As the name of the pub - the Five Pilchards - suggests, the port flourished during the heyday of pilchard fishing and a number of the buildings are relics of this. During mediaeval times, it was a major fishery, initially owned by an Abbey, and the pilchard fishery continued into Victorian times. In more recent times, Porthallow was largely owned by the Trelowarren Estate and the beach was still owned by the estate until the 1970s when it was purchased by the village. The place name is pronounced locally as "pralla".
In 1917 a convoy of cargo ships from Montreal successfully crossed the Atlantic to British waters and the Volnay sailed from Wales around Land's End on a course for Plymouth. The ship zig-zagged along the mineswept area in The Channel but one mine had been missed and this exploded against the cargo hold. The cargo hold that exploded was loaded with 18 pounder shrapnel shells, but remarkably these didn't detonate. The ship's engines weren't harmed and so the captain made a run for Falmouth. As he neared Porthallow, he realised that the ship would not make it to Falmouth and changed course for the nearest land, but the ship sank just half a mile from the shore. All the crew managed to abandon the ship and reach safety. The heavy shells sank, but a storm the next day brought much of the lighter cargo ashore. Much to the delight of the residents of the Lizard, Porthallow beach was 6 feet deep in cases of cigarettes, tea, coffee, meat, butter, jam and even potato crisps.
On the opposite side of the bay, in a disused quarry at Porthkerris, is the Cornish Sea Salt Factory.
The Iron Age saltworks on The Lizard inspired the idea for the Cornish Sea Salt Company in 2004 which, after three years of development work, began trading in Jan 2008. The salt is harvested from the sea in a purpose-built building on the Lizard coast. Only a fraction of the salt is extracted from the seawater, which is then allowed to trickle back into the sea through a fault in the rocks, ensuring that the local salinity levels are not greatly disturbed.
Lackey Moths are so named due to the brightly coloured caterpillars resembling a footman's livery. They are part of a family of "tent caterpillars" who spin their own silk greenhouse to keep them warm during the early spring. These have several compartments separated by insulating air gaps so the caterpillars can move between compartments to reach a comfortable temperature depending on the outside temperature and amount of sunshine. On sunny days in May, keep a look out for the caterpillars emerging from their tents.
Handling primroses is best avoided as the hairs on the leaves and stems can cause contact dermatitis which is quite severe in some people. It is thought that some people may develop a tolerance with repeated exposure but nevertheless a study in a medical journal found that over a quarter of Primula growers experienced skin reactions.
"Sea salt" (evaporated from sea water) undergoes less processing than table salt and retains its trace minerals. Claims that the trace mineral content makes sea salt more healthy than standard table salt are not scientifically substantiated. You can get far more trace minerals in your diet by simply eating vegetables! That's not to say that there aren't other (e.g. environmental, and possibly flavour) advantages of natural sea salt over processed table salt though.
In March 1891, the Bay of Panama - a four-masted steel ship of over 2000 tons - was wrecked at Penare Point near the Helford River in a blizzard. A farmer searching for his animals came across the wreck and found figures hanging in the rigging, some dead and some still alive. The West Briton newspaper reported:
The lifesaving rockets were brought into requisition, and by their aid, 17 sailors were brought ashore, but the Captain, his wife and 18 seamen were drowned. Several of the bodies were washed ashore yesterday, including the Captain's wife.
Large daisy-like flowers on the coast are likely to be oxeye daisies, also known as the dog daisy or moon daisy - the latter is said to be because they are so bright that they appear to glow in the evening. The flowers of oxeye daisies are edible and can be used in salads or deserts. The flower buds can also be pickled in vinegar and spices and used like capers.
As well as attracting insects, the brightly coloured foxglove flowers serve as a warning for animals that the plants contain toxins. All parts of the plant can cause a range of ill-effects in humans from nausea to heart and kidney problems which can be fatal.
Gannets can sometimes be seen off the headland, circling and diving for fish.
Gannets are the largest sea birds in the North Atlantic with a wingspan of up to 2 metres and are easily recognisable by their long white wings with black tips. Gannets can dive from up to 30 metres, achieving speeds of up to 100kph as they strike the water, enabling them to catch fish much deeper than most seabirds. To achieve this they have air sacs in their face and chest, which act as cushioning when they hit the water. Also they have no external nostrils, instead they are situated inside the mouth.
