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.