Friday 4th September

This was meant to be a gentle day's trip to the Tortoise Sanctuary about 4 miles southwest of St Austell. It didn't quite happen that way. To start with, the road east from Charlestown to Duporth was blocked by roadworks. So we ventured northwest (uphill again) to the A390, intending to go slightly west before turning south again and then taking a minor road west from 028515 to Tregorrick and then to the B3273.

Somehow we missed the turn west and carried on down an increasingly narrow road. Eventually we realised that we'd overshot and that there was no way west from where we were (somewhere south of Trevissick) without going to Pentewan. So we thought 'no problem - this has just added a couple of miles to our route and we'll get there slightly later than planned.'

A glance at the OS map shows that we added at least four miles to our planned route and that Pentewan Hill is too steep to cycle down safely and impossible to cycle up.

Follow the blue line to see that we almost re-entered St Austell, the orange line to see how we eventually got to our destination and the green line to see our route home.

There was no need to go through Pentewan but, overall, I'm glad we did.