Personal Britain: CORNWALL: St Agnes To Perranporth Walk

Date:		10th March 2007
County:		CORNWALL
Location:		Perranporth (Perran Sands)
Type:		Scenic Area (Coast)
Sub-Type:		Beach, Dunes
Viewed by:		WALK from car park
Car Park:		Pay and display (hourly.) Free in winter.
Difficulty:		Walk fairly flat. Easy walking except on dune sand.
Distance:		Walk fairly flat. Easy walking except on dune sand.
Season:		Winter
Weather:		Light cloud or clear skies. Chilly.
Time Of Day:		Late Morning to Evening
Camera:		Casio Exilim EX-Z850 Pocket Zoom (JPG)
Scene Rating:		•••••

I think I mentioned in my "Walk In The Perranporth Dunes" post that we had taken a walk, on an earlier visit to the UK, from the vicinity of the old St Piran oratory back to St Agnes, but that the 35mm photographs we'd taken had not only been lost by a friend and the negatives had become water-damaged in Hong Kong!
Rather than try to restore and scan the earlier negatives, we thought it would be easier to take the walk again - although this time we decided to do it in the other direction, so that we'd have the sun behind us (better for photography!) The day we chose was at the beginning of February. The sun was shining brightly and the wind wasn't very strong - although the temperature was still such that you didn't want to stand still for too long!
Leaving my father's bungalow...

...we walked up Wheal Kitty Lane and - within a few minutes - we were approaching the Wheal Kitty Engine House.
From the approach road you can look left across the valley that runs down to Trevaunance Cove and see the old Wheal Friendly Engine House.

A few metres further, to the right, you get this view. The main Wheal Kitty Engine House (top right) has now been converted into offices for a company whose staff develop and maintain web-sites. In the foreground, another mine building has been made into studios for a commercial local radio station - Atlantic FM. Other businesses are said to include surf board design, engineering research and personnel training companies.
The local council (Carrick) purchased the Wheal Kitty Mine site in 1987 and began a scheme to develop it (using traditional materials) into a business estate called the Wheal Kitty Workshops. Financial support was also forthcoming from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) - although I don't know how much they contributed to what was reputed to be a £76 million budget.

Atlantic FM's vehicles are parked at the other side of the building shown above, from which point you get an uninterrupted (well...interrupted only by an old container...) view of the engine house.
The engine house was a grade II listed building and was carefully converted into a three-storey office so as not to disrupt the "feel" of the historic mine buildings and landscape. There was a lot of environmental hype when the buildings were opened for letting and environmental design features are supposed to include a ground source heat pump, a grey water system and super insulation using recycled paper!

Walking past the engine house, you come to a field of sheep and skirting along the left is a grassy path which takes you past a square concrete chimney with some stone building remains, largely forgotten amongst the gorse and scrub. The building seems too small to have been another engine house (although the mine is supposed to have had more than one,) but it's likely to have been part of the mine, even though it is about 200 metres distant from the main complex.
From here some stony farm roads take you to the top of the cliffs running between Trevauance and Trevellas Coves.

From the tops of the cliffs, you get a good view across Trevellas Porth to the rugged stretch of rocks bordering the far side of the beach.
Whether due to differential erosion (maybe because the base of the rocks is under water for part of the day) or due to rock stratification, the two rocks at the end of the point have shapes like submarine conning towers, with the plinths much smoother and longer than the rock on top.
Given the number of mine remains in the surrounding area, it would be quite easy to believe that the craggy tops were man-made ruins, which had been built on a stable rock base - like some old engine houses in the far north-west of Cornwall, near Botallack.

The coarse gravel road which runs along the top of the cliffs down to the Jericho River (which runs into Trevellas Porth) is now unused by motor traffic - except during a vintage car hill-climbing event which happens every spring. Once in the valley, the road joins a narrow sealed public road which crosses the Jericho "River" on a small stone bridge and then snakes up the opposite side of the valley to farms bordering the Perranporth Aerodrome.
The rich green pasture on the top of the ridge contrasts strongly with the almost-black scrubland, with it's chimneys and spoil-heaps, which clutters the Jericho Valley on the far sided of the stream.

The gravel surface of the road is quite loose and the gradient steep, so you have to be careful where you place your feet as you descend into the valley.
At the time of its closure in 1897, the widespread mine remains throughout the lower Jericho Valley all belonged to the Blue Hills Sett mining company. Prior to the early 19th. Century there had been several small mine holdings in the valley, but by 1810 - as miners needed to go deeper and the need for investment and steam-power technology increased - these were gradually absorbed by the more powerful Blue Hills mine.
I've tried photographing this valley a number of times and, oddly, however bright the sun is, the shadows and the distant haze always seem to have a blue tinge to them - giving them a rather cold and slightly unfriendly look. Maybe the minerals in the earth give off some form of gas here that makes the air look blue. Maybe that's why the mine was called Blue Hills...

