From the ancient vantage point of Carne Hill, china-clay works dominate the landscape with vegetated spoil heaps, older conical tips and the whiteness of an open-cast pit at Fraddon.
The curved roofs and twin stacks of the Cornwall Energy Recovery Centre are close by, and lower down, to the north, rows of pylons slung with cables stretch along the flat expanse of Goss Moor towards the electricity substation.
Beyond that moorland, overlooked by the fortified summit of distant Castle-an-Dinas, traffic speeds along the A30 dual carriageway, carrying tourists to coastal resorts and goods to warehouses and supermarkets.
Up here, within a little iron age fort, the churchyard of St Dennis is encircled by leaning sycamore and oak, higher than the nave. Lichens and mosses thrive in the damp, coating branches, the granite tower with its stair turret, the headstones and a Celtic cross. An old stile breaches the thick boundary wall to reach paths of trodden turf sprinkled with tormentil and self-heal, and leading downhill through tiny overgrown fields bounded in cyclopean walls of rough granite.
Bracken is already turning brown but fresh polypody ferns and the flower buds of ivy brighten the stone banks, and stunted thorns are loaded with haws. Cattle and a few horses graze in the less steep, larger pastures; swallows twitter around a farmstead with a derelict milk deck at its lane-end, and old ways link drier ground with the bog that used to be valued for common grazing.
This waterlogged land – the legendary hunting grounds of King Arthur – forms the headstreams of the river Fal. It is now a designated nature reserve. Tin working was recorded here in the 11th and 12th centuries; and from 1930 to 1950 sand and gravel were extracted.
On this dry afternoon family groups walk and bike along the multi-use trail; they skirt pools with flowering rush and water mint, pass heathery mounds, avoid swamps of willow and gather pounds of juicy blackberries. Still not much sunshine but, in a field above a dismantled railway line, an optimist, wishing away tomorrow’s rain, cuts grass for a late crop of hay.
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