Secret Cornwall 8 - Goonhilly
There are strange places, spooky places, unworldly places, surreal places, really weird places… And then there’s Goonhilly Down
If you ever want to go for a walk somewhere that is absolutely, completely, different to anywhere else on the planet - if you want to wander through a landscape that would look more fitting as a set for Dr Who than for a zone that has anything to do with an afternoon stroll - then go to Goonhilly.
You will not forget the experience, that I can promise. Months later, after eating too much cheese at supper, you will awake from a strange and disturbed sleep in the middle of the night and you will think: “Well, at least that dream wasn’t half as odd as Goonhilly Downs.”
Please do not think for a minute I’m writing any of this in a disparaging way. I love Britain’s strangest landscape and would urge all readers to go there and wander about the place at least once. It is a floral and environmental treat just as much as it is a visual, sensory, thrill.
But, let’s be honest, the great bald heath that dominates the centre of the Lizard is a location most of us have driven past in a hurry to reach the peninsula’s dramatic and beautiful beaches. People don’t stop at Goonhilly - unless, that is, they were visiting the famous Earth Station visitor centre which, when I was last there, was closed for refurbishment.
The reason I can now write about Goonhilly and heartily recommend it as a location for a hugely interesting walk is because Sir Ferrers Vyvyan took me up there a few months ago when I was fortunate enough to stay in one of his luxury holiday cottages at the neighbouring Trelowarren Estate.
Goonhilly used to be part of that great demesne, and it still has a place close to the heart of Sir Ferrers who likes to go up on the massive heath for a walk and a muse upon all things interesting and celestial.
We left the estate’s venerable Land Rover at Natural England’s small car park just south of the famous Earth Station. In case you haven’t been there, this is one West Country landmark that you cannot possibly miss - just look out for the huge satellite dishes which border the B3294 Helston to St Keverne road.
Numerous paths head off in various directions across the heath from the car park - indeed there is an interpretation board which introduces visitors to various walks - but we took the one which led us directly towards the vast dishes. That was because Sir Ferrers wanted to show me something that put this whole massive weird shooting match into a very strange and rather wonderful perspective.
As we strolled through the low scrub and past stunted trees, he told me: “I love to come up here - it is an extraordinary and much unappreciated landscape. Yes, it is an incredibly austere landscape, but it is full of interest. For instance, it is the home of the Wandering Heath (otherwise known as Cornish heath or Erica vegans), which was purportedly the bed of Joseph of Arimathea when he landed in Cornwall. It is purple and white and blooms in late summer with an extraordinary scent.
“But this landscape is bleak,” Sir Ferrers continued as we got closer and closer to the big fence that guards the satellite dishes. “It is studded with barrows and standing stones that speak of an older culture here - but at the same time is married to the most extraordinary 20th and 21st century landscape of the satellite station and wind-farms.
“It is a peculiar and quite eerie mix of cultures. You can be lost in an old, old, old landscape that has 21st century technology right beside you. It is very evocative…”
Mow we reached the thing Sir Ferrers wanted to show me - a huge, singular, sepulchral, standing stone pointing heavenwards just like the neighbouring satellite dishes…
“My great-uncle Courtney found this menhir lying on its side in the heath and, with a bit of gentle archaeology, he also found the original site from where it had fallen over - and he raised it again in the 1920s.,” said Sir Ferrers as we walked around the great rock which is called the Dry Tree.
“It is right in the middle of the peninsula - and in the middle of Goonhilly Down. Placed at the very point where the five parishes of the Lizard Peninsula meet at one spot,” said Sir Ferrers in a voice that somehow spoke of awe and admiration. “It is a truly prehistoric spot - this menhir was here two or three thousand years ago - maybe before that.
“And it is a lovely spot which I come up to often to walk in and think about the older history. Here it is - slap-bang next to this 20th century site - the satellite receiving station at Goonhilly. This place must have had an astrological significance in prehistoric times - but also, in our time, it was the only site in the UK where they could track the first satellite, Telstar, as it appeared over the horizon and travelled through 180 degrees, and also 360 degrees around.
“So it was an incredibly rare and important site for the engineers who built the Earth Station - and for the people who erected this menhir. One can’t help but think that those two levels of importance - one prehistoric, one modern - are somehow peculiarly linked.”
Sir Ferrers is right: there is something fantastic - almost too perfectly science-fiction-like for words - about the idea that the massive ancient standing stone has a direct, celestial, relationship with the burgeoning hi-tech world just feet away on the other side of the security fence.
With such thoughts in mind we continued our walk, heading south west across the downs. After a few hundred metres Sir Ferrers had another surprise in store…
“Goonhilly might look empty, but it is full of surprises,” he said, ducking left from the track to clamber through some stunted trees and enter what looked like (and indeed was) an ancient field system. “Right here in the middle of the Downs there are medieval farmsteads - probably older…”
And with that, and bit more rummaging, we came across one such place. Totally hidden deep in a thicket lurked a very, very old and very ruined farmhouse. Someone long ago had put a corrugated roof on the place, but this hadn’t stopped time taking its toll. For interior design - think moss and lichen. For domesticity - think crushed stone cupboards and fallen fireplaces.
As we continued our walk in a great loop out to a place marked on the map as Carn Mear, Sir Ferrers mused: “You can look at Goonhilly and drive past it and you may be tempted to think there’s not anything worth exploring - but if you stop in the Natural England Nature Reserve car park next to the satellite station there’s so much to explore.
“Within minutes you are lost. Peculiarly lost, given that this place is just about flat… And suddenly, here we are in the middle of this rare heathland. There’s the old farm site, there’s fantastic flora, there’s wildlife and, bizarrely, there’s normally a distinct absence of people,” grinned Sir Ferrers.
With that we began our walk back to the car park. Following various paths that took us past a place called Croft Pascoe, we worked our way in what was generally a north-easterly direction - there’s not much point in my giving accurate description of the route here because there are numerous trackways and all you have to do is head towards the giant Earth Station.
Maybe in a very thick fog you’d have difficulties, but in most conditions this is the one landmark in the West Country that it would be impossible - and inadvisable - to miss.
