Before the railway was built, Newquay was a small fishing village, with around 1,300 inhabitants recorded in 1801. The settlement grew up around a natural harbour and was known as Towan Blystra (which translates to something like "wind-blown dune"). Although protected from the prevailing westerly winds, the anchorage was quite exposed to a northeasterly wind. This may possibly be the origin of the Cornish name but also gave rise to its successor: in the late Middle Ages, funds were secured to protect the harbour by the building of a new quay.
Towan Island was first sold at an auction in 1838 to the industrious Billing brothers, who were often seen working in their gardens on the Island. Before 1900, the island had a potato patch and chickens were also kept there, and it was accessed by a curving pathway up the sides from the beach.
At the start of the 1900s, a 30m long suspension bridge was built 25m above the beach and is the only privately-owned suspension bridge in Britain. The building on the island was formerly a tea room, and was converted into a three-bedroom Edwardian house in the 1930s.
The house was once owned by Sir Oliver Lodge, inventor of the spark plug. One can speculate whether the gap between the land and the island provided inspiration for the spark plug, vice versa, or whether this is just a happy coincidence.
The concept of fish and chips is thought to be a fusion of Jewish and northern English cultures. Fried fish was originally introduced by Jewish settlers, while chips became popular in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The combination as a dish is thought to have originated in the mid 1800s. During World War II, it was one of the few foods that were not rationed. The practice of wrapping in newspaper was stopped in the late 1980s due to the toxic chemicals used in ink.
Despite being named after sand dunes (that presumably existed here before Newquay was built), Towan is now Newquay's town beach. Towan beach joins with Great Western and Tolcarne beaches at low tide. It should not be confused with the identically-named Towan Beach on the Roseland peninsula.
The game of bowls dates from mediaeval times and was first clearly documented in the 13th Century. From the 14th Century, it was banned along with several other sports for being a distraction from archery practice. However bans on bowling continued long after guns had replaced the longbow due to the disreputable nature of bowling alleys which were often attached to taverns. Until 1845, labourers, apprentices and servants were forbidden from playing bowls except at Christmas under the supervision of their masters!
During the mining boom of the 18th and 19th Centuries, Newquay's mediaeval harbour, which was originally built for fishing, was rebuilt as a mineral port. Work was started as part of a grand plan by a London investor to create a three acre harbour for exporting copper to the smelters in South Wales. He died before it was completed, but his company was bought out by mining magnate Joseph Treffry who completed work on the harbour for mineral export and connected it to his transport links leading inland. The stone pier in the centre of the harbour was originally connected to the South Quay by a timber bridge to create a third quay.
The harbour still has a small working fishing fleet and commercial boats associated with tourism.
The Newquay lifeboat carried out its first rescue in 1864 and was initially located on Fore Street. The difficulty of launching the boat, over sand at low tide, resulted in it being relocated to a dedicated slipway on Towan Head. This also eventually closed in 1945. In the 1960s, an inshore lifeboat station re-opened at Newquay, based in the harbour and continues to carry out quite frequent rescues, with the crew earning several awards for gallantry.
Newquay's Gig Rowing Club, next to the lifeboat house, stems from the use of these boats in the harbour during the 19th Century. One of four boats documented as in use in 1840 is owned by the club and is still seaworthy.
The six-oared elm boats known as Pilot Gigs were general-purpose work boats, but one of their uses was to transport the pilot to and from a ship, which resulted in the name. The first boat to meet a ship gained the business of transporting the captain (and thus being paid) and thus a "race" came into being, with different boats competing for business. Today, Gig Racing is of a recreational nature, but the boats are still built to the exact well-documented specification of the originals. Elm wood is highly resistant to water, so much so, that town water mains were made of elm before the widespread availability of iron.
When Newquay was a working mineral port, horse-drawn wagons emptied their ore into chutes at the top of the cliff, forming heaps at the bottom. The ore was moved along tram tracks which were laid along the quays to load the sailing ships awaiting in the harbour. Coal and other imported goods were raised from the quay in wagons hauled through a tunnel (now occupied by Newquay Rowing Club) using winding engines.
