Before dawn, at high tide, clouds momentarily part to reveal Venus shining above woods opposite Cotehele Quay on the Tamar. The torch beam illuminates water lapping the top of the dock where the motor sailing barge Little Charlie floats almost level with the quay.
From a higher vantage, by the deep ferny wells or shafts of old lime kilns, the river appears as a lake, pale like the sky. Hoots of tawny owls echo from Cornish to Devon bank but, soon after 7am, rooks begin to caw and the faint quacking of mallards carries from the temporarily stilled and flooded millstream. Debris of driftwood, rotten leaves and reeds on the quayside indicate previous higher tides when the river was even more swollen with muddy run-off from its extensive catchment, extending towards Bude on the north coast and the foothills of Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor.
Throughout the parish, on these wet days, rutted gateways shed surface water from sodden pastures and compacted arable land. Risen water tables drip from moss-covered rocky cuttings and ooze from woodland floored in leaf mould and clumps of ferns. Puddles accumulate on minor roads and rivulets flow down narrow Bury Hill, Vogus Lane, Shottaford and Peppers Hill, washing shoals of fallen leaves and mud into streams and increasing the flow of tributaries that originate from Kit Hill, the outskirts of Callington, and mine adits in Silver Valley and Harrowbarrow below Hingston Down. Turbulent water joins up to race through derelict ponds and leats that used to power water wheels geared to grindstones in corn mills. Cotehele is the mill closest to the tidal river; water roars over the weir below Boar’s Bridge and the confluence with yet another fast-flowing stream (from Metherell and the local sewage works).
Up on the highest land of the parish, vacated but still verdant fields on Viverdon Down remain shrouded in drizzling cloud. The suckler herd of South Devons has been moved downhill to winter in straw-bedded covered yards and feed on this summer’s precious hay and silage. Meanwhile, in a fridge trailer, sides of beef from slaughtered mature bullocks are boned and jointed, destined for Christmas sale in the farmer’s butcher shop.
