Towards midsummer, Kit Hill on our northern horizon turns green as new growth revives the faded heathland. Meadow buttercups waft through grassy verges beside the approach road, and, by the car park, foals lie on warm turf, overseen by placid mares which were brought here to graze back scrub and diversify vegetation. Former mine and quarry workings scar the granite outcrop, leaving burrows (heaps of mine waste) and dumps of hewn stone.
On the southern, exposed flank, overlooking the Tamar estuary and hazy sea, hollows and prospecting pits provide shelter for fresh leaves of holly, willow, thorn and birch, which poke through bramble, foxglove, and buckler and male ferns. Hard fern and tormentil brighten the turf between clumps of sprouting whortleberry and ling; paths sparkle with flecks of quartz. An adder is visible, basking in the sun. A cuckoo calls as it flies unseen across the rough land, somewhere between the beeches on the open hill, a stone enclosure guarding a dangerous shaft and the gaunt stack of South Kit Hill mine.
Further around the hill, in sight of Bodmin Moor’s undulating skyline, willow warblers sing within leafy cover above small pastures of polleny grasses and vivid orange sorrel. Downhill from this vantage point, Holmbush is one of many mine ruins set within the mineralised zone that skirts this granite hill.
On the north side, fenced off from grazing ponies, the jumble of boulders and moorstone is colonised by flowering rowans and sturdy oaks, with patches of seeding bluebells and emerging bracken. A glimpse downhill frames Deer Park’s isolated stack – the remains of an old arsenic flue that extended uphill from the Wheal Martha mine.
Back on the south side, views extend past the mined ground of Silver Valley and Harrowbarrow towards familiar St Dominic, with its green patchwork of pastures for bullocks and recently shorn sheep, occasional crops of cereals, dark hedgerow trees and steep woodland. Pale enclaves gleam at Trehill, Dupath and Viverdon Down, where grass has been cut and carted off to silage clamps or baled in black plastic – essential fodder for winter keep.
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