The concrete platform ahead of the steps is the location of the Fly pilchard cellars.
The Fly cellars were built on the rock platform under The Beacon in 1800. When pilchard catches declined, the cellars were converted into a herring curing factory. The cellars were also used to store the town's four ancient gigs. Two were sold off and one of these was removed from the cellars and was later found in use at a local farm where it had been cut in two - the majority was holding up a hedge and the stern section was used as a chicken coop. The remaining three gigs were moved after the cellars were sold. The night after they were moved, the cellars burned down!
Today, all that remains is a platform on the rocks which has become a popular fishing spot as the water is relatively deep at high tide and the seabed out from the rocks is sandy and snag-free.
The pilchard fisheries rose to their peak in Victorian times. The pilchards were salted and then pressed to extract the oil which was sold as somewhat aromatic lamp oil. The fish were then packed with more salt into hogshead barrels which could fit up to 3000 fish per barrel. Huers (cliff top lookouts) helped locate shoals of fish. The huer would shout "Hevva!, Hevva!" (the Cornish word for "shoal") to alert the boats to the location of the pilchard shoals. The name "huer" is from the old French verb meaning "to shout".
The Huer's hut in Newquay is thought to date from the mid-19th Century but may be on the site of the earlier building, possibly dating as far back as the 14th Century. The courtyard on the seaward side was added later and included walls which were originally five feet high. In 1906, the building was leased to the Council who modified it for use as a shelter, lowering the walls and widening the doorway. It has since had the iron gates added so it can no longer be used as a shelter.
Newquay's Gig Rowing Regatta ran from 1815 and was started at the huer's hut by firing a cannon positioned below the huer's hut that was salvaged from a sunken Galleon in the Spanish Armada. The cannon was destroyed in the 1920s by a group of young men visiting the town who threw it from the top of the cliff and it smashed to pieces on the rocks below.
During the years of Free Trade, Newquay had a reputation as a port where harbour officials could be bribed to "look at the wall" whilst smuggled goods were unloaded. Conversely the port of Padstow was very much more under the control of the Revenue men. The octagonal lookout was built on the top of the headland by the Coast Guard so that armed watchmen from Padstow could be stationed at Newquay to keep an eye on things.
Smugglers would use old mine workings to store their contraband. One area of workings near Newquay became known as the Tea Caverns due to its regular use for storing smuggled tea, which was very highly taxed from the start of the 18th Century. Due to its light weight and ease of transport, tea became even more profitable to smuggle than spirits. This continued until the 1780s, when the tax on tea was slashed and smugglers turned their attention to other commodities.
Due to the difficulties of launching the lifeboat from the centre of Newquay, a purpose-built slipway was created at Towan Head in 1895, leading into the ocean in the area known as The Gazzel (meaning armpit). This was followed by the lifeboat house in 1899. The slipway is one of the steepest in England and as well as making for a launch that was not for the faint-hearted, it was so steep that the lifeboat could not be returned to the lifeboat house via the slipway. Instead it had to come ashore at Towan Beach and be towed through the town by a team of horses.
The walk continues on the path on the opposite side of the lane. Beforehand you can take an optional diversion along the lane to the right onto the headland and re-join the route via the Coast Path sign.
Continue on the coast path past the Headland Hotel to reach The Fish House.
The Headland Hotel was built to create the finest hotel in South West England and opened its doors in 1900. The controversial construction has been documented by the owners of the hotel:
When work commenced there was immediate opposition from the local fishermen, who claimed the hotel was being built on common land they had used to dry their nets for generations. Feelings ran high and local workmen were intimidated into stopping work. One night a group came up from the town and pulled down the foundation walls, burned the scaffolding and threw the foreman's hut into the sea. The Newquay Riots, as they were known, resulted in several men being fined and all work grinding to a halt. Two hundred unemployed miners from Redruth were recruited because the locals were unwilling to return to the site, and as the new workers arrived in Newquay, traction engines equipped with steam hoses were used to keep the resentful natives at bay.