The lookout station at Nare Point was originally part of a torpedo testing range in Falmouth Bay. It was one of two control centres that tracked the position of dummy torpedoes dropped by aeroplanes and helicopters and was in use until 1993. After this it was used as a potato store until it was leased by the National Trust to the National Coastwatch Institution in 2005.
The National Coastwatch Institution was set up to restore visual watches along the UK coastline after two Cornish fishermen lost their lives within sight of an empty Coastguard lookout in 1994. The first station - at Bass Point on The Lizard, where the fishermen had died - opened in December 1994. The organisation, staffed by volunteers, now runs 50 lookout stations around England and Wales.
During World War 2, a decoy site was constructed at Nare Point which was built by Ealing Film Studios and manned from a bunker above Men-Aver beach. A sister site existed on Nare Head on the other side of Falmouth Bay, so whichever direction bombers approached from, they could be intercepted before they reached Falmouth. A mark in the grass alongside the coast path is the remains of a fake railway with red and green lights on posts to simulate signals. The site consisted of a range of fire-making devices that were designed to emulate a town that was in blackout where bombs had hit their targets. These included exploding sand bags, tanks with tar and 15 foot long fire-trays which could be filled with different mixtures to emulate the effect of a hit on a ship or a train. During Falmouth's most destructive bombing raid of 1944, the decoy site managed to lure 9 heavy bombs away from Falmouth.
The Helford creeks are formed from an ancient river valley that has been flooded by rising sea levels. In total, seven creeks (Ponsontuel Creek, Mawgan Creek, Polpenwith Creek, Polwheveral Creek, Frenchman's Creek, Port Navas Creek, and Gillan Creek) connect to the main Helford River inlet between the headlands of Nare Point and Rosemullion Head. The creeks are an important area of marine conservation and contain eelgrass which provides a habitat for a variety of wildlife including seahorses.
Because bluebells spread very slowly, they're considered to be an indicator of ancient woodland sites. In areas where trees are not very old, the fact there are bluebells around can indicate that there has been a wood on a site for a very long time. Even if there are no trees there at all, bluebells tell us that there was woodland there some time in the past. The bluebells along the coast are a relic of the gnarled oak woodland that used to grow here before it was cleared for grazing. There is still a patch of the ancient oak woodland left along the coast at Dizzard.
A romantic theory for the name of a kissing gate is that in the 16th Century, a lady would have been escorted through a gate by a gentleman to whom she would pass in close proximity and may reward a request for a kiss.
The protruding tongue of land is known as The Herra. The larger of the two mounds is thought to have been a Bronze Age barrow, as an urn was found in the eroding cliff and another urn was found nearby in Gillan Cove which is now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Also found in the cove was a bronze socketed axe head and three bronze ingots. The other mound has been greatly disturbed but may have originally been a barrow that was later re-used for fortification.
At the bottom of the steps beside the beach, bear left and follow the path past a bench and waymark to the wooden boat shed.
The walk continues on the bridleway behind the boat shed. You can optionally follow the coast a short distance further to Flushing Cove and the crossing to St Anthony, and then return here to complete the walk.
At low tide it is possible to cross Gillan Creek between Halamana (on the Flushing side) and St Anthony. Although there is a line of stepping stones, these are sometimes covered with slippery seaweed, in which case it is safer to wade across in the ankle-deep water, avoiding a narrow stretch of deeper water leading towards some old gypsy caravans. A ferry runs at high tide during the summer.
Gillan Creek is thought to be named based on the Cornish word gillynn (meaning inlet or creek). Consequently the "Creek" in the name is redundant and is an example of a place name where an English word has been unknowingly added to a Cornish word that already more-or-less means the same thing. Others include "Coombe Valley" and "Porth Beach". Gyllyngvase (beach) in Falmouth is derived from the same word.
The settlement of Trewarnevas was first recorded in the Domesday survey of 1086 as Treurnivet having one acre of land and owned by Alwin. The name is the Cornish for "farm on the sacred place", based on the word neved meaning sacred pagan place or grove.
Cow parsley, also known by the more flattering name of Queen Anne's Lace, is a member of the carrot family. Over the last few decades, cow parsley has substantially increased on roadside verges: there is more than half as much again as there was 30 years ago. The reason is thought to be to an increase in soil fertility caused by a few different factors. In the more distant past, verges were grazed or the grass was cut and used for hay. Now when it is cut by mechanical devices, it is left to rot in place forming a "green manure". In the last few decades there has also been an increase in fertilising nitrogen compounds both from farm overspill and from car exhausts. Whilst this extra fertility is good news for cow parsley and also brambles and nettles, it is causing these species to out-compete many other wildflowers along hedgerows.
