Blackthorn and hawthorn trees both grow in similar places but in each season there are different ways to tell them apart.
In spring, blackthorn is one of the first trees to flower. The white blossom appears before the leaves in April. In warm weather, the leaves may quickly catch up and this is when it can get mistaken for hawthorn, which produces leaves before flowers. However, there are a few other ways to distinguish the flowers: blackthorn pollen is orange whereas hawthorn is pink, fading to black. Hawthorn petals overlap each other whereas blackthorn is more "gappy".
In summer, the leaf shape can be used to tell them apart. Blackthorn leaves are a classic leaf shape with slightly serrated edges. Hawthorn leaves have deep notches dividing the leaf into several lobes a bit like oak.
In autumn, pretty much all hawthorn trees have small red berries, even the windswept specimens on the coast. Blackthorn trees may have purple sloes, but not all the trees fruit each year. Some years seem to result in a lot more sloes than others.
Hawthorn trees are often a little bigger than blackthorn, especially in harsh environments such as on the coast. Blackthorn tends to form thickets whereas hawthorn are typically distinct trees. Hawthorn bark is usually shiny whereas blackthorn is dull. The thorns on hawthorn tend to be shorter (less then 2cm) and point slightly forwards on the stem. Blackthorn has longer spikes that stick out at right angles.
Spring is the best time to harvest nettles. They should not be harvested when flowering (the flowers look like small catkins hanging down from the stems), as during flowering they produce microscopic rods of calcium carbonate (limestone) which can interfere with kidney function.
To prepare them, wearing gloves, strip off the young tender leaves, discarding any large coarse leaves and stems. Use lightly boiled, steamed or wilted as if it were spinach (though not raw unless you want to live dangerously!). All the usual spinach flavour combinations apply (e.g. with ricotta).
Nettles are often found near human habitation, much to the displeasure of many humans. Humans generally remove dense vegetation such as tree cover, leaving open ground that fast-growing nettles can rapidly colonise. Food waste from humans and droppings from livestock boost phosphate levels in the soil which nettles require to thrive. Grazing animals also leave nettles alone, munching away competing vegetation instead.
The Strangles gets its name due to the treacherous currents and jagged rocks that have wrecked many ships trying to navigate the rocky coastline of North Cornwall. This is not a safe beach for swimming unless the sea is completely calm without much surf. There is spectacular scenery both on the walk down and from the beach itself including a rock arch and the cliffs are covered with gorse and heather flowers in early autumn.
There are more than 20 breeding pairs of Peregrine falcons along the coast from Bude to Padstow.
The peregrine falcon can reach over 322 km/h (200 mph) during its hunting stoop (high speed dive) making it the fastest member of the animal kingdom. In 2005, a peregrine was measured at a top speed of 389 km/h (242 mph). The air pressure at this speed could damage a bird's lungs. However small bony tubercles on a falcon's nostrils guide the powerful airflow away, enabling the bird to breathe more easily while diving. In Cornish dialect, these falcons are known as "winnards" and local expressions include "shrammed as a winnard" (meaning chilled) and "rumped up like a winnard" (meaning huddled).
If the tide is out, you may want to stroll down to the beach first, returning to this point to continue the walk.
Between the two species, some gorse is almost always in flower, hence the old country phrases: "when gorse is out of blossom, kissing's out of fashion" (which is recorded from the mid-19th century) and "when the furze is in bloom, my love's in tune" (which dates from the mid-18th century). Common gorse flowers are bright yellow. Western gorse flowers are very slightly more orange - more like the colour of the "yolk" in a Cadbury's creme egg. Also like creme eggs, gorse flowers are edible but are significantly better for use in salads and to make a tea, beer or wine.
Looking back towards The Strangles, there are nice views of Samphire Rock and the Northern Door.
Rock samphire has been a popular wild food since Celtic times. It has a strong, characteristic, slightly lemony flavour and recently has become more well-known as a flavouring for gin. It was very popular as a pickle in 16th century Britain until it almost died out from over-picking in the 19th Century. Consequently, it's currently a protected plant but is now making a good comeback. In Shakespeare's time, a rope was tied to a child's ankles and he was dangled over the cliff to pick the rock samphire that grew in crevices and clefts in the rocks.