In 1990, the hotel was used as the setting for Roald Dahl's film "The Witches".
Fistral is a large, sandy west-facing beach backed by sand dunes. There is a beach at all states of the tide. A small finger of rock separates off the tiny beach of South Fistral which is backed by cliffs rather than sand dunes. At low tide it's possible to climb over the rock to walk along the full length of beach from the car park at the north end near the Headland Hotel to the café at the far end of South Fistral and exit the beach by climbing the steps up the cliff.
Fistral is one of the best and most consistent surf beaches in Europe and consequently Newquay's most popular beach. Fistral hosts a number of surfing championships including the English National Surf Championship and Europe's largest surf festival - Boardmasters.
At this point, you can optionally walk along Fistral Beach if the tide is out and rejoin the route at the clifftop grassy area on the far end of the beach by climbing the steps at Sea Spray café (the steps lead from the sandy area on the other side of the ridge of rocks in front of the café).
Otherwise, continue a few more paces to reach the coast path departing from the inland side of the car park and follow this to reach a junction of paths.
Newquay has been at the heart of UK surfing for half a century. The surfing and beach lifestyle promoted by the Beach Boys fuelled a boom in Newquay's tourism with flights from Gatwick by Dan-Air in the 1960s as well as trains bringing in the tourists. In the 1960s, "serious" surfers sported massive longboards, many of which were made in Newquay, whereas the tourists surfed on wooden belly boards. Newquay still boasts the best range of surf shops, schools and board manufacturers in the UK.
During late April, St Mark's flies occur in quite large numbers. They are recognisable by their shiny black colour, slow flight and dangly legs and have a habit of landing of anything in their path, walkers included. The larvae live in the soil feeding on roots and rotting vegetation and hatch around St Mark's Day (25th April), sometimes later into May in a cold year. The adults only live for about a week but they do feed on nectar, making them important pollinators. Each of the males eyes are divided into two parts by a groove and each part has a separate connection to their brains. This allows them to use one half to fly whilst using the other half to look for females.
As a wave approaches the beach, the bottom of the wave (which extends as far below the water as the crest does above the surface) starts to get close to the seabed and this begins to slow the wave down. As it slows down, its energy is transferred into increased height and the result is more closely-spaced, taller waves. The bottom of the wave now extends even closer to the seabed and is slowed even more. Eventually, the top of the wave outruns the bottom and the wave breaks. More sudden changes to depth allow the wave to get taller and steeper before it has time to break which is why "reef breaks" attract surfers.
Surfing in the UK became popular in the 1960s, driven by the music of The Beach Boys and the Hawaiian influence in California. However there were pioneer surfers in Cornwall and the Channel Islands shortly after the First World War. In the 1920s, the young men of Perranporth were provided with coffin lids by the local undertaker for use as surfboards.
The areas of bright green leaves (with orange flowers in summer) are crocosmia.
The name Montbretia is after "Coquebert de Montbret" - a French botanist who accompanied Napoleon to Egypt in 1798 but died there at the age of 20. The Latin name Crocosmia has Greek origins, meaning "saffron scent". This is based on the the smell of the dried leaves. The crocuses which produce saffron are also members of the iris family.
The headland is known as Pentire (or East Pentire).
The name "Pentire" is common on the coast for the simple reason that it means "headland": in Cornish pen means head or top and tir means land. Some Anglicised names such as "Pentire Point" (i.e. Headland Point) are somewhat tautological.
During the summer months, a ferry operates at high tide between the Fern Pit Café and the beach at Crantock.
Crantock beach is a dune-backed beach south of Newquay across which the River Gannel runs. Due to the strong currents associated with the tidal river, the northern area of the beach is not recommended for swimming. The best place to swim is towards the southern side, backed by the cliffs of West Pentire.
