Boscastle, Treworld, Lesnewth, Hennett and Minster Wood

The walk takes you through a wide variety of landscapes, starting the main street of Boscastle and then turning onto a pathway across a pretty river valley. Next it follows a series of narrow lanes typical of the region, with their high banks filled with flowers. Breaks in the banks give panoramic views over the surrounding countryside. It is a gentle walk, however, some of the hills are steep in places.

At St Juliot's Church, footpaths replace the lanes and lead down through grassy fields to the woodland of the Valency Valley. A walk beside the gentle River Valency finally brings you back to your starting point at Boscastle.

The crooked narrow inlet at Boscastle may seem an unlikely site for a harbour, but it provides the only safe haven along 40 miles of rocky north Cornish coast. There has been a port here since Norman times, but the present harbour was rebuilt in 1584 by Sir Richard Grenville, the famous Elizabethan captain who died while in command of 'The Revenge' in a battle against the Spanish off the Azores in 1591. It must have taken seamanship of the highest order to manoeuvre a big sailing vessel down the inlet, yet even in the last century this was a busy place with ketches and schooners up to 200 tonnes calling in.

The inlet also boasts a curious natural feature called the 'Devil's Bellows', which blows a waterspout horizontally across the harbour mouth for about one hour at either side of low tide.

The village of Boscastle is based on the long street that climbs up the hillside past the site of the Norman Castle, and which makes up the first stage of the walk. Until 1886 this was the only road to the port. The old houses that line this street are as picturesque as any in the region. The rough stone walls, often whitewashed, sometimes need buttresses to keep them from collapsing downhill, and age has caused the mellow slate roofs to sag into gentle curves. Much of the area is preserved by the National Trust, and the village as a whole is a conservation area.

On the outskirts of the village lies what little remains of Bottreaux Castle. It was built by a Norman family called Botterell and gave its name to the settlement that grew up around it - Boscastle. Today, the platform where it once stood makes a splendid viewpoint.

Just before the entrance of St Peters Wood stands Minster Church. Here there was once a simple hermit's cell, but in the 12th century it became a monastic site. The present building, which was heavily restored in the 1860's, used stone from the early church. It has some notable Tudor monuments and sculpted figures at prayer and some carved slate gravestones.

The roads on this walk are all attractive narrow lanes, but near the village of Lesnewth the scenery becomes quite dramatic. A little stream runs down a rocky gorge surrounded by woodland. In spring, the ground is covered in bluebells.

The Church of St Juliot at Hennett is interesting, not only for its romantic connections, but because it stands as a monument to Thomas Hardy's sensibility. His restoration work left the church satisfyingly simple with none of the Gothic excesses associated with other Victorian restorers.

After the church, the walk enters the lovely Minster Wood in the valley of the River Valency, which runs all the way back to Boscastle. Here, seek out Minster Church, which has an indirect link to the unfortunate Joan Wytte. She was known as 'The Fighting Fairy Woman of Bodmin', who was wrongly accused of witchcraft and died of pneumonia in Bodmin Gaol in 1813. Efforts to have the skeleton buried in the Bodmin were thwarted by the church, thanks to her reputation as a witch, and she was buried, in the hope of being out of sight and out of mind, in Minster Wood instead.