The completely unrelated but similar-looking golden samphire also grows around the North Cornish coast. The leaves look almost identical, but the daisy-like yellow flowers in summer are a giveaway, as rock samphire has tiny green-white flowers that look more like budding cow parsley. Golden samphire is edible, but is inferior in flavour to rock samphire; it is also nationally quite rare in Britain.
Also completely unrelated is marsh samphire (also known as glasswort) which looks more like micro-asparagus. This is what typically appears on restaurant menus or in supermarkets as "samphire".
The corner of the field is above High Cliff. If you make your way across the grass towards the cliff edge, there is a bench on the clifftop just below the coast path.
High Cliff, near Boscastle, is the highest sheer-drop cliff in Cornwall at 223 metres (732ft). To the north, there are views along the coast across The Strangles to Cambeak. To the south, you can see the rocky islets of Boscastle, Trevalga and Tintagel. Almost directly below is the rocky promontory of Voter Run which has some impressively folded rocks that have been compared to molten toffee.
Seals are easily disturbed by the presence of humans (and dogs) and this is can be the difference between life and death for seals in several different ways. Perhaps the most obvious is that a panicking seal is liable to injure itself rushing for the water. When breeding, even mild disturbance can lead to mothers abandoning their pups which then starve to death. More subtly, disturbance also causes seals to burn up their precious energy reserves. Even in a "good" year, 75% of young seals can end up dying due to insufficient energy reserves (95% in a very bad year!). If a seal looks at you, this should ring alarm bells as it means you're too close. To watch seals responsibly, it's important to keep your distance (at least 100m), avoid being conspicuous (e.g. on the skyline) and minimise noise.
Well-preserved fossilised remains of plants can be been found in the black shales in the landslide at Rusey Cliff near Boscastle. These date back to 320-350 million years ago during the Carboniferous period. The "main" landslide is half-way down the 680 foot high cliff in a location that isn't safely accessible, but many of the rocks dotted either side of the coast path have come from the landslide, so you may be able to find fossils if you can find a lump of shale to split.
There is a quite large feral population of goats roaming free on the cliffs near Crackington Haven which are used to graze down the vegetation in the difficult-to-access areas on the high cliffs along this part of the coast. The grazing encourages wildflowers and provides the coastal heath habitat that may allow the Large Blue butterfly to be reintroduced.
To make wine from dandelion flowers, pour a gallon of boiling water over a gallon of flowers and steep for 2-3 days in a covered container, stirring occasionally. Then boil, add 1.5kg sugar and allow to cool. To the basic liquor, citrus is often added (lemon/orange juice and zest) which gives some acidity, and chopped raisins or grape concentrate can be used to give more body to the wine. Ferment with a white wine or champagne yeast.
In the past, when the cliffs were grazed regularly, this provided habitat for wild thyme and red ants on which the large blue butterfly depends. As farming became more intensified and cliff-top grazing stopped, the cliffs became overgrown and there was too much shade. Consequently the large blue became extinct in the UK in 1979.
The large square building on the headland in the distance is the Camelot Castle Hotel.
Camelot Castle Hotel in Tintagel was formerly named King Arthur's Castle Hotel and is referred to by locals as simply Castle Hotel. The building was designed by Silvanus Trevail, Cornwall's most famous architect, and opened in 1899. Originally it was planned to be built on Barras Nose but after a local campaign with the National Trust to save Barras, it was built on the site formerly known as Firebeacon. The dramatic Victorian building was used for Dr Seward's Asylum in the 1979 film Dracula, starring Laurence Olivier (and the baby thrown out of the window in the film was in fact Dave - our software developer). It also featured in the ITV Comedy Drama, Doc Martin, as the location for Doc Martin's meeting with the Health Board.
The caterpillars of the large blue butterfly secrete honeydew, which causes ants to carry the caterpillar down into their nests, to feed on this. The caterpillar then proceeds to eat some of the ant eggs and larvae without the ants appearing to care. In fact, the ants even escort the butterfly to the surface, and protect it from predators whilst its wings dry.
