After another wet night, rainbows and spells of sunshine accompany dog walkers and visitors following paths through fields of the Churchtown Farm nature reserve. This popular community space, adjoining housing estates on the edge of Saltash, affords open views across the tidal estuary of the Lynher River. On the opposite bank of this sheltered anchorage, shadowy woodland fronts the Antony estate; Maker’s church tower is distinguishable on the far southern horizon of the Rame peninsula. The low sun makes dazzling mirrors of the Hamoaze (at the Tamar/Lynher confluence) and Plymouth Sound and, out to sea, the Great Mew Stone is a pale conical silhouette.
A trampled muddy path through lush grass and clover in Wearde Park leads to a higher vantage point in the field of Hitchings; from here the shell keep of Trematon Castle comes into view and, further upriver, square corner towers of Ince Castle catch the morning light.
This undulating expanse of pastures, marshy grassland and arable fields is now leased from the Antony estate and managed by the Cornish Wildlife Group, assisted by local volunteers. Some fields are cut for hay and, in Quay Park, seeding knapweed, docks and tall grasses are bounded by spreading hedges of haws, lichen-covered blackthorn, hips and rambling brambles. Steep slopes drop down towards the creek of Forder Lake where, opposite, are the remains of a tidal millpond. Barges used to come up this narrow waterway, bringing dock dung (street sweepings with horse manure) from Devonport to be spread on the land as fertiliser; then, in the late 19th century, volcanic dolerite, dug from Lowhill Quarry, was carried on tramways to quays for loading on to sailing ships.
Today we shelter from a heavy shower beneath an arch of the railway viaduct that carries the main line towards Brunel’s bridge across the Tamar downstream. A narrow path proceeds through woodland where hart’s tongue ferns and ivy sparkle in the wet undergrowth. Scarlet berries of holly catch attention among the burnished leaves hanging on to oaks whose mossy branches with polypody ferns overhang the flooding tide and a solitary dabbling swan.
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