Drive to Cornwall

Today marked our transition into Cornwall, where four millennia of human activity compressed into a single day. From Jay's grave to Bronze Age stone circles to Victorian clay works, each stop revealed how different eras leave their marks on the landscape. The narrow Cornish roads demanded local knowledge, the remote pub defied economic logic, and by evening we'd moved through enough centuries to make Mindwalk's meditation on interconnectedness feel perfectly timed.

From Ancient Stones to Industrial Clay

September 15, 2025

Today was a day of transitions and unexpected discoveries.

Ian drove us as far as Exeter, where Emma took over for the final stretch into Cornwall. There's something reassuring about having local knowledge for these narrow Cornish roads—Emma knows which stone walls to avoid and where the passing places actually work.

We made a stop that wasn't on any itinerary but felt necessary. Jay's grave. Standing there, I was struck by how certain belief systems construct elaborate defensive mechanisms around themselves, almost aggressively so. Places like this remind you that faith and control often intertwine in ways that aren't immediately obvious. Sometimes the most important stops are the unplanned ones.

Lunch was at a pub so remote it didn't seem possible it could survive, yet there it was—thriving in the middle of nowhere. The kind of place that makes you wonder about the invisible networks that keep rural England functioning. Good food, too.

We crossed what turned out to be a particularly interesting bridge. Not sure of its history yet, but it had that look of Victorian engineering—stone and iron working together in ways that were both practical and somehow elegant. Made a mental note to research it later.

The Hurlers was our first real archaeological stop. Three stone circles arranged in a line, dating back roughly 4,000 years. What struck me wasn't just their age, but their relationship to the landscape. These circles weren't placed randomly—they command views, they work with the natural contours of the moor. Standing among them, you get a sense of ancient purpose, even if we can't be entirely sure what that purpose was.

Then to Wheal Martyn—a complete change of pace and century. This was a china clay factory, part of Cornwall's industrial story that often gets overshadowed by the more dramatic tin mining heritage. But china clay was huge business here. The white pyramidal waste heaps scattered across the landscape are evidence of an industry that literally reshaped the terrain. The museum does a good job of showing how this particular kind of extraction worked—different from mining, more like systematic landscape modification.

We checked into our base for the next few days and had dinner at the local pub. Simple, good food and the kind of conversation that happens when you've spent a day moving through different centuries of human activity.

Ended the evening watching Mindwalk—seemed appropriate after a day of thinking about how different eras leave their marks on the landscape. The film's meditation on interconnectedness felt right after experiencing everything from Neolithic stone circles to 19th-century industrial sites in a single day.

Tomorrow we dive deeper into Cornwall's mining heritage. The real work begins.

Pictures can be found here: https://beloretrato0.picflow.com/d43bka91mw/qz3lqj64tr