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.