CIRCULAR via DISCOVERY TRAIL and CLITTERS WOOD

We set off this morning beneath a grey sky from Gunnislake village car park and as two hours parking is free here, we had to ensure we were back before that time ran out for this new walk. This is a walk I have reccied on my own several times, camera in hand, in different configurations before Maggie finally gave this version the O.K. It is not a long walk but it has been given the W & T rating because the two main hills are pretty steep. After leaving the car park we headed along the now peaceful Commercial Street, which as its name suggests, would once have been a bustling shopping hub. Approximately 150 years ago it was possible to purchase almost anything here in this road. About 15 shops sold everything from furniture, hats, bicycles and jewellery to fish and chips; plus of course grocers, butchers, bakers, greengrocers and many more besides, but all are long gone. If you are interested in finding out more there is a very good book on the lost shops of Gunnislake covering the former shops from all over the village with plenty of photographs; it is written by a local lady named Kate Threlfall who I believe, is one of the volunteers at the Parish Archive.

At the end of the street we joined little-used footpath which led downhill almost as far as New Bridge at Gunnislake. For the last short section we had to take great care as the traffic sped down the hill beside us but everyone arrived safely to join the long- distance footpath known as the Discovery Trail. We turned left here to walk uphill towards Clitters Wood passing close to the home of one of our former walkers named Ian Aldersley who died quite recently. Out of respect, we all paused in memory; Ian knew every inch of these woods as he would roam here for miles on his own and would often walk up and down that footpath to get to and from his cottage to the station or the Tamar Valley Centre.

A little further on there were glimpses through the trees of the chimney at Wheal Josiah and the mountainous spoil heap over at Great Consols; as our path widened and got rather muddy we found we were walking parallel with the which of course marks the boundary between our two counties. Along the way we passed a large clump of invasive Japanese Knotweed which was obviously thriving here because it had reached over ten feet high, I wondered if we should notify anyone? Later a fallen tree blocked the path and the first of us over stood watching the river tumbling over the rocks whilst waiting for everyone to re-assemble. Continuing along the footpath on a bed of leaf mould, we came to a short flight of old wooden steps which led us all down closer to the river where the shady path was lined with Rhododendrons beneath a canopy of Beech trees. Shortly we arrived beside a wheel pit which is one of the best examples of its kind in the Tamar Valley and I immediately began to visualise what it might have looked like in its heyday. I could picture a large wheel with water pouring over the ledges to fall with a splash at my feet like the one in this picture but maybe the wheel that once stood here was undershot with the water powering it from below and not from above?

After our little detour we then climbed about twenty steep, wooden steps to see the lofty chimney which appeared to be growing out of a bed of moss near an engine house. This is what remains of Gunnislake Clitter’s Mine which started its life as Wheal Fox in 1820 to extract copper ore; an inclined tramway linked this site with the quays at Gunnislake. Over two hundred miners worked here and they are said to have produced over 2,000 tons of ore per year. After its closure in 1889 it was re-opened on two separate occasions with the last time being during WW1 when Wolfram was mined here to make weapons for our soldiers.

We returned once again to the footpath which climbed steeply uphill through the shady woodland, if we looked down we could see a great deal of white quartz beneath our feet which is the result of a torrent of water gushing down here during heavy rain, and removing all the leaf mould in its path. Higher and higher we went which really got the adrenalin pumping around our body! Arriving at a road it was decided that everyone deserved a ten minute break before leaving the footpath to tackle the next steep hill.

With renewed vigour and tarmac beneath our feet now, we left the Discovery Trail behind and continued uphill towards the quiet hamlet of North , some of us spared a glance at the mighty Redsands spoil heap on our right which has more vegetation growing on it than its counterpart on the opposite hillside. At last the road beneath our feet levelled off and it was time to change into a lower gear before descending to Middle Dimson. Here at the crossroads everyone crossed into Chapel Street at the road junction before turning sharp left and back to Gunnislake village via Hooper’s Lane, on arrival at the car park we all agreed that after all that cardiovascular exercise, we certainly felt like we had done a walk despite only travelling about three miles.