv and I left home in good time to deliver me to North Petherwin for the start of the walk. After about an hour it started to rain and this lasted for an hour, by which time I was struggling to make sense of a footpath that was horribly overgrown with all the gates tied up with baler twine (once described to me by a farmer as a farmer’s best friend but I’m not so sure). I notice that large electrical cable ties are now being widely used instead of baler twine for holding things together, the trouble being that these cannot be reused so that cut plastic ties are now littering the verges.

And, whilst on this topic, it seems to me that wooden field gates are fast disappearing, being replaced by galvanised steel gates. Though these have been around for a long time they appear to have taken over in a big way, with some sophisticated models that combine a field gate and a small pedestrian gate or a kissing gate in a single unit. However, many of these steel gates (which are heavy) have been hung on wooden gateposts that are not strong enough or young enough to carry the weight, making opening some gates a big struggle.

Then, via some extremely small lanes, some pretty but drunken signposts and another bad path, to Davidstow airfield, opened in 1942 and used by Coastal Command until the end of the war and then as a motor racing circuit (three Formula 1 races were held there in the 1950s), It is long since derelict, though microlights have been flown from there for some years and there are warnings about walking on the runways (though the sheep do it all the time).

There is also the huge creamery at the edge of the airfield with its chimneys, and a couple of steel towers that I haven’t seen before. The largest looks like a huge electricity pylon but there are no wires and no other pylon in sight. And would you put power cables next to an airfield, even if it’s only microlights that are flying?

Finally, a long and muddy path down into Camelford where I’m now looking out at the traffic on the A39 and thinking that I can’t spin the last cup of tea out any longer. So to the same primitive but cheap B&B that I used in 2012; same proprietor, same room, same air of the 1950s but clean and well placed. On the way into the town I came across another garden figure either modest or where the face had fallen off.

Camelford seems little changed. The Conservative Club has been spruced up and there’s bunting strung around outside – it’s hard to tell whether that’s a political statement or merely celebrating summer. Tomorrow I go to Bodmin where I’m meeting a lady outside the station. Brief Encounter it isn’t and I stay in Lostwithiel tomorrow night.

Re-entry

Today was a bit cobbled together. Having altered my route to avoid accommodation difficulties west of Barnstaple and having found myself at Chilsworthy instead of in Holsworthy as intended (but, that said, it was an excellent B&B), I now needed to plot the route that would get me to Camelford in two days. The eventual solution was that Viv would pick me up in North Petherwin, I’d stay at home overnight and then do the North Petherwin to Camelford bit tomorrow. Avoiding Launceston would save a bit of legwork and result in two reasonably easy days.

So here I am at home, feeling a bit out of place, and trying to focus on the walk on not on any of the other things that need to be done. The walk today was, indeed, pretty easy; it wasn’t much more than 12 miles and I had time to do a bit of essential shopping in Holsworthy as I went through. It was the day of the street market and I saw bits of the town that I’ve missed as I’ve driven through. But I noticed that a Waitrose had been built across the line of the old railway and that there’s a new housing development on the site of the old cattle market which moved to a new site two years ago.

I also saw that Holsworthy described itself as a port town and, on checking in Wikipedia, see that it and Launceston were connected by canal to Bude in the 19th century; I hadn’t realised that the Bude canal was so extensive. Like the Rolle canal near Bideford, the Bude canal used inclined places instead of locks: there were six altogether but the access to the sea at Bude was via a sea lock that is still in operation. The canal closed in the 1890s, unable to compete with the railway.

Then across country to Tamerton Bridge where I re-entered Cornwall. Actually, it looked almost exactly the same as Devon on the other side of the river but everyone knows that it feels different. I see form the OS 1:25000 map that the line of the canal ran close to the bridge and that one of the inclined planes was there. And, at one point, I passed this car in a hedge; it was so rusted that it must have been there for some time.

The point of re-entry into Cornwall at Tamerton Bridge

Another bit of across-country walking brought me via Boyton to Petherwin Gate which now seems to be part of North Petherwin. Here I waited in the bus shelter for Viv to arrive. Tomorrow I go back there to resume, walking to Camelford along a mix of lanes and footpaths, more or less as I did in 2012.

And a PS. As I was leaving Veronica and David’s home in Barnstzple, David took this photograph of Veronica and me which he has subsequently sent me.  My thanks for this.