Altarnun
Altarnun is an attractive village, along with Blisland the most interesting on this part of Bodmin Moor. Aalong the main street there is a straggle of houses, stone or slate built, some slate-hung, one or two of them substantial Georgian homes. At the lower end of the street is the church, dedicated to the mother of St. David, St. Nonna, said to have founded this church in 547AD. Her Holy Well is just off the road that heads north. Known as ‘The Cathedral of the Moor’, the church is approached by a narrow and ancient packhorse bridge over the fast-flowing little Penpont Water. Outside, unexpectedly exotic trees thrive in its churchyard and a Cornish cross stands at the top of a bank. A little way up the hill in the village is a former Wesleyan chapel, over its door a stone likeness of John Wesley, a regular visitor, carved by local man Nevil Northey Burnard. Wesley stayed often in the nearby village of Trewint in Digory Isbell's home, now a museum to Wesley and Methodism. Altarnun, surprisingly, has three shops but no pub or teashop. Perhaps it doesn't really welcome visitors, although I felt welcome enough when enquiring about a trail leaflet for the Inny Valleys Walk, which I did in July 2006 - there wasn't one, nor a sign from the village which, for a walk shown as a trail on the Ordnance Survey map, really quite shocked me.
St. Nonna's Church & Holy Well
Packhorse bridge to St. Nonna's Church
Signed (1 mile) off A30 7 miles west of Launceston.
Inny Valleys Walk: Full detailed directions, and a 2 mile extension by way of Polyphant, see my Bodmin Moor Walks page
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And Even More St. Mawgan
Mawgan
Another View of Coverack - From Tess Warburton
Hi Oliver, I was just reading your rather critical review of Coverack. I holiday in Coverack every year, along with many other families who return there each summer to enjoy beautiful surroundings and friendly inhabitants. I have been going to the village for almost twenty years and although I have travelled to many places in the south west it is still my favourite. In many ways I am pleased you don't like it. If you had stayed long enough in the village and been bothered to find out what it is really like you would have written a more far more colourful description. This would however have encouraged lots of other people to holiday there, including people like yourself (who think it is possible to understand and make judgments about a place within a paragraph). I wish you luck with your touring. However, maybe you should 'stay put' in some of the places you visit before you judge them and influence the decisions of others.
Blisland
There is a lot that is both unusual and admirable about Blisland, one of Bodmin Moor's, and indeed Cornwall's, most charming villages. To take the unusual first, you don't find many proper village greens in Cornwall - but you do find one in Blisland. Roughly triangular, the church is on one side, the Blisland Inn on another, the Manor house is on the base. The church has an odd dedication, to Sts. Protus (or Pratt) and Hyacinth, and an interior like a pre-Reformation church. The Blisland Inn has a reputation for its real ales and the atmosphere of a real welcoming local pub. The Manor house has the four-square appearance of a Georgian home with a two storey Elizabethan style porch - and, most unexpectedly, on its north face two Norman windows and a Norman arch. Now for the admirable. It looked at one time as if Blisland was going the way of so many villages, dormitories with no heart, soul or amenities. But Blisland fought back and now it has not only its pub but a school and, since 2006, a community centre in the real sense of that phrase. A great effort replaced the lost village shop with a brand new convenience store, whose groceries include local produce, plus cafe, doctor's surgery and internet caf�. Pub, church, school and store make Blisland a real village.