Walks: Mên-an-Tol - Ding Dong Mine, Cornwall
Another lockdown walk. We dared to drive a bit further out from Hayle, where we lived at the time and drove to Zennor to see some ancient sites. Since then I discovered Penwith Landscape website which has some trail guides and information about Penwith land management.
We drove to Zennor and parked by the entrance to area. There is parking for 5-8 cars, and it’s worth arriving early as the parking spots fill up quickly as the locals like to use the area for walking their dogs and tourists will visit the site. Penwith Landscape site has a trail map for a circular route. The last 10% of the route is very overgrown, so it’s worth walking back to the car using the same road as entering the site and missing the last bit of the suggested loop back. We decided to extend the walk a bit more following a route from AllTrails, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake, as you’ll read soon.
First stop is in the middle of the field, Mên Scryfa, inscribed stone. The inscription, dating to the early medieval period, commemorates "Rialobranus son of Cunovalus." Read more in Wikipedia.
Then we walked to an junction and walked in a narrow walled path trying to find a trail around old homestead, as described in the AllTrails by someone. That was not to be found, so we climbed of the hedge and continued to follow the route around the homestead, basically just walking on a field.
We took a sharp turn and followed a narrow path, surrounded by knee deep in gorse towards Carn Galver, or so we thought. There was Carn Galver, then a lesser carn and next to it was the Little Galver. We ended up somewhere in the middle of the two, as that’s where the path took us.
There were great views from top of the carn, over the Garver Engine house to the South West Coast Path and the sea. We were high enough to see the sea on the other side as well.
From the carn, we followed the well marked path (in OS Maps) towards Ding Dong mine.
On the way to Ding Dong mine, there’s also bronze age barrow and Nine Maidens stone circle. We missed them on this walk, but we returned a year later for another walk, so I’ll include a photo of that here as well.
We reached the Ding Dong mine. From the mine we headed back to have a look at the Mên-an-Tol stones. It’s said that, if you have any ailments, crawling through the hole in the stone will cure them.
Cornwall has a quite vibrant pagan subculture and sites like Mên-an-Tol and Nine Maidens have local witches visiting them in certain key dates of the year to perform rituals.
One our second walk, we also visited Lanyon Quoit, which is not visible in the map above, but it’s close to the road just south of the parking spot / start & end of the walk. Here’s a photo of the quoit. It can be reached by taking a path heading west between Ding Dong mine and Mên-an-Tol. There’s also a spot for maybe a one car to park by the road next to the quoit. Please don’t park on the side of the roads in Cornwall, unless there’s enough space for safely park without obstructing traffic. On narrow roads, there are also wider part, which are not meant for parking, as they are passing spots for the incoming traffic.
