Monday 23 December Ring-a ring a - Roseland
The Roseland is secret Cornwall. Not secret because anyone is keeping it secret; but because it changes shape and moves its lanes around every now and then, so that the road you thought you took from St Michael Penkevil to Ruan Lanihorne is not where it was the last time. Villages move. Lanes take you out one way and then return you to the same place, an endless Groundhog Day where left and right and north and south have no meaning.
This means that people go looking for the hotel or pub they went to last year but can't find it again but do end up somewhere else which may be just as good - or perhaps not. Or it may be the same place but somehow different. In the middle of the Roseland is the quiet, almost deserted village of Tregony that advertises itself as the 'Gateway to the Roseland' although the main road bypasses it in a hurry to get to St Mawes.
The Roseland is a peninsula made of peninsulas, a bony hand cut through by water and hidden valleys that may hold a stream or may not depending on how the valley feels that day. It is a shape shifting, bewitching, hidden and utterly beautiful part of south Cornwall somewhere between Truro and St Austell. Or at least that is where it was today. So the journey I describe may not be there by next summer, new lanes may mysteriously appear and others vanish. Or it may be my long promised GPS (Santa has it) will bring 21st century exactitude to this medieval landscape and cause it to behave. Perhaps I just need to use the map better.
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Nobody seems to live on The Roseland. There are squat houses and cob cottages, decaying manors, green streaked granite farmhouses and incongruously a few short terraces of 1960s build council homes located on lonely crossroads, close to the farms but nothing else. But no one actually lives here in winter or if they do, they are inside keeping warm or Christmas shopping. I see one dairy farmer, shiny green waterproofs and manure streaked wellies who waves a weary hand as I pass. I am passed in turn by a dirty white Peugeot van who announces his presence by sounding his horn causing my heart to stop. I think he was being kind.
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The lanes pass through small copses and larger woods, all part of Lord Falmouth's land. All the large farms here are either Duchy of Cornwall or belong to Cornish aristocracy. The small tenant farms are struggling to manage with beef suckler herds or dairy for the local ice cream manufacturers. The large estates grow tea for Londoners, camellias and azaleas for the Eden Project, winter wheat and cabbage and daffodils. In an hour of cycling through this secret, medieval landscape, the tarring of the road is the only thing that has changed in hundreds of years. The poor remain poor, the rich remain rich.
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The plan is to head out of Truro and cross into the Roseland by a new lane I found on the map last night, that looked less up and down than the last route I tried here. It is a lane that I have never found before - and will probably not find again. It does the Cornish thing of 150 to 200 feet of reasonably steep uphill, confined between tall hedge-walls, the granite blocks hidden by straggling and bare ash and sycamore bushes and small trees. Then at the top a brief glance at the view before plunging down between deep hedges, the lane sinking into mud and debris and puddles until I am again back to the height where I started. It is important to be patient about this. It is the price of admission to The Roseland that you endure this dragons back trail, this lack of apparent progress, this sense that you are fighting gravity all the time.
On though the village of Philleigh, no vehicles in the pub car park, houses with curtains drawn and everything dripping, trees bedraggled and denuded from the coastal storm last night. The lane is more open now until the helter-skelter descent down the steep sides of the Fal valley arriving at the King Harry Ferry, named after Henry VI who had it built to carry pilgrims on their way to St Michael's Mount.
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This is the place where Tristan, a knight of Cornwall and Brittany and Iseult, a Queen of Cornwall made a legendary crossing of the river. Tristan was having an affair with Iseult, who was wife of King Mark, monarch of Cornwall and chunks of Brittany. It wasn't Tristan and Iseult's fault they couldn't keep their hands off each other as they had accidentally swallowed a love potion disguised as wine. That still happens now at Christmas parties. It appears that King Mark suspected something was going on and summoned Iseult from the woods on my side of the Fal (where she had been dallying with Tristan) to a trial by fire. Iseult being pretty cunning arranged for Tristan to disguise himself as a labourer and to meet her at this river edge and carry her across the river on his shoulders. She was then able to pass the ordeal by fire because it was truthful when she said that only King Mark and the labourer who carried her across the river, had ever been between her legs.