From West Pentire, there are steps from the coast path leading down to the inlet near the Bowgie Inn and another path leading down at Vugga Cove. However, there is no way up from the cliffs around Piper's Hole at the back of the beach so care should be taken not to be trapped in the inlets here by a rising tide. Currents along the cliffs also sometimes create depressions in the sand which fill up with water as the tide comes in forming deep pools which can result in unwary people being marooned on sandbars.
The settlement of Crantock dates back to AD 460, when a group of Irish or possibly Welsh hermits founded a chapel there. The parish was once known as Langurroc, which translates as "The Dwelling of Monks". The chapel of Langurroc was said to have been covered up in a sandstorm, and may lie beneath the sand dunes behind Crantock Beach. The village church is dedicated to St Carantoc - said to be one of the founders of the village. In its heyday, when the River Gannel was navigable, Crantock was a river port.
Cornwall has the mildest and sunniest climate in the United Kingdom, both due to its southerly latitude and the Gulf Stream carrying warm air from the Caribbean. The county has become even milder over the past decade, according to a report from Exeter University. Average temperatures in Cornwall stay above 10°C for more than seven months of the year and the southwestern part of the county is classed as subtropical.
Just after you turn right, the Public Footpath to Crantock leads down onto the shoreline of The Gannel. At low tide you can optionally walk upriver along the shoreline and rejoin the route at the small car park, just past direction 33, following the lane ahead towards the main road to reach direction 34.
In the UK, Cordyline australis can often reach around five metres high. In New Zealand it normally reaches around 8 metres. The largest specimen of the plant is thought to be around 500 years old, is 17 metres tall and has a circumference of nine metres at the base!
Another place that alexanders are commonly found is near the sites of mediaeval settlements, in particular religious settlements where they were cultivated by monks as a vegetable. In mediaeval cuisine they were used as an alternative to celery (which was a more bitter plant back then). It was traditionally one of the "pot herbs" that were added to stews and the dried seeds can also be used as a spice. Alexanders were particularly useful during lean winters as its new growth is available in the late Autumn, before many other spring greens.
Whilst there's a bit of a joke that Cornish Time is "d'reckly", the reason why things happen a bit later in Cornwall can be explained by a brief introduction to marine navigation (possibly in more ways than one by a local who is not amused!):
Longitude is the east-west position around the globe in degrees (0-360). Greenwich in London was chosen to be 0 degrees, known as the "meridian". The sun rises in the east so places east of the meridian get the sun earlier and places west get the sun later.
Each global 1-hour timezone covers 15 degrees of longitude (360 degrees divided by 24 hours). Being the most westerly part of the UK mainland, Cornwall is roughly 5 degrees or a third of a timezone away from London - about 20 minutes behind GMT. Since clocks are not set differently, everything involving the sun - dawn, dusk etc - happens at a later time.
The take home message is that it's therefore possible to enjoy a couple of glasses of wine watching the sun set over the sea whilst the capital is in darkness.
Blobs of resin from conifers can fossilise along with the trees themselves in low oxygen environments to form amber. Over time, the volatile organic compounds that make the resin sticky are lost as the molecules left behind join up into polymers. After a few million years, the result is something very similar to a hard piece of clear plastic. Amber's ability to survive for hundreds of millions of years also suggests that man-made plastics created from organic polymers could persist in the environment a very long time.
Cornish tradition states that Hevva cake was baked by the huers on their return from their clifftop lookouts to their homes, the cake being ready by the time the pilchard fishermen returned to land. It traditionally contains flour, lard, butter, milk, sugar and raisins and is similar in appearance to Welsh cakes, but the magic ingredient is a heavy spicing of nutmeg. It is made by crumbling all of the dry mixture together, then adding the raisins and mixing to a dough with milk. The dough is then rolled to a thickness of about half an inch, and traditionally a criss-cross pattern is scored across the top which signifies the nets used by the fishermen. It was originally cooked on a griddle, as with Welsh cakes. Hevva cake has had a recent revival (if you taste it, you'll see why!) and is now on sale in many supermarkets as well as bakeries in Cornwall.
