Daily Telegraph - 7th August 1999
Shedding Light on Ancient Ways
The line of totality will fall on Land’s End next week
Someone had to think of doing it - walking the eclipse’s central line of totality through Cornwall, from Botallack in the west to Falmouth in the east.
That someone was Kurt Jackson, one of Britain’s most talented watercolourists and artist-in-residence at this year’s Glastonbury Festival. He paints outdoors, on the beaches, cliffs and moors around his home near Botallack, his watercolours powerfully portraying the intensity of light and atmosphere that draw so many people to the Land’s End peninsula.
“The eclipse is about distance, about a piece of land being crossed. It’s also about time and light, as landscape painting is, ” says Jackson. Last summer, he laid out the large-scale orange Ordnance Survey maps of the area and worked out a route following the line of totality as closely as possible using public rights of way.
“I liked the idea of following paths used over many generations, by pilgrims, cattle droves, miners and people going to chapel. Some are probably prehistoric, others medieval, and as you walk you find out why they took a perticular route around a field or across a valley,” he says.
The 60-mile walk took the super-humanly energetic Jackson and his wife, Caroline, who filmed it, just three days. They set off from Botallack Head, where the ruined engine houses of tin mines teeter on the cliff edge, and headed inland over a common known as the Gump. “They say you should walk across it with your coat turned inside out,” says Jackson, “so the spriggans - the local pixies - who live here in large numbers can’t get the money out of your pockets. It is stunning in summer, covered with cotton grass, heather and gorse and wandering cattle.”
The route took in some key ancient sites: Chun Castle, a hill fort with a commanding view over Land’s End; the standing stone of Carfury; and the quoins of Chun and Lanyon, great slabs og granite raised on three stone legs. “Out here in west Penwith are some of the oldest fields in western Europe,” says Jackson, “still used in the same way as in Bronze age times. The hedges between then were made from the stone that littered the soil. So the higher the hedge, the poorer the soil. I love the names of the farms: Break My Neck, Labour in Vain, Eureka...”
He came across some strange sights as he struck farther inland: lanes completely covered in tiny baby toads; a field surrounded by wooden sticks, each with a dead crow tied to the top - a gruesome but powerful image that he felt compelled to return to and paint; and whole groups of abandoned cottages. “It was as if the occupants had disappeared overnight, taking the windows with them. Inside, it was like going back into the fifties with the wallpaper and even furnishings of the period.”
The second day’s walk, from Badgers Cross, near the hill-fort of Castle-an-Dinas, and through the valley of the Hayle to Townsend, was tougher, the footpaths often overgrown with brambles and gorse, but the Jacksons battled on, compass in hand. “We certainly needed one, ” he says, “especially in the swampy valleys full of willow and sedges. Once, there would have been raised paths, but these have sunk into the bog.”
“Just when we were about to give up, we would always come across a little stone footbridge to encourage us on. Local farmers were always very friendly and helpful, which was great as coming across five Boquio farms next door to one another can become totally confusing.”
One of the greatest pleasures of doing this walk in high summer was strolling along the “green lanes” beneath trees in full foliage. “These ancient ways have been worn down over the centuries, leaving the fields higher on either side,” says Jackson. “Many green lanes were classed as white roads on the 1960 Ordanance Survey map, but they’ve since become no more than a footpath or, at best, a farm track.”
To the north of Helston he found isolated homes tucked awar down these rough tracks; little cob cottages, farms and a surprising number of manor houses. “You get the feeling that these people’s lives haven’t changed for a long, long time, especially compared with the coast, which feels the influence of tourism. Every lane, footpath and stream has a name to the people living there, but few have made it on to the map.”
On the final stretch to Falmouth, tin mining gave way to granite quarrying. “Around Spargo and Halrosso we came across stiles, stepping stones and bridges in beautifully dressed granite, lovingly made by the workmen who used them.”
On the outskirts of Falmouth, Jackson met the first walker he had seen since leaving Botallack. But even here there is a footpath that goes right into the town centre, a little ribbon of greenery between the housing estates.
“I’ve lived here for 10 years and I never realised there was so much beauty to be found inland. We travelled trrough such different areas climatically, from moorland to river valleys rich in flora and wildlife. And above us always, were buzzards circling and flocks of jackdaws.”
After talking to Jackson and viewing some of the watercolours that his walk inspired - the dappled sunlight on green lanes, hedgerows bursting with campion, scabious, hairbit and foxgloves, fine old granite barns and standing stones - I found myself itching to folow the path.
I had no excuse as my own home is in the valley of the Hayle. So I set out one afrenoon and walked east to Kerthen Wood and, directed by the kindly owner of a fine Georgian cottage in the middle of nowhere, continued through fields of barley and potatoes to the ruins of an old tin mine.
Pretty soon, I was lost again. Then a farmer held open a gate for me and we strolled together back to his house as he told of foxes so clever they could open trapdoors into chicken coops, and should certainly be hunted. He ticked off the stiles and gates I could open or would have to climb over, in a Cornish accent so broad I had to ask him to repeat everything. And, yes, I was the first walker he had seen on his land for a long time.
Finally, I reached Binnerton, a beautiful thatched 16th-century manor, and found it offered bed and breakfast, a wonderful refuge from the world at the end of a long private drive.
Now I, too am hooked on rediscovering these ancient ways, searching out the prehistoric hut settlements, medieval manors, tin mines and quarries that litter maps of this area. Next Wednesday, Cornwall expects hordes of New Agers, Druids, Witches and the spiritually obsessed to watch the eclipse from ancient sites along this central line. But when all the fuss is over, the peace of these glorious moors and secret valleys will be disturbed only by birdsong.