The real Minions

I've just returned from a three day break in the West Country, visiting a very poorly brother-in-law and celebrating an aunt's 90th birthday. Between these two contrasting events we found time to explore a bit of our beloved Cornwall – this time the moorland north of Liskeard, centred on Minions.  No, that's not the little yellow creatures with blue trousers and cheeky grins, but a tiny village, high on the the moorland to the north of Liskeard.  This particular Minions has long been a favourite spot of mine, with its rugged scenery, Bronze Age stone circles and industrial remains.

These are The Hurlers, the remains of villainous men who dared to play Cornish Hurling on a Sunday and paid the penalty by being turned into stones. You have been warned! Since it was also a Sunday that we chose to visit, we were most careful to behave ourselves.

This stone looks rather too carefully shaped to be a petrified hurler, so I think it's one of the marker stones erected by Ralegh Radford in the 1930's to replace a missing one.

From The Hurlers it is but a short walk to The Cheesewring, a natural granite formation, worn to an amazing shape by moorland wind and rain.

It looks as if the next puff of wind would surely topple it, but it's been there for a long, long time. What my photos fail to show is that, while we were there, it was again taking quite a buffeting from the howling wind. This next photo may aid your imagination...

Finally, on our way back to Minions, we sought out the remains of the old Liskeard & Caradon Railway and some of the copper and tin mines it served – mines where fortunes were won and lost, and where hundreds of men once worked.

This is Wheal Jenkin, sitting astride the old railway line. Beyond is Caradon Hill, from where we used to receive Westward Television when I was a kid.

1908 Ordnance Survey map

Finally, to complete the Minions story, when the other Minions became famous the film company donated this colourful addition to the road sign.  So popular did it become, with drivers stopping their cars and children running onto the road to be photographed, that Cornwall Council judged it to be a danger and removed it. Shame, really.