I have told this story in the past to Madame Crow who has little patience with legends and history - 'its all been and gone, it doesn't matter'. . She contemplated the river, narrowed her eyes and asked why Iseult didn't just take the ferry. She also pointed out that the river is about eighty feet deep here so Tristan must have had long legs.
These are the things going through my mind as I puff up the steep road on the other side of the Fal, breath rasping and legs cold after waiting for the ferry. Once at the top I continue downhill (again) to Feock following a route I have done before that takes me at sea level along the edge of Devoran Creek, with views across to the Carrick Roads and then joins the coast to coast cycle path. Yes, Cornwall has a coast to coast cycle route. Eleven miles sea to sea, twenty two if you come back afterwards.
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I only follow the cycle path for a mile as it becomes more challenging later on, large stones and small drops and places where the Carnon River has burst its banks flooding the path. Instead it is on and along the Bissoe Valley, trail riders sounding like demented chain saws on the hillside opposite where an old mine working has left a spoil heap of red stained rubble. I stop and watch for a while, admiring the skill with which the trail bikes ascend the steep slopes and then hurtle perpendicularly down the other side. They are the first signs of life all day apart from the odd car that has passed and a dog that followed me for a while.
As I climb the lovely wooded valley from Twelveheads, trees still in leaf in this sheltered dell, that leads up to the mining village of Chacewater I decide that I am not tired enough yet and add some miles to the day. Now it is up Kerley Hill once again, legs pumping and then a fast lane, almost flat that takes me onto a circuitous series of lanes north of Truro, dirty, clogged with mud and glinting wetly in the winter sun. More hills, more descents. I cross the grain of the land, ascending down to bankfull or flooding streams in the bottom of the valley and then puffing my way up the other side.
I am close to Truro now and a right turn would take me home but I have other ideas and turn left instead, extending the ride up through St Allen and Trispen and then along the high ridge, back southwards, from where I can see the hills and clay spoil heaps of St Austell to the east and the long, green valleys that lead to Truro and the west on the other side. This is fine cycling, a little up and down, some bends, a few wooded copses to break up the view. Easy cycling and I know that I am nearly done so can let go of the reserves and pedal fast - as fast as I can. I keep thinking I am about to be overtaken by another cyclist but it is only my shadow, elongated in the low light that races towards me and then away as the land dips and rises.
A fast downhill, the road greasy and green under overhanging trees and I need to be careful. But something has taken control of my spirit and I let go of the brakes, exulting in speed, careless of consequences, leaning into the bends, eyes wide, hands tight. I emerge into Tresillian village like a cork from a bottle and have to brake hard for the junction. An easy pedal home now, just a couple of hills, no more than 3% and 220 uphill feet. This is the hill that was as much as I could manage last Spring. It was my ultimate test in April to ascend the hill without stopping. Now I can breathe all the way to the top and although I will not be challenging the Strava KOM, I take a pleasure in the evidence of improvement.
I had sent my older son, usually in Hong Kong but this week in Cornwall, a text with the picture of King Harry ferry and asked him to guess where I was. He responded in seconds. "Dad we are starting to worry about all this cycling in circles you do. Why don't you do Lands End to John o' Groats instead?'.
I have read articles by people who have done that journey and admired them in much the same way I admire the people who are astronauts or Olympic athletes. Not for me. Too hard. Superhuman qualities required. But now a worm is stirring.....maybe, just maybe, in the summer when the weather is kind.... I could do.... Bristol to Truro. Hmm...that feels as if it would be downhill.
Oxford to Truro? East to west, Lowestoft to Lands End?....I begin to compose what I will need to say to Madame Crow as I walk up the garden path.
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but cycled over to Phil’s, passing the long queues of traffic that were trying to get into a well known food store on the Retail Park and arrived at 10:30. It was chilly out and a keen wind from the West/South West was blowing.
