Cloud shadows sweep across the green of Treswallock Downs, in Cornwall, and the adjoining moorland. Skylarks sing above this expanse of open grazing where drifts of flowering grasses, sedges and rushes mix with granite outcrops, remains of ancient settlements, and turf sprinkled with tormentil.
From the top of Alex Tor the vista extends as far as Pentire Head on the north coast, west to the Cornish alps of St Austell and towards old china clay tips at nearby Stannon, now grassed over.
Beyond the moor’s northern edge, sun highlights the cliff of the slate quarry at Delabole, the height of turbines on the adjacent wind farm, and the whiteness of the cheese factory at Davidstow.
But it is the tors of Brown Willy and Rough Tor that dominate this part of the moor, the ridges looming in the distance around the rectangular enclosure of King Arthur’s Hall. There, protected by a wire fence, tall granite slabs are set within wide earthen banks. Many of these standing stones slump inwards towards the boggy floor of cotton grass and sphagnum. It is uncertain whether this formation originated as a prehistoric ceremonial space or as an early mediaeval pound for livestock.
Today, a herd of Devon cows grazes around this isolated site and, in the distance, on Steping Hill, is a group of cream coloured cattle. Cows and their calves, sheared sheep and resting gulls populate inbye land bounded from the moorland by drystone walls.
The stream through the hamlet of sheltered Candra is bridged by lengths of granite and, in the valley bottom, blackberry flowers and foxgloves sway in the warm breeze. Upslope, a holiday cottage, is surrounded by pastures of pollen-rich grasses, sorrel and yellow vetch, and, on the skyline, horses and their foals gallop and buck across the rough, airy, land.
Back in St Breward crowds gather for the annual carnival parade, when drum majorettes, floats, carnival queens, a pipe band, morris dancers and fancy dress competitors move through the village streets inland, high above the distant shimmer of the sea off Polzeath.
Twitter: @GdnCountryDiary