Our favourite hevva cake recipe was passed down by a lady called Patsy to make small rock cakes or cookies rather than a single big cake, and is baked using self-raising flour for a lighter finish. Rub/whizz 125g butter into 250g SR flour. Mix in 125g demerara sugar, 60g raisins or currants, 50g mixed peel and 3g of freshly grated nutmeg. Add a small egg and bring together with a little milk. Shape into small discs about 1.5cm thick. Top with demerara sugar. Bake 170°C for 15-20 min until just starting to turn golden on top.
The name of the river is from the Cornish An Ganel meaning "the channel". At high tide, the River Gannel used to be navigable all the way to Trevemper Bridge, and schooners and barges would transport coal, timber and sand to the mining and agricultural industries further inland. In 1838 the East Wheal Rose mine began discharging mine waste into the tributaries of the river. This caused silting and slime to coat the riverbed. Despite complaints to the Admiralty about the impact on the river's navigability, the silting continued.
Since the closure of the mines, the water quality has greatly improved and the Gannel river supports wildlife including salmon and the once common but now endangered European eel. The salt marshes created by the silting have also become an important habitat which is now earmarked for protection within a Marine Conservation Zone.
The little egret - a white member of the heron family - can be seen on many of the creeks in Cornwall and yet is only a very recent settler in Britain. The birds first appeared in Britain in any number in 1989 and the first to breed was in 1996 in Dorset.
The flooded quarry pits, farm ponds and pools in small streams in Cornwall provide ideal habitats for Freshwater Eels. Freshwater Eels have such an eccentric life cycle that it was a mystery for many years. The adult eels migrate from the lakes in which they grew up, across land, down rivers and 4,000 miles across the ocean to the Caribbean where they spawn and die. The larvae then drift for 300 days in the ocean currents from the Sargasso Sea to Europe. The tiny "glass eels" then migrate up rivers and across fields to find suitable homes.
Eels have been a popular food for centuries as their rich, oily flesh is very tasty. Due to overfishing, pollution and also changes in ocean currents, the Freshwater Eel is now a critically endangered species. Since the 1970s, the numbers of eels reaching Europe is thought to have declined by around 90% (possibly even as much as 98%). A research project has been started to breed eels in captivity. This is not straightforward as the eel is generally only able to reproduce after having swum 4,000 miles. The researchers have therefore developed an Eel Gym to help the eels find their mojo.
Trenance gardens were initially laid out in 1906. Further work was done during the Great Depression of the 1930s to create the boating lake. Local unemployed men were paid dole money, a pasty per day and some tobacco to work on this and at the end of each week their wives received a packet of tea.
During the 1960s, it was considered an exotic school trip for schoolchildren in Tintagel to be taken to the boating lakes at Trenance Park. Unfortunately, schoolteachers at the time were less well-acquainted with boats than the schoolchildren, and a teacher who unwisely stood with one leg in each boat was reminded of Newton's Laws in a way that was both memorable and ceased any more Newquay visits for the schoolboys in the two boats.
Trenance cottages are thought to have been converted from the remains of an old malthouse which had fallen out of use by 1840. In the 1970s, the cottages were used as a private museum. Since then they have undergone a community-led restoration project to create the tearoom, a function room and a free public museum which explores the history of tourism in Newquay.
Newquay Zoo is a short distance further along the road beneath the viaduct and can be reached via the pedestrian crossing just before the viaduct.
Newquay Zoo opened in 1969 by the Newquay district council, went into private ownership in the 1990s and is now part of a larger conservation charity which also includes Paignton Zoo. Newquay Zoo increasingly holds endangered species and has a number of successful conservation breeding programmes including the Red Panda.
