A fairly leisurely start to what turned out to quite the workout, with almost 4000 feet of climbing. A large portion of our day was spent off-road, in trails that were more designed for mountain biking, and definitely not something you’d want to do with panniers.

We had breakfast at Wetherspoons pub & hotel where we’d lodged for the night. As usual, once you decide what you want you need to get up and walk to the bar, give them your order and table number, someone will bring out your food when it’s ready. Soon after ordering a server brought us out toast, which we though was strange to get before the rest of the breakfast was ready, but okay. Shortly after, when we are thoroughly enjoying orange marmalade toast, the server comes out with a couple of English breakfasts, complete with toast. She then realized her mistake as the hungry looking elderly couple in the table next to ours said they didn’t order a big breakfast, just simple toast and tea. We offered to share the meal, in the middle of the server’s profuse apologies all around, but being proper folks could not and chose to wait for another serving of toast. 

Fueled with a hearty breakfast we headed out to take on the hills. Along the way we saw many beautiful parish churches, a number of them built for the miners, who likely donated the funds. In it’s heyday, Cornwall had thousands of tin mines that was the economic engine for southwest England. If you want to know more about what life was like in those days, consider watching the tv series Poldark.  One particular parish church we stopped at, the Vicar and his wife were putting up flowers for their daughter’s wedding, which was to occur in a few hours. Inside his niece and nephew were singing and playing the piano, practicing for the wedding. It was all rather lovely. 

The countryside was littered with old abandon mines, across the hills you can still see their iconic silhouettes framing the sky. We stopped at a few to see them up close, big stone edifices, held together with cement and huge iron bolts that span the width of the building to increase structural strength of outside walls. Out in the wild, there are numerous open shafts that pose a hazard. They have built strong metal grates that rise up from the edges of the circular openings to a point some seven feet above, resulting in cone-shaped wired outline of TeePees every few hundred yards. 

A long day, made longer by all the off road. The trails through the heather was nice, but time consuming. Some trails didn’t look like trails, and most were designed for mountain biking. At one point Komoot/Wahoo wanted us to go up this step, rocky path that was overgrown with vegetation. This was alongside a bunch of goats. No one has taking this route in years, and the goats were a little agitation, we turned around figuring we’d keep following the mountain bike trails down until we get to tarmac and then sort out the best direction. Turned out this was a very good choice. 

Still, lot’s of crazy trails, but a good day. 

We talk to various groups of mountain bikers, pulled over in one section to let them pass, and their trailing buddy came up with no friends in sight heading the wrong direction. I called to him and pointed the way his friend had gone, which was the same as we were heading, so the three of us descended down the hill eventually running into his friends at a Bike Stop Shop Food Relax Repair & car park. Really nice setup for a day of mountain biking. Wish we had this in Santa Cruz by Rincon parking, maybe a food truck that feeds bikers, but also repairs and sells some bike stuff. 

Climbing out of a valley at one point, we meet a man making his own timber. 

Fish and Chips Truro

Truro cathedral

ATM, NO CHARGE

Huge cows, no accidents. 

Solar panels

Rutted paths (grace did so well, maybe I can talk her into mountain biking now)

She did say, Lodge road had prepared for this.