The satellite dishes on the right are part of the Goonhilly Earth Station.
Goonhilly Earth Station was set up in the 1960s for telecommunications. Its first dish, Antenna One (also known as "Arthur"), was built in 1962 to receive TV from the Telstar satellite and was ready for the first day of broadcasts. In 1969, the sound and images from Apollo 11 were broadcast to the world from here as Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the Moon.
It went on to become the largest satellite earth station in the world for a while, with over 60 communications dishes and 25 in use at any one time. During the 21st Century, it has been repurposed for space exploration.
There are some nice displays of violets along the lane in early spring.
The purple flowers resembling a miniature pansy that you see along the footpaths from March to May are almost certainly dog violets, so-called because they are unscented (rather than scented of dog) to distinguish them from the sweet violet. The plants are able to thrive both in shade and full sun, so are found in grassland and hedgerows as well as woodland. Sweet violets prefer shade, so if you do encounter these it will most likely be in woodland, but the dog violets are more common even in this habitat.
Tarmac was discovered by accident in 1901 when a barrel of tar fell and burst open on a road and then waste slag from a nearby furnace was used to cover up the mess. The resulting smooth surface was noticed by a surveyor for Nottingham County who patented the idea, formed the Tar Macadam Syndicate and registered Tarmac as a trademark.
This has been adopted into the English language initially as tarmacadam and increasingly now as just tarmac. When used as an adjective it gains an extra "k" (i.e. tarmacked).
The track seems to be a popular flight path for butterflies searching for nectar-bearing flowers along the hedges.
The oldest moth fossils found so far are from the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago. By the Middle Triassic (age of amphibians - before the dinosaurs), moths had evolved their proboscis used to collect nectar from flowers. Day-flying butterflies were on the scene in the Late Cretaceous (when Tyrannosaurs were around). Originally it was thought day-flying was to avoid night-flying bats but it's now thought more likely that this was mainly to take advantage of the abundance of nectar that was originally targeted at bees.
Plantains are common weeds found alongside footpaths. Confusingly, members of the banana family are also known as plantain (e.g. "fried plantain") but despite the name the footpath weeds aren't closely related to bananas.
Cow parsnip can be mistaken for giant hogweed as the leaves are similar in shape and flowers look similar. The most obvious way to tell them apart is size. Cow parsnip reaches a maximum of 6-7 feet tall whereas even by the end of May, giant hogweed is massive and can reach 15ft tall by July. Another distinguishing feature is that cow parsnip has a groove in the top of the stem holding each leaf but you should not touch the plant to examine it.
Giant hogweed is regarded by some as the most dangerous plant in the UK (although hemlock is also a good contender). If you encounter giant hogweed, avoid touching it and children and dogs should be kept away from it as the sap contains a chemical which is extremely phototoxic. When activated by sunlight, this binds to the DNA in skin cells and kills them. Skin reaction starts as an itchy rash and can develop into third degree burns and scarring. It also makes the affected areas susceptible to severe sunburn for several years.
The plant gets its name as it can grow more than 10 feet tall, topped with white umbrella-shaped flowers. Due to the similar style of flowers, it is also known as giant cow parsley although the giant hogweed leaves are much more solid with a toothed edge, more similar to cow parsnip (normal hogweed). It is typically found near water or on waste ground.
The plant was introduced to Britain by Victorian botanists in the 19th century as an ornamental plant and has escaped from gardens into the wild. It has been spreading across the UK (as one plant produces 50,000 seeds) but is still very rare in Cornwall. A project to eradicate it along the Tamar River system is helping to stop further spread into Cornwall.
If you find giant hogweed in Cornwall (and are sure it's not normal hogweed), take a photo and report it to invasives@cormacltd.co.uk
Trees need a lot of water. A large oak tree can absorb around 450 litres of water per day, most of which is released into the atmosphere as water vapour through transpiration. Trees therefore help to reduce flooding from heavy rain in low-lying river floodplains and also reduce erosion from runoff.
Bluebells grow in the woodland and usually begin flowering towards the end of April.
Bluebells are also known by folk names based on their shape including Lady’s Nightcap and Witches’ Thimbles.
Other common names for the bluebell include "wild hyacinth" and "wood hyacinth" as they are related to the hyacinth family. Their Genus name Hyacinthoides also means "hyacinth-like".
