The Fal River Short Walk

The Rotary Club of Boscawen Truro organise the Fal River Walk each year. This involves two different walks around the Fal River, a shorter and a longer walk, from the National Trust Gardens at Trelissick in September each year. Walkers pay a fee to participate and also collect donations in support of the Merlin MS centre in St Austell, just down the road from Bosinver.

Walkers can choose, the long 15 mile walk circular around the Fal via St Mawes, Flushing, Mylor and Restronguet or a shorter 6 mile walk from St Mawes following the river Fal back to Turnaware Point by ferry to Trelissick. Fal River provide ferries for walkers on the day enabling them to cross several stretches of water easily and quickly with no long detours for regular ferries.
I have undertaken the long walk for the past 2 years but decided to do the short walk for a change and joined my fellow Walk Kernow Nordic Walking Group members for a stroll and a chat.
The National Trust kindly hosts the event from the Stable Yard and after registration, we walked down the South Woodland Walk to the waiting ferry. The participants were of all ages, toddlers to OAP’s and everything in between, plus an array of dogs.

We had a glorious sunny river boat trip down to St Mawes and alighted to begin our walk back to Trelissick. As we headed for the open countryside near the castle, we bumped into the long walk walkers who had started earlier and walked the route we were about to tackle.

The path was muddy and slippery after a week of heavy downpours which slowed us down a bit but it allowed time to appreciate the wonderful views and the great variety of boats out on the river in the autumn sunshine.

The path led us through the picturesque creek side churchyard of St Just church and onwards across the creek side field to Turnaware. This land was used as an embarkation point for US troops for the D Day landings in June 1944 and there is a memorial to the men who embarked to Omaha beach from here. We followed the concrete road laid for the troops to Turnaware point opposite the grounds of Trelissick, offering wonderful views of the great house.

Here, our ferry was waiting to take us across the river for the short walk back to the Stable Yard and a much needed cup of tea and delicious home baked cakes.

Many thanks to all the Rotary Club volunteers who gave up their day to make the walk such a success.