During the 1840s, the Victorian entrepreneur Joseph Treffry created a horse-drawn tramway from the area around Bugle to his port in Par. In 1849, the tramway was extended through St Dennis to Newquay, in an ambitious scheme to export from the mines to both coasts. In Newquay the tramway ran along the trackbed of what is now the railway line, over the Trenance viaduct and beside the current station but rather than terminating here, it continued through the town to the harbour.
In 1873 the Cornwall Mineral Railway took over the line to Newquay with a view to exporting iron and china clay but the demand for transport was less than expected. The line was therefore opened to passengers in 1876 in an attempt to diversify and the railway station was built in 1877, providing access to Newquay's array of golden beaches. After buying the line to Newquay in 1896, the Great Western Railway ran a poster campaign to entice city dwellers to discover the wonders of Cornwall. This proved hugely successful and a number of hotels were built in Newquay to accommodate the surge in tourism. Passengers were originally taken from the station to their hotels in horse-drawn taxis.
The pedestrian and cycle route is known locally as "the Tram Track" as this is the trackbed of Treffry's tramway leading to the harbour. It continued to be used as a rail link to the harbour until 1926.
Many guides to crabbing mention changing water in a bucket containing crabs. There are two reasons why changing water frequently (every 10 minutes) is vital to keep crabs alive:
Crabs have gills and get their oxygen from the water. There is not much water in a bucket and the oxygen quite quickly gets depleted. Too many crabs in one bucket also depletes the oxygen too quickly.
The temperature of the sea in Britain rarely exceeds 19°C and most marine animals can only survive short periods at higher temperatures where their metabolic processes don't work efficiently. Crabs will avoid water warmer than 25°C (room temperature) as long periods in warm water will kill them. The small amount of water in a bucket has a small heat capacity (like in a nearly-empty kettle) and so will warm up quite quickly. Keeping the bucket out of the sun will also help to stop the water getting too warm before it is changed.
Increasing the amount of water will also help by holding more oxygen and staying cool longer.
Sea beet is also known as "wild spinach" and is the ancestor of sugar beet, beetroot and Swiss chard. It can be eaten raw or cooked. The leaves are at their best during March and April and become tougher as the year goes on.
Sea beet has been cross-bred with domesticated crops to re-introduce some of the disease resistance from the tougher wild plant that were lost in the domesticated plants. It is also able to withstand quite high sodium levels in the soil which allows it to grow in salty conditions on the coast.
The Hottentot Fig (Carpobrotus edulis), was once classified as a Mesembryanthemum but as plant genetics were better understood, was found to be a close relative but in a different sub-family of the larger ice-plant family. They are called ice plants due to hairs on the leaves which refract sunlight and make them sparkle. The plant is native to South Africa and was originally grown ornamentally in gardens but has subsequently gone feral and settled on the coastline where it thrives in sandy soils, helped by its resistance to wind and salt. It forms a dense mat which crowds out other species and is therefore considered invasive.
Biologically, there is no clear distinction between ducks, geese and swans (geese and swans are one lanky subfamily of ducks). Dark-coloured ducks get the equivalent of "grey hairs" with age - their feathers gradually turn white.
The species of duck that you're most likely to encounter is the mallard. Mature males have striking iridescent green heads and dark bodies whilst females look totally different - a brown and white pattern which offers much better camouflage. However, both have a common feature that is unique to mallards - an iridescent blue patch on their wings.
In situations where ducks need to watch out for predators, they can sleep one half of their brain at a time, keeping one eye open for danger. In safer circumstances, ducks will sleep fully.
Male ducks (drakes) have a penis which falls off every autumn and regrows the following spring. The length each year depends on the amount of competition for females and varies up to a maximum of the duck's whole body length.
Ducks can change gender. This happens for about 1 duck in 10,000 and more commonly from female to male than the other way around. It seems to occur in a flock of ducks where there is a significant gender imbalance where it gives the duck that changes a competitive advantage. It's likely that the female to male direction is a bigger evolutionary win because one male can fertilise multiple females.