Researchers think that hemlock produces alkaloid compounds to attract pollinating insects. The compounds are volatile so they evaporate in the warm weather and carry in the air. Although the plants are poisonous to mammals, they are the main food plant of some butterfly species.
The inner bark of the tree carries sugars created by photosynthesis down from the leaves to feed the rest of the tree. The inner bark dies over time to produce the outer bark which protects the living part of the tree.
Sorrel is native to the UK and common in fields and hedgerows. It's salt tolerant so it can often be found on the coast in Cornwall. The leaves resemble small, narrow dock leaves. In summer the plant is often evident in abundance in fields by its red seeds at the top of a tall stalk.
Sorrel leaves have a pleasant lemony flavour but before being tempted to try one, it's important first to learn how to avoid one of the most common poisoning mistakes from eating wild plants - how to distinguish sorrel leaves from the poisonous lily Arum maculatum (Lords and Ladies) as the latter causes serious irritation if consumed as it contains needle-like crystals that puncture mucous membranes. There's a video here.
The northeastern area of The Lizard, around the Helford creeks has been known for at least 1000 years as the Meneage, pronounced "M'neeg". The name means "land of the monks" and it is thought that after the Romans departed, the area was a confederacy of small Celtic monasteries settled by missionaries from Brittany.
Porthallow's "ex-straw-dinary" scarecrow festival began in 2017 and now takes places each August.
Scarecrow festivals were traditional in Derbyshire but were first imported into southern England in 1990 in the Wiltshire village of Urchfont. Since then many villages have started annual festivals, often with impressively elaborate and amusing scarecrows.
Porthallow is now probably best known for being the midpoint of the South West Coast Path.
The South West Coast Path stretches for 630 miles from Minehead in Somerset to Poole Harbour in Dorset. It was created as a route between lighthouses for use by the Coastguard so they could overlook the bays and coves to catch smugglers.
Cornish pilchard fisheries existed in mediaeval times, and in this period, the fish were smoked to preserve them before export to Spain and Italy. From Tudor times until the early 20th Century, Cornwall's pilchard fisheries were of national importance, with the bulk of the catch being exported almost exclusively to Italian Catholics for religious fasting. Cornish pilchards were the favoured ingredient for the brazenly-flavoured spaghetti alla puttanesca ("puttanesca" transliterates to "like a whore").
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".
Industrialisation of fishing and the introduction of rail transportation during Victorian times led to over-exploitation of the Cornish pilchard stocks to meet an insatiable demand from the Italian market and the population crashed. Possibly as a knock-on consequence of the lack of availability, demand from Italy dried up and this has allowed pilchard stocks to recover.
Pilchards are from the same family of oily fish as herring and mackerel, and are also high in omega-3 fatty acids and provide a range of minerals and vitamins. Some historical texts rave on about how amazingly healthy and radiant the Cornish peasants were when pilchards were a main component of their diet.
Sardines and pilchards are names for the same fish. Sardine was traditionally the name given to the smaller individuals and pilchards were the ones that managed to avoid being caught for a while longer. Pilchards have been deemed by marketeers as unsexy, possibly because those sold in tins during the late 20th Century tended to be the larger, less-bony specimens and so "pilchard" became associated canned fish. Therefore pilchards are now marketed as "Cornish sardines" when they are sold fresh.
Fat Apples Café is on the site of Porthallow Vineyard which was the most southerly in Britain. This made it into the national press in 1998 after the owner at the time was prosecuted by Trading Standards. A Trading Standards inspector became suspicious when he came across a 1992 vintage - the year that the vines were cut back. According to the newspaper reports, a site visit revealed that "estate produced and bottled" wine was made from wine kits and cider production involved soaking off the labels of shop-bought cider and re-labelling it.
The settlement here, known as Park-an-Tidno, dates from mediaeval times and was recorded in 1419 as Parksyntynnyowe. It is thought to have originally been based on the Cornish word fenten, meaning "spring" or "well", plus the more recognisable park, meaning "field". -yow was a common plural ending in the Celtic language. The gist would have been something like "Springfields".
Gillan Cove is a sand and shingle beach facing north into the mouth of Gillan Creek. The beach is sheltered from the west behind the protruding headland known as "The Herra" and consequently the beach is used to launch boats (it is also known as Gillan Harbour). Also as a result of being very sheltered, there's often quite a lot of seaweed growing on the beach towards the low water mark.
