Neolithic Cairn Bank, Roughtor towards Showery Tor - this is oart way up the bank -note brown soil/stones where Time Team excavated across the bank
Showery Tor, Roughtor showing wall of smaller stones around it - possibly a Bronze Age addition

I'll start with archaeology. Time Team on Channel 4 did some excavation on the slopes of the hill Roughtor, Bodmin Moor in the autumn of 2006 and the result of this was shown on TV in April 2007. We have done a lot of exploring this important Neolithic ritual site and Bronze Age settlement area and it is one of our favourite places so the work done by Time Team was very interesting for us. There was also a walk at Roughtor reviewing the results of the TV programme that we attended lead by County Archaeologist Peter Herring. The most important discovery for Britain was the cairn bank - 100's of feet long which had been assumed to be a boundary but turned out to be a possible ritual pathway leading up the slopes of Roughtor. It has bends in it and each bend if you stop and view the hill makes you look at a different tor on the summit. The tors were important and each had been surrounded by a great wall of stones in the past. Well that was interesting enough but then I went onto Google in the summer and had a look at it from the air. At the top end of the bank I noticed a circle of flat stones adjacent to a sort of rising sun shape. With our October Archaeology group we investgated this and indeed there appears to be a circle of flattened stones at the end of the bank! Adjecent to the circle is a rising sun shape - semicircle with rays coming of it and piles of stones dotted about. We also had a good look at this. In the winter we reported this to the County Archaeologists. The sun shape was surveyed in the 1980's and was assumed to be field walls - but they don't look like it to us and the piles of stones dotted around are cairns - used as markers or burial places in the Bronze Age. They didn't know about the circle - NOW they do and we are hoping someone will go and check it out. Have we found a new stone circle for Cornwall?????
Many of our guests are now photographing dragonflies and butterflies. Ron Linfield is a dragonfly man and is now recording these for Cornwall. I acquired his old Nikon D70 off him and now I have got the 'bug' except I do birds mostly. I decided to bring more natural history into our Allsorts week. So it was off to Breney Common in May With kid's dipping nets and a load of plastic boxes. It rained but that doesn't stop pond dipping and we found all sorts of beasties including water beetle larva and the larvae of damselflies, dragonflies etc as well as tadpoles and water beetles various. The larvae are a new field for us so there was a lot of looking up photo's when we got home trying to identify what we have found. There is a new book on dragonfly larvae etc that Ron has recommended so I shall have to get that. I also tried attracting life that lives in the mud - various squirmy things like leeches, flat worms etc. I didn't stick my foot in the water but dangled a lamb chop off a piece of string that I happened to have with me on the bottom of the pond. The lamb chop had been in our freezer for sometime - not eaten because it was from a batch that were too tough - unfortunately even the flat worms turned it down so disappointed I walked off with it dragging it along the ground. I couldn't stop laughing as I thought what am I doing - 'Hunting for the Beast of Bodmin?' Thankfully it didn't turn up. It was a very interesting day and what was most interesting to me was how absorbed our group got with the dipping nets and the beasties they caught. So I included it in our Best of Cornwall week and the same absorbtion happened again. So we will definitely be pond dipping in 2008.

Common Darter photgraphed by Ron Linfield
Chaffinch photographed by Sheila 2007
May Allsorts - Sheila and the lamb chop with Steve trying to hide - sorry forgotten who took this picture...uuurk
Water beetle, damsel fly larva and pond skater photographed by Martin Stolworthy or was it Ron?