Seaton might sound like an Old English name for a settlement by the sea but is thought to take its name from the river which had a Cornish name. The river was recorded in 1302 as Sethyn which is likely to be from the Cornish word seth, meaning "arrow" and a contraction of vean, meaning "small".
Wild arum lilies grow alongside the path.
In order to attract pollinating insects, the plant heats the flower spike up to 15°C above that of the surroundings. The plant exudes a smell of decaying flesh which attracts flies and the flower is designed to trap these. Within the flower, the female organs mature first and insects carrying pollen from other plants (together with any unlucky enough not to be) are imprisoned behind a row a spines within the flower. Once the plant is pollinated, the male organs quickly mature and the plant's own pollen is dusted over the trapped flies. The spines then wither away enough for the flies to escape.
All members of the lily family, including wild arum, are poisonous to dogs.
When a tree is injured, it exudes resin - a thick, sticky liquid which hardens and seals up the wound. The resin also contains anti-fungal and insecticide chemicals to protect it from parasites and pathogens. Frankincense and myrrh are both examples of resins.
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.
The seeds of common gorse are the source of the chemical used to identify people with the rare "hh" blood group. The red blood cells in the vast majority of people (in blood groups A, B, AB and O) have a material called "H substance" on their surface. It turns out that the chemical extracted from gorse binds remarkably specifically to this and cells from the "hh" blood group (that have no H substance) are left alone.
Gorse flower wine can be made using 5 litres of gorse flowers stripped from the stems and simmering these in 5 litres of boiling water. Once the flowers are removed, 1.3kg of sugar should be dissolved in the hot water and allowed to cool to room temperature. Then add 500g of chopped raisins and juice and zest of 2 lemons and ferment with white wine yeast and yeast nutrient. Although flowers are present year-round, they are best picked in spring (April and May) when they are most profuse and fragrant.
Gorse seeds each contain a small body of ant food. The seeds also release a chemical which attracts ants from some distance away. The ants carry the seeds to their nests, eat the ant food and then discard the seeds, helping them to disperse.
Looe Island has been inhabited since the Iron Age. Roman coins, pieces of Amphora and stone boat anchors all point to continued habitation and possibly trade before the Dark Ages. From the 13th to the 16th Centuries, the island was known as St Michael's Island, and after 1584 it became known as St George's Island.
Looe Island also had a history of smuggling, and the first cottage on Looe Island was built by smugglers. The second cottage on the island was built by the Revenue to clamp down on the smuggling!
In 1965 the island was bought by two sisters who lived there for the rest of their lives. The island was left to the Cornwall Wildlife Trust who now manage it as a nature reserve.
The English Channel is thought to have been formed by two catastrophic floods from lakes that built up behind a dam of ice. The first was about 425,000 years ago and broke through a range of chalk mountains between the Weald and Artois. Then about 225,000 years ago, a second ice-dammed lake at the end of the Rhine broke through another weak barrier and created another massive flood channel. The waterfalls during these floods are thought to have created plunge pools around 100 metres deep and several kilometres across.
A large proportion of buzzards diet is earthworms and carrion and consequently they have a reputation for being lazy and scavengers. However, when they need to be, buzzards are formidable predators. Diving on rabbits and small mammals from a slow or hovering flight, or from a perch, they nearly always make the kill on the ground.
The process of placing trig points on top of prominent hills and mountains began in 1935 to assist in the retriangulation of Great Britain - a project to improve the accuracy of maps which took three decades.
A plate (known as a "flush bracket" and marked with an ID code) on the side of each trig point marked a known measured height above sea level. The brass plate on the top with three arms and central depression (known as a "spider") was used to mount a theodolite which was used to measure the angles between neighbouring trig points very accurately. These angles allowed the construction of a system of triangles which covered the entire country and provided a measurement system accurate to around 20 metres.
The Monkey Sanctuary was founded in 1964 by Len Williams, father of the famous classical guitarist John Williams. The sanctuary was created as a cooperative to care for woolly monkeys rescued from the pet trade, and has won Green tourism awards. It was the first place in the world where the monkeys bred successfully outside of their native habitat and the woolly monkeys there today are descendants of the rescued pets.
Baby blackbirds usually leave the nest before they can actually fly then hop and scramble through the bushes. Their parents watch over them so don't attempt to rescue them.
In March 1944, the crew of a battle-damaged B17 Flying Fortress long-range bomber aircraft bailed out over the land, leaving just the pilot who took it out over the sea to avoid civilian casualties before he himself bailed out. The plane crashed into the sea a short distance offshore of Millendreath beach and the pilot was rescued by a local man who rowed out in a leaking boat whilst a local woman bailed out the water. The engines and propellers from the plane were recovered by divers and are now in museums at Looe and St Mawgan, respectively.
