I spent an amazing day getting lost while looking for quoits, stone circles and barrows along the circular walk across the open moorland and farm tracks of West Cornwall.
The day started well enough until the taxi tried to find Chûn Quoit - let’s say that the Sat Nav gets pretty confused round those parts. I got dropped off by a dirt track and was told to go right, which I did, and walked for two miles to get back to where I started outside Morvah.
After two hours walking round in circles with signs pointing nowhere but waterlogged fields I thought best leave Chûn Quoit till the next time, and headed South East along the main road till I got to the start of Tinners Way, which I knew would take me to the Mên-an-Tol.
It made the most exciting read to know that Tinners Way is “as old as the Bronze Age” and possibly goes back to the Neolithic Age! Walking alone was truly inspirational, imagining the thousands of people who have walked that way, each one with their own life stories. A few weeks later I would be walking the South Dorset Ridgeway, feeling the same awareness.
The Mên-an-Tol (Cornish: “Holed stone”) monument is generally considered late Neolithic / early Bronze Age which makes it at least 3,000 - 4,000 years old (2500 - 1500BC). As is the case with most stone monuments, folklore and superstition resides - in the guidebook “Antiquities of West Cornwall” by Ian Cooke it reads “traditional rituals at the Mên-an-Tol involved passing babies and childred naked through the holed stone three times and then ‘drawn on the grass three times against the sun’ while adults passed through nine times” for health or fertility benefits.
Just minutes away from the Mên-an-Tol stands the brooding inscribed granite Mên Scryfa (Cornish: “Stone with writing”) - a 6ft Bronze Age standing stone with a medieval inscription that commemorates the death in battle of an Iron Age warrior - different sources say the inscription reads “Royal Raven, famous leader”, or “Rialobranus son of Cunovalus”.
I tried hard to find the nearby Fenton Bebiwell Well but (like Chûn Quoit) this landmark will be one for the future. I did however discover this wonderfully arcane hawthorn.
Cornering the hawthorn lies the Mên Crows (Cornish: “Stone Cross”) four parishes stone, which marked the meeting point of four ecclesiastical parishes.
I’ll be honest, I got a bit lost again finding the Nine Maidens - following pathways detailed in a guide book 30 years ago doesn’t allow the ever changing trodden landscape. When found, it was well worth the curses. Julian Cope (one of my idols) in his seminal “The Modern Antiquarian” vividly describes the visceral energy of this circle, allowing the imagination to run riot when he says “this is no place for the peace of the gods”.
The last part of the exploration was Lanyon Quoit. A ‘chambered tomb’ it’s one of the oldest stone monuments in Cornwall, predating metal tools by two thousand years. It’s fair to say that after leaving Ding Dong mine I lost my way again, completely missing Bosiliack Barrow (see Chûn Quoit) and found myself somewhat ripped apart by gorse and bracken ankle deep in sodden grassland, so to view the quoit at the last minute came as an extremely welcome sight!
To finish off an epic day of discovery I called a cab to pick me up and take me to Newlyn Filmhouse to watch A Year In A Field. As I sat in the cinema covered in bracken, with shreddedd legs and waterlogged boots watching the year in a life of a standing stone less than 5 miles from where I was sitting, I think the experience was about as immersive as it gets. An utterly unbeatable day!