On this balmy autumn day voices carry through calm air on the eastern edge of Bodmin Moor. Two walkers stand out as silhouettes on the stony summit of Sharp Tor; others clamber across the squared-off top of Stowe’s Hill, where a prehistoric rampart encloses ancient hut platforms and natural rock formations like precarious cheese or cider presses. Nearby, in the Rillaton barrow, a corrugated cup beaten from a single sheet of gold was discovered in the 19th century and is now displayed in the British Museum. Quarrying and mining remnants adjoin or cut through some of the earliest archaeological features, and this land remains a focus for locals and visitors who come for recreation, and to admire its long views across the Lynher and Tamar valleys towards the pale blue skyline of Dartmoor.
Close-grazed turf, browning bracken and sturdy gorse bushes clothe the lumpy remains of the derelict railway, shallow quarries and prospecting pits. Grounded in ferny hollows are berried rowans and stunted hollies; gnarled hawthorns (some loaded with haws but most bare apart from withered foliage and bearded lichen) overlook taped-off horse pastures beside the sterile spoil tips of Wheal Phoenix. Lichen and moss colonise worked moorstone and the dumps of discarded granite blocks, blasted from the Cheesewring Quarry, which provided stone for two London bridges and the Thames embankment. The remaining working quarry on this side of the moor is set beneath Bearah Tor, where specialist masons cut and dress stone for architectural restoration work.
By Wardbrook Farm beneath Sharp Tor, red-marked sheep graze in enclosures of bright green pasture scattered with boulders. Towards evening, the lengthening shadows will pick out the degraded banks of an old field system, set at a diagonal to the more recent dry-stone walls. Back towards Minions, the shimmering sea off the Dodman on the south coast is gradually hidden from view. Belted Galloway cattle lie quietly, facing away from the standing stones of the Hurlers. A few people stand within these mysterious circles, pondering their origins, alignments and possible ancient use as a processional way towards cairns on Caradon Hill, now dominated by a towering communication mast.
