Country diary: Walking the familiar lanes of my childhood | Virginia Spiers

Lynher Valley, east Cornwall: They wind downhill, near to where we visited our paternal grandfather, hedge-banks dripping with moss, pennywort and fernsBeneath the Cadson Bury hillfort, the River Lynher rushes past a tangle of fallen trees, boggy pools, rivulets, and debris cast up into overhanging branches. Beside flowering gorse bushes, steep rabbit-grazed turf leads up to even steeper ramparts edging the fort. From these prehistoric defences, all-round views take in the woodland on the other side of the river - a purplish, brown and grey canopy of budding alder and lichen-encrusted oak twigs, stretching downstream past Newton Ferrers, and towards the medieval clapper bridge at Pillaton. To the west, Caradon Hill and Sharp Tor mark the skyline of Bodmin Moor, rising above upper reaches of the Lynher.There, near Stara bridge, is a favourite place, dating from childhood when my younger sister and I stayed with our paternal grandparents. At the hamlet of Darley, close to Notter Tor with its overgrown quarries and mine shafts, overlooked by the shadowy profile of Cheesewring quarry, my grandfather cultivated a garden with fruit and vegetables, milked two South Devon cows, kept hens and rotated a few bullocks in little stony pastures. Occasionally he rode towards the moor on his chestnut mare, Gaiety. Until a borehole was divined and installed, the house was plumbed with rainwater collected from the roof; we helped carry pitchers and covered buckets of drinking water pumped from a nearby well. Continue reading...