What's even stranger is that if the ant colony produces more than one queen, at this point the ants seek out, kill and eat the caterpillars. It's possible this is an evolutionary response to raise the "birth rate" in the colony, by removing predation from the caterpillars, prior to a potential split-off of a satellite colony with the new queen.
During winter months, kestrels mostly hunt from perches rather than by hovering as this burns too much energy at a time when food resources are scarce. The reason the birds don't do this all year round is that hovering is a much more productive way to catch prey so when temperatures are warmer and food is more abundant they switch strategies.
Betony is a grassland herb, common on the coast, with pretty purple anthers that stick out from the plant. The name is derived from the ancient Celtic words bew (meaning head) and ton (meaning good) as it was used as a cure for headaches. From Roman times onward, it was believed to be a cure for a number of things (the Romans listed 47!) including drunkenness. Even as late as the 1800s, Richard E. Banks stated that you should "Eat betony or the powder thereof and you cannot be drunken that day" and John Gerard (1597) said that "It maketh a man to pisse well". Betony was also used to ward away evil spirits (hence it is planted in a number of churchyards) and also to make a dark yellow dye for wool.
Due to the curvature of the earth, the distance you can see to the horizon depends on your height above sea level. This increases with the square root of height (i.e. with diminishing returns). An adult typically sees the horizon about 3 miles from the beach. From the top of a 100 foot lighthouse, it is about 12 miles away. At the top of the highest cliff in Cornwall it is roughly 33 miles out but if a 100ft tower were built all the way up here, it would only allow an extra 2 miles to be seen.
The name "daisy" is thought to be a corruption of "day's eye" (or "eye of the day", as Chaucer called it). The name comes about because the flower head closes at night and opens each morning. In mediaeval times, it was known as "Mary's Rose".
Skylarks are the most common member of the lark family in Britain and are often known simply as "larks".
The phrase "to lark about" may have its origins in the aerobatics of the skylark. At the start of the 19th Century, young boys who played about in the rigging of ships were known as "skylarks". The use of "to lark" as a verb can be traced back as far as the early 19th Century. By the middle of the century, it had reach America where "larking about" is first recorded.
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.
A flower is effectively an advert to insects that nectar is available and the reason that flowers are coloured and scented is so these adverts get noticed. The basic idea with most flowers is to lure the insect in with a bribe of nectar and then whilst they are there, unload pollen they are carrying from another flower, stick some pollen to them from this flower, and send them on their way.
There are sometimes llamas in the fields on the right.
Llamas and Alpacas are both from South America and are members of the camel family. Llamas are the larger of the two with longer (banana-sized) ears and a longer face. Alpacas have a very short, blunt face and have been bred for fleece production so they have shaggy hair rather like a sheep. Llamas have been bred for transporting goods (similarly to camels) hence their larger size.
As sunlight passes though the atmosphere, the rays of light can interact electromagnetically with the molecules of air. This interaction causes each ray of light to be sent off in a random direction and is therefore known as "scattering".
Sunlight includes all the colours of the rainbow, each with different wavelengths. The shorter waves of blue and violet light interact with air molecules more strongly than the other colours in sunlight and this is responsible for the colours we see of the sun and the sky.
Pineapple weed grows on the more well-worn areas of the track.
Pineapple weed is related to chamomile and is consequently also known as false chamomile. Unlike chamomile, it doesn't have white flowers - its flowers consisting of little yellow balls are therefore quite distinctive. Even more so is the fruity pineapple-like scent when is trodden on or squeezed.
Pineapple weed leaves and flowers can be eaten in salads or dried to make tea. The flower heads can also be used to make a syrup by first infusing the flower heads in simmering water then straining off the liquid and adding sugar to this.
The writer Thomas Hardy met his first wife, Emma Gifford, while he was working as an architect on St. Juliot's church, and they were married in 1874. Hardy wrote several poems about their first meeting and their marriage, most of which were written in the years immediately after her death in 1912. In the poems, he disguises some of the more well-known place names, for example "Castle Boterel" refers to Boscastle, while "Lyonesse" is the name of the mythical land of ancient Cornwall.
