Well it's not often I say this, but I awoke to rain yesterday morning (Sunday) and most welcome it was too! Great waves of fresh smelling air wafted in as I opened all the windows and back door and stood listening to the gravity powered rain on the leaves and roof over the patio (no wind to speak of at all).
Welcome though it was, there was a hint of disappointment too, as there had been no sign of the thunder storms that we'd been warned about. Initially due any time from Saturday afternoon through to Sunday night - we here in my 'hood had not a single flash nor rumble. That rain, that lovely cooling freshening rain, only lasted a couple of hours too before it cleared and we went back to a sunny, then hazy, hot and humid day. Watching on weather radar it seems Western Europe was having all the fun with a mass of storms spread wide and lightning strikes pinging away like an Uzi in a drive by shooting.
I like a good thunder storm, so am feeling a bit short changed right now, and once again, hot and clammy. Rain... we need rain... please!
Well that was yesterday/today, Saturday I had me a ride, so we'll get onto that.
Sunrise is such a magical time of day, it's just a bummer it's so early... But anyway, wanting once again to miss the main heat of the day but still have a good ride, I set out just after sunrise as it happens, at about 05.30.
Time to give the Marin a boot I thought, so wheeled that out into the dawning Saturday.
I wonder if you can still get starburst filters? I can remember a while back when they were all the rage, and as with everything, often overdone. This being a scruffy starburst, it is the obvious product of a smaller aperture rather than some accessory jiggery pokery.
I love gateways, they're like windows in the high hedged corridors that are most of the lanes around here.
Of all my bikes, the Marin is the one that takes a little re-learning when I first hop on it again after riding the others. This is mainly down to the one by ten transmission and its slightly larger jump between ratios. My other bikes have either twenty or twenty four ratios to play with, and so getting into a rhythm on the Marin takes a couple of miles, but once I'm settled into its ways, it really is a great bike to ride. Not as fast on the flat as the 29er Jamis mind you, but still a lovely back lane cruiser.
As with a few weeks previously, I was heading towards Fraddon to start with, and took the Ladock route rather than the more northerly country lanes. The Ladock - Fraddon road is a main road of sorts, and a twisty one too as far as Brighton Cross, but at silly o'clock it's quiet and also provides the longest continuous pedal in my immediate neighbourhood, the road being mostly flat before a slight rise into Fraddon. Most of my riding will see me either grinding up a hill or coasting down another with little in the way of flat going, so this road is a consistent cruising cadence treat and good exercise for the legs too.
Just outside Ladock and the sad sight of a freshly killed Deer. It must've happened overnight judging by the condition of the poor creature - in the temperatures we've been having I wouldn't like to see this after a few hours in the sun). Thankfully it was dead, I'd hate to think of it still being alive and lying there in what would be agony, and I hope it didn't suffer at all.
My ultimate destination was the small town/honking great village of St Columb Major. Why there? Erm... why not is the only answer, it was just somewhere to go and have a poke around. I've not been through in many years and remember it having narrow streets and high buildings giving the centre a hemmed in feel, so I thought I'd go and see if it has changed much.
There are three St Columbs - St Columb Road, St Columb Major and St Columb Minor. I was going to 'do' the first two, the latter, St Columb Minor, is a bit too close to Newquay for my liking, so best avoided.
This milestone bothers me though, as I'm not sure what it is trying to say. It certainly isn't 111 miles to St Columb, but nor is it three, unless it means St Columb Major (but if it does, then surely it would say so...). It could be, at a stretch, a third of a mile to St Columb (Road) though, that might be it.
Whatever it is, the Stone Mason employed to do it wasn't the best by the look of it, his kerning was way out...
Fore Street, St Columb Major. Hmmm... it's early in the morning but is that a traffic jam up the street to the left?
All but the far shop are long disused and looking a tad derelict, which is a shame. The one nearest the camera was clearly an ironmongers, but St Columb Major folk do still have that once common but now rare thing - a 'proper' ironmonger, as I passed an ironmonger's shop as I came into the town.
The buildings are 19th Century and Grade two listed. Like a lot of the buildings here, the front is slate hung.
