Wednesday 17th September 1997 - Day Five, Tintagel & Wind farm Prev Next

Another 4 weetabix and a pint of milk for breakfast, and a large helping of 'Travels with Boogie'. I was going to visit the nearby wind farm which generates electricity for the national grid today - just not yet. At about 11 O'clock I cooked up an early lunch of macaroni cheese and tomatoes so that I had plenty of energy for the afternoon, it was a 4 mile walk each way. Presently I started off, though Tintagel and then up a county road. The map showed that I would have to walk on some main road but I was aiming to keep this to a minimum, and use a footpath to short cut across some fields.

From the first hill I could see a lot of the familiar landmarks of Tintagel on what was a beautiful sunny day. The main road I had to take started off with a foot path but this ended with the last of the houses. From then on I had to carefully listen for traffic and get off into the hedge when vehicles came along. There was plenty of evidence of quarrying on both sides of the road with a tin mine engine house standing on one of the hills. As I approached the intended footpath I passed a shop which had hundreds of gnomes outside and a sign saying 'Please leave a donation if you take photographs'. I accidently went past the footpath before doubling back when I realised I had gone too far. From the road you could see the tops of some of the windmills in the wind farm. I found the footpath marked with a very old sign going up a farm track. At the top of the track next to a farm building a collie and terrier rushed at me barking furiously, then the collie stopped and bared its teeth. If I went any further I would have risked injury. I waited for a minute to see if anyone would appear and call it off, but they didn't. I had no alternative but to turn back and go along the other footpath. The second path went next to some houses and more substantial farm buildings, and I had no dog problems this time.

I found the stile at the other end of the footpath up on a wall and shrouded in foliage, and made a careful note of where it was because from the road it was not very visible. Again I walked on road avoiding the traffic before I arrived at the wind farm visitor centre. The centre proved very interesting with some fascinating facts about its operation, displays focusing on the environment, the advantages of wind power against other more traditional methods of electricity generation and how the wind farm here was built in 1991. There are ten 400kW turbines giving a total output of 4MW which means the farm is able to supply the electricity needs of about two thousand homes. Outside as well as the ten turbines there was a full size rotor blade on display, some fifty feet long and weighing over a ton. The scale of engineering was awe inspiring. Back outside I stood near to the base of one of the windmills, you could hear the whoosh of the blades as they rotated at just over 30 rpm, and the shadow on the ground showed just how fast these huge rotors were moving.

I retraced my steps back to Tintagel using the second footpath and the road. Back in Tintagel I visited a grocery to stock up then dropped the food off at the campsite. I returned to Tintagel and did some shopping. I also checked out the bus stop so I knew where to pick up the bus next morning. That evening I catered for myself rather than another King Arthur's chippie meal and read some more '500 mile walkies', using the candle again when it got dark.

Next page, Day Six, 18th September 97, Tintagel - Bude - Exeter - (Home)

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