Bodmin
A bustling little place, Bodmin is the historic county town of Cornwall and because the Crown Court sits there lays claim to be the Cornish capital; however, this is hotly disputed by Truro, seat of the county council and Cornwall's cathedral city.
Bodmin lies midway between Cornwall's north and south coasts at the junction of two ancient cross-country trade routes. For centuries traders between Wales, Ireland and northern France preferred the overland route to the perilous sea journey around Land's End. To the south-east of the town is Castle Canyke built during the Iron Age to defend this important trade route; centuries later the Romans erected a fort to the west of town, one of a chain of fortresses built in south-west England to defend strategic river crossings. The ancient trade route remains today as a waymarked footpath known as the Saint's Way.
Bodmin is steeply situated on the edge of Bodmin Moor and its streets, with their brownstone and granite faced buildings still retain the charm of a typical Cornish country town. It can claim to be the only market town in Cornwall to be mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1088; at one time it enjoyed the privilege of its own mint and later was the home of the county assizes. A number of impressive relics remain to us from its illustrious past; these include the Tudor Guildhall, the Assize Court of 1837, and the Turret Clock where former mayor Nicholas Boyer was hanged for his part in the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549. Bodmin Gaol was the scene of more than 50 executions between 1785 and 1909, carried out in public until 1862; a once feared place the county gaol now operates as a hotel and features an absorbing exhibition that includes the former dungeons.
One of the most influential of early Welsh missionary saints was St Petroc, who landed in Cornwall in the 6th century, originally founding a monastery near Padstow that was eventually moved to Bodmin in the 10th century, to protect it from seaborne Viking raids. This monastery lasted until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 - little of it remains today. Bodmin's parish church dedicated to St Petroc, now the county's patron saint, is most impressive and is the largest church in Cornwall. Rebuilt in 1469 and renovated in the 19th century, St Petroc's Church contains an exceptional Norman font, whose immense bowl is supported by finely carved columns topped with stone angels. Enshrined in the south wall is a priceless ivory casket in which the remains of St Petroc were placed in 1177, after having first been recovered from a less than saintly Augustinian monk. Close by the church is one of the holy wells that Bodmin was renowned for; Eye Water Well bears the date 1700, and an advertisement recommending the restorative powers of the water as a cure for eye disorders.
H.C.McNeile, 'Sapper', the creator of Bulldog Drummond, was born in Bodmin in 1888, while his father was governor of the naval prison. During the First World War the Domesday Book, Crown Jewels and other national treasures were kept in this prison. The town also contains two first-rate museums; the Regimental Museum housed in the Duke of Cornwall's old headquarters and the Town Museum. Turf Street leads up past Mount Folly to the Beacon, a marvellously scenic picnic area, where a 140ft obelisk on its summit commemorates the Victorian general Sir Walter Raleigh Gilbert. A now defunct rail line, built in 1830 to link Bodmin with the Camel estuary at Wadebridge, has been reopened as The Camel Trail, a public cycle path and walkway running into Padstow.
Stretching for 80 square miles to the east of Bodmin lies Cornwall's highest ground, with expanses of barren moorland frequented by wild ponies and topped with the occasional granite tor. Few roads other than the A30 penetrate Bodmin Moor, and like neighbouring Dartmoor this bleak wilderness is covered in prehistoric remains. Typical of the scattered Bronze Age hut circles is that found on the side of Rough Tor, at 1311ft one of the highest points; standing nearby in the north of the moor is Brown Willy, the highest of these giant tors at 1375ft. Minions is a former mining community on the south-eastern fringes of Bodmin Moor, now a mournful scene of derelict engine-houses and disused quarries. Standing nearby is the famous Hurlers Stone Circle, three Bronze Age (c1500BC) stone circles up to 140ft across; local legend explains them as men turned to stone as punishment for playing the game of hurling on Sunday. Half a mile to the north is the spectacular natural granite formation called the Cheesewring. Views across the moor are rarely bettered than from this strangely weathered outcrop - northward over the brooding stillness of the central moor toward Brown Willy and Rough Tor, eastward across lush farmland to forbidding Dartmoor, southward to the urban sprawl of Plymouth.
In the centre of the moor, on the A30 main road, lies the tiny hamlet of Bolventor, the location of the former coaching inn immortalised in Daphne du Maurier's famous novel ‘Jamaica Inn'. During the 18th and 19th centuries this isolated hostelry provided an ideal meeting-place for outlaws and smugglers, a period recaptured in du Maurier's novel. A part of this complex in Bolventor is taken up by Potter's Museum of Curiosities, a highly eccentric and somewhat creepy storehouse of objects, the best known of which are the series of tableaux created by a Victorian taxidermist! A minor road leads south from Jamaica Inn past the dark and mysterious natural tarn known as Dozmary Pool. This desolate stretch of water is, according to one legend, the site to which King Arthur was brought following his final battle at Slaughter Bridge, near Camelford. Urged by the dying king, the reluctant Sir Bedivere threw the mystical sword Excalibar toward the eerie waters, only to see it caught by the ghostly Lady of the Lake. On a brighter note, sited just south of Dozmary Pool is Colliford Reservoir, a man-made lake offering excellent recreational and watersports facilities.