The chimneys and the style of building seen in the ruined mine buildings - and the size of the spoil heaps - suggests that they date from the stream era, from 1810 onwards.
It's difficult to know when tin extraction started along this valley, although archeologists sugges that the tin industry has been active in Cornwall since 2000 BC, when wooden boats carved out of 4 huge logs carried tin to North Wales where artisans smelted it with local copper to make bronze artifacts.
The Jericho Valley is likely to have been an early site, since the fast flowing stream carries alluvial tin down to the beach even today and it would have been easy to find it on the stream-bed.
Prior to 1780 the mines used the power of the Jericho stream to drive water wheels to pump and to crush or process the tin-ore. Today, the tourist-oriented attraction - the Blue Hills Tin Streams (a few hundred yards up the valley) still uses a water-wheel to process alluvial tin, which is then smelted into pure tin and crafted into jewellery and ornaments. It's reputed to be the last tin-production centre in Europe.

As the height of the cliff decreases and gives way to a normal slope, less eroded by the waves over time, the view from the descending road rapidly changes and you can see that the two conning-tower rocks are further spaced than you thought.

The broken rock on the hillside and the dry heathery vegetation gives the valley an arid, scrub-desert ambience, which the fast-flowing water of the Jericho stream does nothing to alleviate as it tumbles, gurgles and foams over its angular rocky bed.
You find yourself wondering whether, before the mines came, this valley was as green as the upland pastures. The stream runs through little soil now. It is bordered by an irregular morraine of spoil - destitute to all but the toughest plants.

Lower down the valley the buildings are less well preserved. This chimney seems to have lost the building that must have once abutted it and now stands as a lonely marker on the hillside above the Trevellas Porth car-park - like an Irish round-tower, abandoned and ignored.

This broken wall is only a few metres from the beach and acts as a picture frame for the few winter walkers who come with their dogs to sniff and poke amongst the dark seaweed and the rocks.

Climbing the coastal path up the other side of the valley, you at last squint into the light and see down its length. The Blue Hills Tin Streams buildings are just up and to the right from the centre of the picture. Above them a narrow metalled road curves up the hill, taking you back to Wheal Kitty Lane.

The dry soil - time worn by tramping feet - is prone to erosion during heavy rains, so boards have been placed to make steps and trap it for posterity.
As I wrestled with weighty problems about what was the best framing and exposure for the shot, Xue kept moving and I often found myself several hundred metres behind here...

...although she did kindly wait for me when she found a comfy spot where she could sit without her feet needing to marinate in one of the many puddles from the recent rain.

The vegetation along the path to Perranporth is similar to the path between St Agnes and Chapel Porth...

...but it takes you along a coast which is more interesting and has a variety of fascinating shapes caused by the slow torture of erosion or the sudden fracture of shearing rock and landslips.
Curiously, many of the sheer rock faces have a coating of green, as plants take advantage of water leeching from the rock or the spray from small waterfalls, falling mistily from gullies in the cliffs.
This is one of many small unnamed rocky coves between Trevellas Porth and a small head called Pen A Grader...

...where there are many rocks jutting from the sea and slippers of rock jutting into it. Where the sea meets the rock it weathers smoothly, but where the rock has been undermined by the incessant pounding of the waves it has sheared like rock blasted from the face of tunnels.
The colouration of the rocks is interesting too. A single cove can have rocks ranging from dark grey to salmon pink. Add this to the green and yellow patina of plants and lichens and you have a spectrum of subtle colours.

The wind funnelling up the narrow coves had made it harder to get a stable shot, so my pace dropped substantially and Xue had to wait for me again. I think I did manage to walk with her for a while...

...until I saw this interesting rock...

...and another interesting cove - close to Pen A Grader - when I fell behind again!

The path between Trevellas Head had been less affected by mining and the heathland scrub had been mollified by grass - although the remains of anti-aircraft emplacements around Perranorth airfield meant that the relative absence of mines did not been that the area was unaffected by the steel and concrete of Man.
After Pen A Grader we were back in an area with remains of mines and quarries - few of them scenic - and the despoiled ground became too poor to support much grass again (although the dark colours have their own austere beauty which contrasts strongly with blue skies - apologies for the skewed horizon, by the way, it was shot on the move and I forgot the gyroscope...)

I mentioned in an earlier post about how mine shafts are required to be filled and "capped" to prevent anyone wandering about in the mist from falling to their doom.
This is a typical example - only a few metres from the coastal path - with the shaft being topped by a conical rod grill in the shape of a Chinese coolie's hat and marked a few feet away by a heavy round post.

The most obvious feature along this stretch of coast is Cligga Head, close to which the cliffs have become stained burnt red by rich mineral deposits.
Cligga Head is often described as "famous" and on websites dealing with mineralogy and mineral collection. This is because it is "geologically complex" - which description certainly seems to be accurate, when you try to understand the descriptions of the geology on sites which deal with that kind of thing! For instance, mindat,org describes its composition as "granite intruded into Devonian metasediments ... cut by a greisens-bordered north-east vein-system" and "rimmed by a tourmalinite alteration aureole."
Basically this all means that the area yields generous quantities of wolframite and cassiterite, along with arsenopyrite, covelline, stannite, ferrokesterite, many other "-ites" and various iron and copper minerals. Parties interested in mineralogy even make trips to Cligga to comb the beach and spoil heaps for interesting samples. Even though many of the mineralised rocks (often associated with quartz) are quite pretty in their own right, we preferred just looking at the view...

