Tuesday17 December. East to Goss Moor and the Clay Country
Frost this morning and the air sharp in my lungs like breathing ice, fingers ends numb where they touch the metal of the brake levers, heading downhill into the shadowed lane that runs north of Truro past the primary school, playground sounds that take me back to my old job. Yesterday Madame Crow and myself cycled to the seaside along sunny, dry lanes and had lunch in Portreath, watching the winter waves storm the beach. Those 36 hilly miles are dragging on my legs today. Nothing is in sync this morning, breathing ragged, legs hurting on the smallest gradient, clanking, ugly gear changes, wobbles on the mud covered lane past Idless Woods. This lane never dries out until the end of winter, shaded even today under the bare branches of oak, ash and hazel with deep drifts of leaves and lumpy trails of mud from tractor wheels.
Once uphill and clear of the woods I can see far to the west there is a darkness on the horizon, a promise of rain to come. For now the pale blue sky is still clear of clouds and the air sparkles, I am breathing frozen champagne. My legs have stopped grumbling.
The plan today is to roughly follow the line of the A30 eastwards but on small lanes and forgotten ways, dipping up and down, crossing the valleys that run north south down from the spine of Cornwall. The lanes are very quiet, some closed to traffic where they were once part of the old A30 before the dual carriageway, a thin and weedy line of tarmac slowly surrendering to gorse and bramble. A vision of post apocalyptic Britain when the oil runs out and everyone uses bikes.
Sometimes I can see the A30, traffic moving slowly at this distance, just a faint hum from time to time.
Every time I stop to look at the map (I have a map today!) or to lose some of the tea that is pressing on my bladder, I feel the warmth of the sun, even though the air is cold, grating my throat, chilling me deep inside. The sun has brought out the birds, some pheasant born this year just coming into their colours, daft birds that run across the road, stop and then run back making me brake to avoid them. The magpies are always here, as are the crows but there are smaller birds, moving too quickly to identify, their trilling informing me spring is coming one day, just not today. The threatened rain is moving to the north coast as it so often does, leaving me in sunshine, although it is no warmer.
Across the A30 and now the long pull uphill through Fraddon and Indian Queens. The A30 somewhere to my right rises steeply too and I can hear the trucks grinding down through the gears, as am I, warm now as I work hard pushing the pedals down.
On and along, the road mercifully flat until the turn right onto Goss Moor, a wilderness of uncultivated land, swampy after the winter rains, a mixture of moor and bog covered in dwarf oak. It is the largest area of mire in south west England but fortunately it has a cycle path across it. I pass the place that is the source of the River Fal and then follow it's infant valley along twisting lanes, my vista blocked by tall, uncut hedges and small copses.
Now it is up and up and up along narrow lanes, lined with granite walls, to the mining village of St Dennis. This is an uncompromising landscape, cut through with huge china clay quarries and pyramidal spoil heaps. I have chosen roads that take me away from the heavy traffic of laden lorries carrying clay to processing plants but even so a large tipper truck causes me to wobble, heart racing, adrenalin in my blood as it suddenly appears on my elbow, it's noise masked by the hat over my ears and the wind whistling in my helmet. There is too little space for us both and I stop suddenly, yanking the brakes and finding sanctuary in a small widening of the road, a place where the granite walls move back slightly. I am not convinced the driver, sitting some ten feet higher than me and rumbling down the road even knows or cares that I am here, trembling, cross.
From St Dennis it is a fast downhill for a few miles to St Stephen. Cornwall - the land of the Saints. I can see the evidence of mining everywhere although it is all now in decline as new deposits of china clay have been found in Brazil. It is like Kentucky or West Virginia here, small communities separated by tradition and steep hills. But there is no Clay Country music apart from the brass bands that practice in the squat granite village halls. No fiddles or banjos, although there is tradition of Cornish folk singing, the words sound sad and plaintive but I can't speak Cornish like nearly everyone here, so it is the melody and sound and not the words that move me.
My memory from planning the route was that there were no more hills after St Stephen - I am wrong. A steep uphill, deceptive so that I stand on the pedals, forcing the bike to ascend thinking this is just a small ramp and then the lane turns and steepens further, more and more of it, two crows sitting on a telegraph pole mocking my efforts as my heart strains to keep pace with my ambition for climbing this hill. And then steeply down, back to the familiar game of snakes and ladders as the down is followed by another up although this time I can see the line of the road as it winds up the hill that is blocking the horizon, an uphill skein of hedges across the empty pastures, the cows now indoors and out of the cold.
Muddy lanes, tall hedges, more small rises and falls until in the slanting afternoon light I can finally see Probus and this is the penultimate hill. A fast descent down Truck Hill and now only the last couple of miles home, spinning along by the Tresillian River, low tide, the December sun dropping early so now it's picking out the shadowed course of the river in its deep trench and the platforms of mud, flashing and glowing in the light. A last hill, spinning slowly, keeping my breathing under control but not going to bother the Strava KOM time today - or any day. Arriving home, the lawn is starting to freeze again although it is only mid afternoon.
I am still aiming at my own 'Festive 500', but one where I have all of December and not just a week to complete it. More than halfway through the month now and 300km done; 200km to go. The next three days have weather warnings for wind and rain, so I can rest. I need a rest. Cornwall is beautiful but there are a lot of ups and downs.