Cornwall had a number of its own peculiar units of measurement:
Several species of heather grow in Cornwall and are most easily recognised when they flower from July to September. The one with the most brightly coloured (purple) flowers is known as bell heather due to the bell-shaped flowers. This is the earliest one to start flowering - normally in June. Bell heather is usually interspersed with ling or common heather which has much smaller flowers which are usually paler and pinker and come out at the start of July. A third kind known as cross-leafed heath is less abundant but can be recognised by the pale pink bell-shaped flowers that grow only near the tips of the stems, resembling pink lollipops. A fourth species known as Cornish heath grows only on the Lizard and has more elaborate flowers which are mostly pale with a dark purple crown at the front.
Heathers and heaths are members of the Ericaceae family. The formal definition of a heather is a member of the Calluna genus within this family whereas heaths are members of the Erica genus. Bell heather is actually an Erica and therefore technically not a heather but a heath.
Heather plants have a symbiotic relationship with fungi which grows inside and between some of the plant root cells. Up to 80% of the root structure can be made up of fungi. The fungi are able to extract nutrients from poor, acidic soils that plants struggle with. In return, the plant is able to generate other nutrients (e.g. sugars by photosynthesis) that are useful to the fungi. A similar partnership between plants and fungi occurs in lichens.
Heather can grow in soils which have concentrations of metals normally considered toxic to other plants and they are also tolerant of salty (high sodium) environments on the coast. Their symbiosis with fungi restricts metal uptake through their roots.
Heather plants can live up to 40 years and over time they form woody stems. This provides them with a way of excreting heavy metals that they absorb by locking it up in the layers of dead wood (found by researchers as the areas in the plant with the highest concentrations). Their woody stems have also found many uses over the centuries including fuel, thatch and ropes. One other use has made it into the genus name for heather - kallune is Greek for "to brush".
Rabbits were originally from the Iberian peninsula and were brought to Britain by the Normans and kept in captivity as a source of meat and fur. Although grass is their principal natural food, rabbits are able to survive on virtually any vegetable matter and with relatively few predators, those that escaped multiplied into a sizeable wild population.
During mediaeval times, rabbit was decreed by Pope Gregory I as "not meat" so it could be eaten during Lent. This accelerated the spread of rabbits through European monasteries in the middle ages. In fact, there are no barriers in the world's major religions to eating rabbit which is also considered both halal and kosher. From Elizabethan times, rabbit farming became common practice in Britain and it was not until the 1950s (when rabbits were associated with myxomatosis) that its popularity as a food declined sharply.
Rabbits have a number of wild predators including foxes, polecats and stoats. Buzzards and weasels will also take young ones. Domestic cats are also capable of tackling a full-grown rabbit. Rabbits have evolved to be able to detect predators early and then run very fast. The location of their eyes on the sides of the their head gives them almost 360 degree vision and they can also can turn their ears 180 degrees to pinpoint the location of a sound.
If a rabbit is placed on its back and its legs are stroked, it appears to go into a relaxed trance and many owners of pet rabbits thought this was a cute thing to do that was enjoyable for the rabbit. It's now understood that this reaction, known as "tonic immobility", occurs when the rabbit is extremely stressed because it thinks it is about to be eaten by a predator! It is effectively a "playing dead" reaction to lull a predator into a false sense of security so the rabbit can make a sudden escape when the predator isn't paying attention.
Due to their warm fur, rabbits are able to feed all year round, switching to woody foods such as bark and twigs when green vegetation isn't available. They don't hibernate and the reason they aren't seen as often in the winter is just that they are most active at dawn and dusk when people tend not to be out walking.
Rabbit teeth continue to grow throughout their lives as an evolutionary adaptation to eating grass which contains abrasive silica. Consequently pet rabbits fed a diet with insufficient hay often get problems with overgrown teeth. However, cut grass from a mower should not be fed to rabbits as it ferments more quickly than fresh grass (impact and heat from the blades causes bruising and wilting which releases the carbohydrates) which results in bloated bunnies.