Tin drawn from the Cligga Mine in the 19th Century proved not to be very profitable and it was only when the focus shifted to exploitation of the tungsten-bearing wolframite that the mine in 1938 that the mine became a growing concern.
This interest was reflected in the company name: Cligga Wolfram and Tin Mines Ltd - although it was taken over after less than a year by The Rhodesian Mines Trust. Vibration from blasting caused the first of several collapses in 1940, but after a further five boom years, US imports of tungsten killed the market price of tungsten and the mine closed.
Oddly, though, the story of Cligga (unlike mines in St Agnes, for example) still continued. Although the mine has never re-opened,
Geevor Mining Company in collaboration with the Sungesi Besi, Tronoh and Panang Companies (presumably not Cornish!) did look at re-opening the mine in the early 1960s - as did the Wheal Concord mining company in the late 1970s (until the idea was finally abandoned with the collapse of the tin-market in October 1985.)

As we moved closer to the ochre cliffs of Cligga Head, we started to meet walkers who had set out from Perranporth and were heading to St Agnes. There was a lot of good-natured banter from these two good folks as they found me incorporating them into the shot, which brightened the spirit of sociability as much as it brightened the foreground of the photograph!

I'd been looking out for this particular rock since we started the walk. I remembered it from the first time we walked this part of the coastal path - on a day much colder and windier than it was on this occasion, with sudden showers of rain which were driven almost horizontally by wind coming from the sea, with a force that stung like small insects in the face of a charioteer. Because of the wind and driving rain, this rock had become well populated with gulls and other seabirds, jostling for shelter.

Disappointingly, few birds were on the rock today - which maybe proves that you shouldn't hope to relive prior experiences...
The rock was close to Hanover Cove, named after the Falmouth Packet Company's brigantine 'Hanover' (built in 1757) which was driven ashore and wrecked in a gale in December 1763. Out of 67 people aboard only 3 survived and the cargo of gold and other valuables is said by some to be buried still, deep in the sand...

Near the neck of Cligga Head the vegetation became even more black and forbidding, as if still poisoned by the industrial processes needed to purify the ore before smelting.
Industrial pollution from processes of removing or burning off arsenic was such that in St Agnes, more than a hundred years after the mines closed, there are places where it is prohibited to grow fruit or vegetables, for fear that anyone eating it might slowly ingest toxic residue.

The only brightness along the coastal path along this section comes from the cheerful acorn emblazoned posts of the National Trust, whose yellow arrows mostly point the direction you should be walking!

As the path turns east away from Cligga Head, there are some building foundations - presumably from the mine area. Like the concrete ruin near the Wheal Kitty engine house, it is not in any way attractive and you find yourself wishing it wasn't there!

After Cligga, the next coastal feature is this beak of rock, jutting north-westwards into the sea. Oddly, it has no name. Instead the map is mared by the name of a rock just the other side of it: Shag Rock (presumably after the alternative name for the cormorant (although we didn't see any here - the last one we'd seen was during our walk near Godrevy Lighthouse.
The coastal path here contours along the side of a steep slope which ramps down to clifftops and (if you were unfortunate enough to roll down it) to the sea.

Xue is just coming out of the shadow cast by a rokface above the path here - you may need to click the image to bring up the 800 pixel version to see her. She's by a white shape (actually the reflection from a large puddle on the path) just left of centre and about 40% from the top. Her black jacket acts as good camouflage in shadowy areas!
Again I remember this stretch from our first walk between Perranporth and St. Agnes. The wind was much stronger then - and we'd had a definite sense that if a gust had made us overbalance and topple down the slope, it would have been quite difficult to grab on to scrub strong enough to act as a brake and stop a uncontrolled descent...

This is another view of the "unnamed head by Shag Rock." I liked this angle because of the dead, rust coloured vegetation, I think.
You can see the long sweep of Perran beach in the background.

And yet another view of the "unnamed head by Shag Rock" - wider this time. No, I don't know why I uploaded so many shots of something that doesn't even have a name, either...!
Because of the coastal slope, the ribbon-like sweep of the coastal path is obvious here...

...although what's not obvious is that the path actually bends inland - out of view behind the slope down from the right...

...and then kinks up around these spoil heaps from the Cligga Mine, which are probably still investigated by visiting mineral-hunters.

Almost at the "unnamed head" now! The suspense is killing me!

Yes, here it is! Is that the Shag Rock? No, in fact! It's still hidden by the spur of rock!
Even though the surf was not running with any great power, the rock's proximity to the cliff still caused substantial turbulence and forced the spume to jet upwards in an impressive fashion. Despite the cold air, we still stood for several minutes mesmerised by the churning water and the arching white spray.

Passing beyond the unnamed head ("at last!" I hear you say!) there is another rocky outcrop which is more awesome still. This is Droskyn Point and here the cliffs really are vertical. Apparently the backpackers who visit this area don't suffer from vertigo, since the Perranporth Youth Hostel is perched right on the top!