From geography lessons at secondary school, you'll probably know that wave-cut platforms form where waves hit the cliff face and create a wave-cut notch into which the cliffs above eventually collapse. The reason the cliffs are eroded faster than the platform below them is more in the realms of physics:
Nevertheless, the platform does slowly erode. At Porthleven it is estimated that the platform is eroding at a rate of 1mm every 5 years.
The white flowers along the coast in July and August which resemble a more compact version of cow parsley are the delightfully-named sea carrot. Unlike cow parsley, the flowers start off pink and become white as they open and sometimes have a single dark red flower in the centre. It's best to avoid touching the leaves of the sea carrot as they can make skin hypersensitive to ultraviolet light which can result in blistering caused by extreme sunburn.
The sea carrot is technically the same species as a wild carrot, from which the carrot was domesticated, but is shorter, stouter and more splayed-out than a wild carrot. The two converge the further north and east that you go in Britain: West Cornwall is therefore the pinnacle of sea carrot evolution.
A DEFRA survey recorded over 300,000 cows in Cornwall (a lot of moo is needed for the cheese and clotted cream produced in Cornwall) so there's a good chance of encountering some in grassy fields, but also on open moorland and sometimes for conservation grazing on the coast path too. Around 70% of agricultural land in Cornwall is used for grazing and agricultural land occupies over 70% of Cornwall's land area.
Cows are thought to have been domesticated in the Middle East around 8,500 BC. By about 6,400 BC they were being traded into Neolithic Europe. This is just about the point where the land bridge between Britain and Continental Europe (known as Doggerland) flooded with rising sea levels, so the first few cattle may have just managed to walk across.
The word cattle is from the same origins as "capital" and was originally a word for any portable wealth. Later it came to mean specifically (any) livestock which was still the understood meaning in Tudor times. It is only in relatively recent times that the scope has been limited further to just cows.
The Ramblers Association and National Farmers Union suggest some "dos and don'ts" for walkers which we've collated with some info from the local Countryside Access Team.
Do
Don't
Cows are very gregarious and even short-term isolation is thought to cause severe psychological stress. This is why walking along the hedges of a field to avoid splitting a herd is so important to avoid a cow bolting in panic to rejoin its friends.
Scientists have found that cows tend to lie down when the weather is cool but stand up when it's hot to improve air circulation and regulate their body temperature. The folklore about cows lying down being a sign of rain might well be due to the cold fronts causing precipitation being reflected in the "cow thermometer". Cows also lie down to sleep but they only sleep for about 4 hours a day.
A beef cow produces around 30kg of dung per day. As dairy cows need to eat more to produce milk, they also produce roughly double the amount of dung which adds up to around 20 tonnes per year.
Cow dung is high in nitrogen compounds which makes it a useful fertiliser but depending how this is spread on the fields (e.g. sprayed as a liquid), harmful ammonia can be released into the air and run into watercourses. Large tanks of slurry can also decay anaerobically releasing methane so storage mechanisms are being re-examined in light of climate change.
A group of grazing animals known as "ruminants" (which includes cows) have evolved a "pre-stomach" called a rumen where microbes break down cellulose into digestible materials. These microbes produce methane as a by-product. Cows emit around 250 to 500 litres of methane per day but contrary to urban myths, the vast majority is by burping rather than from the other end.
Since methane is a powerful greenhouse gas (reflecting more heat than carbon dioxide) and there are around a billion cows in the world, this has led to concern about the contribution that methane belched out by livestock is making to global warning. However, since methane is quite a short-lived greenhouse gas (about 12 years) and since the number of cattle hasn't changed that quickly over time, atmospheric methane levels are fairly stable. Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, lasts hundreds of years in the atmosphere so this is much more able to build up over time. One other factor is that pastureland is able to absorb triple the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide as grain fields so grass-fed cattle are preferable to grain-fed.
Scientists have found that adding a cupful of red seaweed per day to a cow's diet reduces the amount of methane that the cow burps out by about 80%. Due to the relatively short lifespan of methane in the atmosphere and the strong greenhouse effect from methane, this has the potential to make a quite quick but significant reduction to the rate of global warming, whilst the more tricky accumulative problem of carbon dioxide is being worked on.
The red campion produces a blaze of pink flowers along hedgerows in the spring with the most intense flowering period occurring between late April and the end of June. A scattering of flowers continue throughout the rest of the summer. In the mild Cornish climate, a few plants can often be seen flowering during winter months.