When the shops closed I don't know, but it is a real shame to see them disused like this. Much as I like decaying history in favour of newer stuff, efforts should be made you'd think to encourage businesses to occupy these buildings. Mind you, I expect they will need some serious refurbishment but still.
An old photo pinched from the fascinating Francis Frith collection (link HERE) showing Market Place.
And how it looks now at about 8am on Saturday morning. The artic is delivering to the Co-Op and is the reason for the traffic jam as nervous drivers tried to squeeze past it. The vans, well they're just parked there.
I've been a confirmed petrolhead most of my life, but now even I am slowly finding the way everything must bow down to the motor vehicle distasteful. All vehicles just seem to dominate everywhere now, and they're getting physically bigger too which doesn't help.
Everywhere I go I see once attractive front gardens ripped out to make way for parking for a car or three, usually hoofing great four wheel drives, and who in their right mind buys an attractive looking house, only to knacker its looks and then sit and look out of their windows straight into the side of their cars?
Now behind me as I was stood on the steps taking the above photo was something I've got a bit of a thing for, a coffin rest in the church gate. Don't ask me why I find these things interesting as I'm beggared if I know, but still, we've all got to have a hobby, right?
So anyway, there's a coffin rest in the entrance to St Columba's Church. I can't tell you anything much about it, other than it looks original. But wait... what's that just around the corner...?
Is that another coffin rest I see?
Yep, t'is too. Not found two such features in one churchyard before, although this one looks a tad modern and boring. This entrance is obviously the one used by the posh folk, the sort who get out of the bath to have a pee and have fruit in the house even though nobody is ill. Not my sort at all...
The other entrance is presumably where the poor people were carried in, not worthy enough to be seen going through the grand entrance, or something like that.
St Columb Major War Memorial.
Just to the side of the church is this gothicky looking place built in 1874 - Bond House. I'm not sure what it was originally built for but it is now all flats inside.
Union Square, which like the Market Place, seems to be given over to parking and used by residents as nothing was open yet shop wise other than the Co-Op.
Pride and neglect.
Lots of well tended and stocked flower beds and baskets can be found all over the town, but there is also a lot of tattiness too.
In the town centre, every other bollard is decorated with the town crest - a hand clutching a silver ball in reference to the local game of Hurling the Silver Ball.
Cornish Hurling is unlike Irish Hurling and was once a big thing throughout the county. Now it is only played in St Ives once a year, twice a year here in St Columb Major and once every five years in Bodmin, but they're a funny lot in Bodmin anyway.
The game is played out between two teams - the Townsmen and the Countrymen, and the object of the game is simply to get the silver ball into a goal (your own goal as it happens rather than your opponent's). Those goals are two miles apart, or another goal can be scored if the ball can be carried across a Parish Boundary, making the Parish the biggest sport's pitch in the country, allegedly.
Bizarrely, the roads remain open to traffic as the game progresses, but it would be only the very unwise who would venture into town in a car on play day. The game will scramble and scrummage its way through the streets, gardens, shops, pubs, fields - anywhere it gets taken is fair game, and local shops and some house owners will board up their windows for the day just in case of damage.
More on this (occasionally) roughest of sports can be found HERE
The painting on the wall of the library in the background in the above shot was completed in 2017 and depicts the history of the sport in the town, and includes portraits of 100 individual ball winners of the game and all the names of winners since 1900. (A winner is the individual player of either team who carries the ball to his goal or over the Parish boundary).
I must confess to just not 'getting' recumbents at all. Great for the disabled, no problem there, but otherwise I just don't see the point in them. I would feel incredibly vulnerable that low down, and you can't see a lot down there either. How they fare on the steep hills around these parts I don't know, and they just do not seem anywhere near as agile and versatile as a conventional bike, and I include the two wheeled versions in that as well. No, they ain't for me at all.
I don't know about you, but I can see two Red Lions. And a Seagull.
Yep, definitely two Red Lions. Crappy ones at that, but nothing a good wash and a coat of paint won't cure.
It's a funny old building this, as it manages to look tatty and rather uninviting, as the nature of the granite stonework manages to make the front look grubby and the too-small windows are out of proportion to the overall height. It looks boxy too.
One notable Landlord of the Red Lion was James Polkinghorne (1788-1854) who was a Cornish Wrestling Champion who won many fights, usually against opponents from Devon, that attracted as many as 12,000 spectators.