The first record of slang word "bunny" being applied to rabbits is from the late 17th Century. Prior to this it was in use as a term of endearment, recorded in a 1606 love letter as "my honey, my bunny...". The origin of this pet name is thought to be a dialect word "bun" which was a general term for small furry creatures which did include rabbits but also applied to squirrels. The use of the word "rabbit" for chattering is from the Cockney rhyming slang for "talk" (rabbit and pork).
Since rabbits' unfussy diet includes pretty much anything grown by farmers, in the 1950s, the disease myxomatosis was deliberately spread in the UK to curb rabbit numbers. Over 99% were wiped-out and they almost became extinct. The few survivors that were genetically more resistant to the disease multiplied and so the survival rate has now increased to around 35%. Escaped pet rabbits inoculated with a live virus have the potential to transfer the vaccine into the wild population which may further increase resistance. Consequently the peak rabbit population gradually recovered to around half the size of the UK human population.
By 2013, rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus type 2 (RHDV2) had crossed to the UK from continental Europe and began spreading through the wild population. By 2018, nearly half the UK rabbit population had disappeared. In their native region on the Iberian peninsula, rabbits are now an endangered species and there is concern that the UK population decline will continue. Whilst a high density of rabbits can be a pest to farmers, in many areas the rabbit population has already fallen well below the level where this is significant.
The close grazing from rabbits in wilderness environments is valuable for biodiversity, allowing rare wildflowers to compete with grass and insect species to thrive. The crash in the rabbit population due to myxomatosis is thought to have been a contributing factor to the large blue butterfly going extinct in Britain in the 1970s. The recent decline from RHDV2 is therefore worrying conservationists. Consequently, some landowners are now giving rabbits a helping hand by creating "rabbit hotels" - areas of brushwood above warrens that provide extra cover and safety for rabbits.
Starfish can be found in rockpools though much larger numbers of starfish occur a short way out to sea on the mussel beds of the reefs. In winter, storm waves and high tides can result in mass strandings on beaches.
Starfish are members of a bizarre family of animals with bodies that have five-fold symmetry and date back at least 450 million years. They have no brain but instead have a complex decentralised nervous system spread throughout their bodies. This connects up to sensors which can detect light, vibrations and chemicals, equivalent to eyes, ears and a nose. Starfish eat shellfish such as barnacles and mussels which they lever open with their feet and then extrude their stomach into the shell. This releases enzymes which dissolve the prey into soup which is then absorbed.
By-the-wind sailors consist of a ring of blue jellyfish-like material around a central plastic-like sail and can sometimes be found blown onto beaches. Like jellyfish, they catch prey using stinging cells (not perceptible by humans although some people can get a rash).
The direction of the sail along the float determines which way they travel. Those with a sail running top-left to bottom-right drift left of the wind, whereas those with top-right to bottom-left drift to the right of the prevailing wind direction.
They are not a single organism, but a whole colony of coral-like polyps that are interconnected with a canal system to distribute the food caught in the tentacles. However each colony is all of a single gender. If that wasn't complicated enough, alternate generations are singular planktonic jellyfish-like creatures that don't even form a by-the-wind sailor, but their offspring do!
In Cornwall, cliffs erode at an average rate of between roughly 3cm - 30cm per year depending on the hardness of the rocks and location. In reality this often happens in infrequent sudden collapses rather than as a steady, gradual process. It was found that one massive storm in 2014 caused around 100 times the average amount of erosion. There are obvious implications from climate change leading to more frequent or more intense storms.
It's estimated that on average around 1 tonne of fishing gear is left in the ocean every minute either by being lost or discarded. This is known as "ghost gear" as it drifts through the ocean, killing marine life in its path. This includes over 100,000 whales, dolphins and turtles every year as well as countless fish and seabirds. When it finally washes up on beaches, it makes up around 10% of all marine litter.
A number of initiatives are underway to try to prevent fishing gear being dumped in the sea which even include recycling old nets into skateboards. However, since the gear that's already in the sea can take 600 years to break down, you can help by spotting any washed up on the beach. If you come across a small amount of fishing gear on a beach that's safe to remove then bin it. If you spot some that's too large to deal with yourself then take a photo and email it to seals@cornwallsealgroup.co.uk, describing where it is and giving an idea of size.
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