Despite being called red campion, its flowers are most definitely pink - varying quite widely in shade from vibrant deep pinks to very pale. The colour is produced by red anthrocyanin compounds which are also responsible for red autumn leaves and red tinges on new growth in some plants as well as flower colours. In red campion, the intensity of the colour is controlled by a pair of genes and several other genes control the exact balance of anthrocyanin compounds within the petals. These are passed down the generations and so pale pink parents are likely to produce pale pink offspring.
The second part of the Latin name of red campion - dioica ("two houses") - refers to the plants' gender. Some plants are male and others are female. The male plants' flowers can be recognised from five yellow stamens sticking out from a protruding ring in the centre of the petals. The female plants' flowers have no protruding ring and instead have 5 curly white stigmas. These produce a white froth to trap pollen.
Red campion is also known as "red catchfly". The flowers are an important nectar source for larger pollinating insects including butterflies, bees and hoverflies. Much smaller flies drawn to the nectar can become stuck in the froth on the stigmas of the female flowers but this is not intentional by the plant (it doesn't eat them).
Red Campion seeds ripen between June and August. The seed capsule has teeth at the end which fold back when the seeds are ripe, allowing them to escape when it is shaken by the wind (known in botanical circles as "the pepper pot mechanism"). Each seed weighs only one thousandth of a gram, allowing it to be carried as far as possible by the wind. Nevertheless many end up falling quite close to the parent which is why red campion often occurs as a cluster of plants.
The genus name for campions - Silene from the often-drunk Greek woodland god Silenus whose name derives from the Greek word for saliva. The name is thought to be based on the froth on the female flowers used to trap pollen although its habitat preference including semi-shade within woodland also fits fairly well.
Red campion is also known by a few local names including Johnny Woods (from its habitat) and Ragged Jack (from its flower shape). Some are colour references such as Scalded Apples, and particularly in the southwest, Red Riding Hood. Cuckoo-flower is a reference to the time of year that it flowers. Another name - "Batchelors' buttons" - suggests it was once worn as a buttonhole by young men.
The roots of red campion contain saponins (soapy compounds) which protect the plants against microbes and fungi. These compounds make it easier for large molecules such as proteins to enter cell membranes. This has the potential to increase the effectiveness of immunotherapy against cancer by allowing immunotoxins to enter the cancer cells more easily.
The name "buttercup" is thought to have come from a mediaeval belief that cows eating the flowers gave butter its yellow colour. In fact this couldn't be further from the truth as the plant contains toxins which make it taste acrid and is therefore avoided by grazing animals.
The Latin name of the buttercup, Ranunculus, means "little frog" and said to be because the plants like wet conditions. It is thought it may have come via a derogatory name for people who lived near marshes!
There are a few different species of buttercup. One of most common is meadow buttercup (unsurprisingly found in meadows!) which is the tallest member of the family. Another common one is creeping buttercup which as the name suggests spreads through rhizomes so is more likely to be found in dense clumps in damp places. Its leaves are also more golden and glossy.
Meadow buttercups spread across a field relatively slowly as most seeds fall quite close to the parent and although it has a creeping root system capable of propagating new plants, this only extends a fairly short distance from each plant (unlike creeping buttercup which has a much more extensive root system). Because grazing animals avoid buttercups due to their acrid taste, this allows them to accumulate over time. The combination of these factors allows the number of meadow buttercups in a field to be used as an indicator of how long it's been used for grazing.
Buttercups produce a toxin called protoanemonin, which is at its highest concentration when flowering. It is thought that buttercups may be partly responsible for Equine Grass Sickness. Fortunately the toxin is quite unstable and drying of the plant in haymaking leads to polymerisation into non-toxic anemonin. Buttercups are also toxic to dogs, cats and humans. They have a bitter taste which puts dogs off eating the plants but pollen can collect on fur and be ingested, particularly by cats when they clean themselves. A man in France who drank a glass of juice made from buttercups suffered severe colic after four hours and was dead the next day!
Porthallow beach is a pebble beach and there is a beach at all states of the tide. Along the right-hand side of the beach there are larger rocks and a rock platform is exposed at low tide. A rock platform also lies under the cliffs along the left side of the beach. The beach faces east away from prevailing winds so it is quite sheltered. Consequently the pebbles towards the low-water line can become quite weedy.
The beach is used to launch boats. Due to the rocks either side there's a reasonably narrow channel where they can launch and land which is something to be mindful of if swimming here.
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