Here in Cornwall we often walk on the fabulous coast paths, but often miss out the incredible richness and history of Cornwall’s interior – which is full of both prehistoric and industrial heritage, along with stunning views and diverse wildlife.

Yesterday we headed up for a walk around Minions on Bodmin Moor. We met: 

• the Cheesewring. It looks like one of those pebble stacks that people like to make on the beach, only much bigger, and sitting at the top of a quarry cliff (the quarry supplied the granite for cladding Tower Bridge in London), looks very impressive. Even more amazing and interesting then, when you learn that the Cheesewring is actually one big granite rock that has been eroded on horizontal strata to create that effect.
• An old dismantled railway. Minions was a tin mining village. All around you can see the remains of shafts, pumping houses and the railways which took the ore down to the coast at Looe.
• The Hurlers – a set of three Bronze Age stone circles. As the area has had a lot of disturbance through mining, only the second circle is largely complete, following the stones being reset after excavation in the 1930s.

With so much to look at, and expansive views across Cornwall, this is a pretty spectacular place to walk, and we’re planning on bringing the Scouts and Explorers up here later this year.

Lately, we’ve allowed a combination of “being busy” and “being tired” to get in the way of our mini-adventures a bit. So we decided to put that right this Bank Holiday weekend. The boy decided to forego the adventure as he wanted to focus on revision for the day, so it was just three of us and doggo.

We headed for Porthgwarra, a little cove just beyond Porthcurno on the very western tip of Cornwall that we had somehow not visited before.

We headed West to Nanjizal where I clambered over the rocks for a quick dip in the “Song of the Sea” cave, but the tide was not quite far enough out so I couldn’t quite get to the cave.

We then continued our walk along the coast to Land’s End. We stopped for lunch in the cafe there. I wouldn’t recommend it – £6 for a dry baguette, though the coffee was nice.

We caught the bus back from Land’s End to Porthcurno, and then walked from there back to Porthgwarra, where Isobel and I had another dip in the sea.

That last bit of coast path was a profusion of spring wildflowers on lovely top meadows and weather-worn lichen covered rock formations. Stunning.

Cost of today’s adventure:

• Fuel to Porthgwarra (53 miles each way)
• Carpark at Porthgwarra (£6 for 4.5 hours)
• Lunch and coffee x 3 at Land’s End (£29 – would definitely avoid this next time).
• Bus from Land’s End to Porthcurno for 3 of us. (£7).

Wildlife seen

• Unidentified birds of prey – pretty sure kestrel and buzzard
• Lots of sea birds
• Seals
• Lots of lovely wild flowers

We were also on the lookout for Cornish choughs and adders, both of which could very easily have been in this area, but we spotted neither, and also for dolphins off the coast, especially where the seabirds we’re going crazy over a large shoal of fish just off Nanjizal.