Millendreath beach faces south and the high cliffs either side shelter it from the wind, making it a sun-trap. The pier along the left-hand side of the beach was constructed to trap seawater, forming a bathing pool. At low tide, it's possible to walk along the foreshore to the neighbouring beaches. To the west, it's possible to reach Plaidy and East Looe beaches, and to the east it's possible to reach Bodigga and Keveral beaches and even Seaton. Care must be taken not to be cut-off by the incoming tide, however.
Millendreath was established as a Holiday Village in the 1940s and was developed in the 1960s, which is evident from the box-shaped apartments tiered up the valley. The Holiday Village declined in the 1980s and 1990s, eventually closed and became derelict, gaining the name "Disturbia" amongst locals. Since 2012, the remains have been regenerated under the name Black Rock Resort, with some of the larger buildings removed and the original apartments refurbished as holiday villas.
During early spring, primroses flower along the lane. As these die back, evergreen harts tongue ferns continue to make the most of the available light.
Although primroses flower most intensely in March and April, some primroses can begin flowering in late December. The name "primrose" from the Latin for "first" (as in "primary"), alluding to their early flowering.
Both evergreen and deciduous plants lose and regrow leaves but in the case of evergreens this happens over a longer period (e.g. 3 years) and not all at once.
In deciduous plants, the cost of having to re-grow all the leaves at once every spring is offset by advantages of reduced ice damage, water loss (useful when water is frozen) and predation during winter when less sunlight is available to power repair processes.
The bushes in the hedgerows provide perches for robins and tits.
Unlike many birds that just sing in spring, robins sing nearly all year round. In fact during winter if you hear birdsong, it's most likely to be a robin. Despite how cute robins look, they are actually very territorial and the chirp is an aggressive warning to any would-be intruders not to even think of trying it. When robins don't sing, this a sign that their body fat reserves are low and they are conserving what little they have left until food becomes more plentiful.
The hamlet of No Man's Land is located on the boundary of the Lostwithiel and Lanlivery parishes.
Sometimes a small area of common land with unclaimed or disputed ownership occurred close to or between parish boundaries, often ignored due to relatively poor agricultural value. The name nonesmanneslond was recorded in 1320 for such areas. This has also given rise to the place name of Nowhere (in Norfolk).
Keveral was recorded in 1299 as Keverel. Cornish place names expert Craig Weatherhill suggests that the meaning is "place of joint-tillage". Since the name is based on the Cornish language, it's likely that the settlement dates from the Early Medieval period before the Norman Conquest.
When we were checking this walk one winter, we were surprised to see a Sainsbury's delivery van located a considerable distance along the path from the waymark. A shell-shocked driver struggled out from the tiny gap between the van and the wall and informed us that as he applied the brakes, the van began to slide down the footpath and continued sliding for several hundred metres until it eventually reached a narrow point where it wedged between the walls. I probably wouldn't be here to write this if we'd arrived at the top of the path a few minutes earlier.
The bridleway is lined with wild garlic in spring.
Despite the pungent smell, the leaves of wild garlic are quite delicate in flavour so can be used quite large quantities in cooking or more sparingly within salads. They are at their most fiery early in the season. As well as a garlic flavour, the leaves have a slight (though not excessive) bitter note which can be balanced against sweet flavours (e.g. tomato or roasted pepper) or salty flavours like bacon to cut through a rich sauce.
Trees grow from a microscopically thin layer of cells that sits between the bark and the wood. On the outside it produces the inner bark (phloem) and on the inside it produces the outer section of wood (xylem).
Bluebells flower along the bridleway in late April and throughout May.
Some estimates suggest the UK has up to half of the world's total bluebell population; nowhere else in the world do they grow in such abundance. However, the poor bluebell faces a number of threats including climate change and hybridisation from garden plants. In the past, there has also been large-scale unsustainable removal of bulbs for sale although it is now a criminal offence to remove the bulbs of wild bluebells with a fine up to £5,000 per bulb!
The formation of most of the world's coal deposits from wood occurred during a single geological period suitably-named the Carboniferous. It was postulated that this might be because white rot hadn't evolved by then so dead wood just accumulated. However, it's now thought more likely to be due to the formation of particularly deep swamps from the crust-buckling collisions of tectonic plates in this period which allowed wood both to accumulate in a low-oxygen environment and then be compressed into coal.