Feeding bread to ducks is quite bad for them although not feeding ducks anything at all is potentially worse as many have now become reliant on being fed. White bread lacks many of the nutrients that ducks need but ducks will gorge on it to the point of ignoring other foods, effectively becoming junk food addicts. The problem is that by filling up on just this, they can become malnourished, deformed and even die. Some healthier things to feed ducks are leftover peas, sweetcorn, seeds, rice and salad.
Swans usually mate for life, although "divorce" can sometimes occur if there is a nesting failure. The birds can live for over 20 years but in the 20th Century many swans were found to be suffering from lead poisoning. This was tracked down to the tiny "lead shot" weights used for fishing that swans would hoover up with weed and roots from the bottom of rivers and lakes. Since the introduction of non-toxic metals for making fishing weights, incidents of poisoning have disappeared and the swan population is now even growing very slightly.
Kittiwakes are a member of the gull family, recognisable by their black legs and black wing tips. During the spring and summer, the birds form colonies on cliffs or rock stacks. After August, they move offshore for the winter to feed. Unlike herring gulls, which have been able to adapt their shoreline scavenging to urban rubbish tips, kittiwakes feed solely on fish and have been declining in some areas, possibly due to overfishing.
Golf developed in The Netherlands during the Middle Ages and was introduced into Scotland towards the end of this period where it evolved to its present form. The word golf is thought to be a Scots alteration of Dutch colf meaning "club". Golf is first documented in Scotland in a 1457 Act of the Scottish Parliament, prohibiting the playing of the games of gowf and futball as these were a distraction from archery practice.
In mediaeval times, golf balls were made from wood. In the 17th Century, the "featherie" was created, made from leather and stuffed with feathers. In the mid-1800s, balls moulded from sap were the first to be mass-produced. They could also be heated and re-cast if they went out of shape from being hit. However people noticed that battle-scarred balls that had been used a long time seemed to fly more consistently. Golf ball manufacturers began etching different protrusions on the surfaces in attempts to improve the aerodynamics. The potential of a ball of elastic bands was discovered by a bored golfer waiting for a friend to finish work and by the 1890s, these were being coated in sap to make golf balls. In the early 1900s, it was found that indentations (rather than protrusions) on the surface resulted in better aerodynamics.
The word "tee" is from the Scottish Gaelic word taigh meaning "house" and is related to the coloured circles known as a house in the sport of curling. Teeing off was originally done within a circle of one gold club length from the hole. A mound of sand would be placed somewhere within this circle and the ball rested on top. In 1892, an Englishman patented a rubber-topped wooden peg which was sold as the "Perfectum". In 1899 an American dentist designed "an improved golf tee" consisting of a wooden cone containing a rubber sleeve to hold the ball but this didn't seem to catch on. Peg-based tees were adopted widely by the 1920s.
The Red Lion is thought to be the most common name for a pub in the UK and to originate from the Stuart era when James I came to the throne and ordered the heraldic red lion of Scotland to be displayed on all buildings of importance, which naturally included pubs.
There are several reasons why seagulls should not be fed.
One is that human foods are not nutritionally suitable for seagulls but seagulls are not smart enough to know these can damage their health.
Another is that seagulls become dependent on humans and lose the skills to obtain food from natural sources.
The reason most affecting us is that feeding seagulls makes them less scared of humans. Since seagulls do not have have the emotional wiring to empathise with humans, fear is the only thing preventing that interaction being aggressive. Seagulls are innately aggressive when it comes to food as their behaviour with other seagulls demonstrates. There are many examples of children being attacked (who then drop food, reinforcing the behaviour).
There is little or no beach at high tide at Little Fistral. As the tide goes out, the upper part of the beach at is coarse sand and shingle and as the tide goes out further a rock platform with rockpools is revealed. The beach faces west so there are often waves breaking onto its rocky shore.
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