Cornish Wrestlers are barefoot and grapple their opponent down on their back to the ground. Devon fighters were 'kickers,' who wore boots soaked in animal blood then dried to harden up the toe to do more damage. The different styles of fighting and footwear didn't seem to matter in those days, not least to Polkinghorne.
Apart from the Hurling contest, St Columb Major hasn't got a lot to attract visitors from outside its natural 'catchment area' and that is a shame. It is a cracking little town unspoiled by modern developments in the centre, and just needs some money being spent on tidying it up and attracting visitors. If I were in charge I'd start by banning traffic from the centre between 7am and 7pm, and start having general markets/farmers markets, any sort of market or fair in the centre each week. Get some money together to fully refurbish the empty premises dotted about and get them opened up as little shops or cafes, or community stocked and staffed shops. Town centres are in a state of turmoil at the moment, from small ones like this to the big towns. Some will reinvent themselves and encourage new growth and attract visitors, other authorities will bury their head in the sand and preside over decaying wastelands. With a lot of hard work and even harder cash, places like St Columb Major could be busy little places full of interesting shops and activities, places where certain groups such as cyclists, motorcyclists, walkers, book readers, wine and beer fans and so on can flock to each day, but especially at weekends. Create a bit of a destination for a certain interest and people will come and enjoy themselves.
No doubt though, there will be plenty of people wishing to preserve the quiet, out of the way, nature of towns such as this as well, and they do have a point. But for me, I'd much rather see small towns flourishing with life than boarded up and decaying.
After a bit of a look around I headed back out of town, aiming to take a different route home, and following NCN Route 32 briefly. This took me past a large cemetery on the outskirts of town featuring large wrought iron gates and inside, two distinctive and matching mortuary chapels dating back to 1856.
The two mortuary chapels - Anglicans to the left (northern), Dissenters to the right (southern).
Follow NCN Route 32 out of St Columb Major and a shared path brings you out into a country lane at Trekenning where this 19th Century milestone can be found. Seven miles to Newquay is close enough thank you, I'm going the other way, pronto.
Leaving St Columb Major (thank goodness, it means I won't have to keep typing the name out) I made my way along the lanes to White Cross (where there once was a POW camp, now a tourist campsite), then hung a left into Barton Lane that heads back into Fraddon, but I intended to take a Bridleway that would take me away from there and knock off a corner, dropping me onto the lane I wanted, to St Enoder.
I've been up this Bridleway once before, from the opposite direction, and it is a handy short cut for sure. I found the start of it ok, although any signposts have been removed, but was then confronted with a firmly shut farm gate, in fact, three firmly shut gates to differing fields, but there appeared no access to the Bridleway at all. Bugga! So I had to take the road route back through Fraddon - no great hardship but a nice track through the edge of a wood would be so much nicer on such a hot day. I'll go back soon, from the other direction and see what happens.
It was only about ten o'clock when I got home, with no further stops for photos as you'll notice, but already there was evidence of the tar melting on some of the roads. Indeed, the council gritters have been out gritting the roads to try and prevent the surface melting.
An early start is definitely the way to go for me, and it feels good to get out, get some exercise, go somewhere interesting, do my health some good, and get home, refreshed mentally but tired physically, and still have the majority of the day ahead to relax and try and stay cool!
Now, here on Monday, I've just had my weekly food shopping delivered, and the driver was amazed at how dry it is here, as just up the road apparently there is a thunderstorm raging, with the rain torrential and the road flooded. I can't even hear any thunder yet his wet van showed him not to be telling porkies. Pfft! and Pfft! again. I want a thunderstorm!
As usual, the full details of the ride can be had HERE
A good ride then, my bike computer saying 29 miles covered, and whilst I was wearing the padded undershorts that I don't wear on the other bikes, the saddle didn't bother me at all. I think it is all but broken in already, after about 130 miles. That is actually less than I was bargaining for having read horror stories of thousand mile break in periods and all sorts for the Spa Cycles sit upon. Soon I'll start riding without the padded shorts to break it in finally so I won't waddle around feeling like I've filled my underpants in some disastrous bowel related accident.
Right, that's the latest - Happy Cycling!
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