The source of the River Seaton is in Minions near the Cheesewring Hotel and it connects with two tributary streams running through St Cleer. Due to the copper mining activity around Caradon Hill, the tributary streams contain dissolved copper salts where the groundwater drains from old mines or percolates through waste tips. The level of copper in the main river is not high enough to prevent fish living in it but it does restrict the invertebrate species that are able to live in the river and so the fish population is lower than surrounding rivers as there is less for them to eat. The river runs for just over 10 miles before reaching the sea at Seaton beach.
The beach at Seaton is composed of grey sand which becomes coarser and more pebbly towards the high tide line. At low tide, the beach stretches all the way to Downderry. A sea wall runs along the top of the beach for its full length. It is possible, although not recommended, to walk along the top of the sea wall all the way to Downderry. The Council signs advising against this may seem overly risk-averse as the top of the wall is no more uneven than many footpaths, and benches along the top of the wall would seem to contradict the signs. However, at high tide when there is a big swell, waves can break over the top of the wall and have the potential to sweep people into the sea.
Seaweeds are algae and rely on sunlight to produce energy via photosynthesis in the way terrestrial plants do; they therefore thrive in shallow water where the sunlight penetrates. On the shoreline, you're likely to see brown bladderwrack and red dulse on exposed rocks; within rockpools, green sea lettuces and red coral-like seaweeds. At very low tides, or if you wade into the water beside rocks, brown ribbon-like kelp is common, which is a favourite hiding place for many fish such as bass, pollack and wrasse.
No seaweeds are known to be poisonous and several are eaten raw, cooked or dried. Seaweed is quite rich in iodine which is an essential mineral, but in very large doses is toxic, so excessive consumption are not recommended. A number of food additives such as alginates, agar and carrageenan are produced from seaweed and used as gelling agents and emulsifiers in many processed foods.
Barnacles are crustaceans, related to crabs and lobsters. After a planktonic stage, they settle on a rock and never move again. To facilitate genetic transfer between isolated individuals, barnacles have extraordinarily long penises. It is thought barnacles probably have the largest penis to body size ratio of the animal kingdom.
The striking magenta flowers seen in Cornish hedgerows and gardens in May and June are known as Whistling Jacks, Mad Jacks, Cornish Jacks or Corn Flag. The "whistling" is thought to be from children using the leaves as a reed between their fingers and blowing. The plant is a species of Gladioli originally from the Mediterranean but has been naturalised in Cornwall for some time. Opinions differ on exactly when it first arrived but numerous opportunities have existed during the trade that has taken with Cornwall over the centuries, and the great gardens and cut flower industries in more recent times.
Wetlands act as sponges, storing and gradually releasing water which helps to prevent floods and buffer river levels during dry periods. Sediment and nutrients washed off the land by rainwater are absorbed by the wetland plants, feeding the wetland ecosystem but also filtering and cleaning the water before it enters rivers.
In marshes, micro-organisms thrive in the wet mud and use up the supply of oxygen. To survive being partially buried in mud with low oxygen levels, many marsh plants have therefore evolved snorkels: air channels in the stem which allow oxygen to reach the base of the plant. This is why the leaves of reeds feel spongy.
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.
During late winter or early spring, if you encounter a patch of plants with white bell-shaped flowers, smelling strongly of onions, and with long, narrow leaves then they are likely to be three-cornered leeks. Once you're familiar with their narrow, ridged leaves, you'll be able to spot these emerging from late October onwards.
The plants get their name due to their triangular flower stems. As the name also suggests, they are members of the onion family and have a small bulb. In fact, in New Zealand they are known as "onion weed". They are also known as "snowbell" due to their white bluebell-like flowers.
Three-cornered leeks are native to the Mediterranean and are first recorded as being introduced to the UK in 1759. By Victorian times, they had become well-established in the wild. They thrive in the moist, mild climate in Cornwall and are salt-tolerant so will grow almost anywhere, even on the coast.
The plant spreads to form dense colonies, crowding-out native species. The onion-flavoured seeds are very attractive to ants who carry them quite large distances and forget some of them, allowing the plant to colonise new areas. In fact three-cornered leeks are so invasive that they are illegal to plant in the wild.
All parts of the plant are edible by humans and the flavour of the leaves is relatively mild so they can be used in recipes in place of spring onions or chives. They are at their best for culinary use from November to April. By mid-May, they have flowered and the leaves are starting to die back.
The long leaves can be mistaken for bluebells or daffodils which are both poisonous but do not smell of onions. However, fingers that have previously picked 3-cornered leeks also smell of onions and so mistakes have been made this way.
All plants in the onion family including three-cornered leeks are poisonous to dogs. Keep dogs away from the plant and wash their paws if they come into contact with it.
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