Beetlebumbling
Carn Galver to Mên-an-Tol, Cornwall
The further west you go, the thicker the volumes of folklore become.
We leave the cliffs above Porthtowan, where a huge shaggy dog tamed a dragon.
We pass Carn Brea, on which a giant plonked his left foot while his right stood on St Agnes Beacon – that’s an inside leg measurement of about eight miles.
And we brush Zennor, where a mermaid’s hymn-singing was so beautiful it tempted the churchwarden’s son away to start an underwater family with her.
Finally, we arrive for the start of this walk at Carn Galver, where we’re back in a land of giants.
Carn Galver (also spelt Galva) means rockpile at the lookout place. And it is indeed a big pile of rocks, which you have to scramble over and around to reach the top, which is indeed a lookout place.
Cornwall’s high instep often takes me by surprise. We park on the knuckle of its big toe, but after climbing the hill we can clearly see St Michael’s Mount on its sole. If it wasn’t for the rain clouds building ominously to the south-west, we might even be able to see the toenail that is Land’s End.
Folklore tells us that a ‘playful and friendly’ giant living on Carn Galver would build piles of rocks and then kick them down. You would think he was big enough to tidy up after himself, but they’re still there.
This giant didn’t know his own strength and, because this is folklore, the story takes a dark turn.
Intending to give a friend from one of the local villages a gentle tap on the head, the giant crushed his skull. The giant was distraught and later died of a broken heart.1
There’s another gentle giant with a darker side at the top of the hill today.
Five of them drag ungainly legs over the grass and stones, like a holidaymaker heaving a suitcase onto an escalator. They make slow and clumsy progress in various directions. One has faceplanted and thrashes its legs in an attempt to right itself. I wonder if this is why it’s called a bloody-nosed beetle2 – but unfortunately it isn’t.
Some creatures have defence mechanisms that can only be described as ‘eww, gross!’ The red wood ant sprays formic acid from its abdomen, the fulmar projectile vomits an oily, sticky, smelly substance, and the bloody-nosed beetle oozes an unsavoury red liquid FROM ITS FACE.
When they’re not doing that, they’re kind of cute. Classically beetle-shaped with a round beetlebum3 and a glossy black shell with a blue shimmer in the right light, they have a seam running down their back that suggests at one time they had wings but decided flying was a bit of a hassle so gave up.
We leave the bloody-nosed beetles (surely the name of a tribute act that tours the tougher live music venues) and enjoy an easier descent further into West Cornwall’s mystical, and misty, lands.
The random rocks of Carn Galver are replaced by more carefully placed stones: the Nine Maidens circle; Mên Scryfa, which has Latin graffiti inscriptions reading ‘Rialobranus son of Cunovalus’; and Mên-an-Tol, a Polo mint between two upright Fox’s Glacier Mints, where we try not to photobomb a large family gathering in which a baby is being ceremoniously passed through the holed stone seven times.
There are various benefits that are said to come from passing through the stone. I hope the family get what they wanted for the baby. We walk on as they indulge in another Cornish tradition – eating pasties in the rain.
Basking sharks seen on this walk: 0
Total basking sharks seen to date: 0
An alternative version of the story is that the giant threw a stone that accidentally hit and killed a small boy. Folklore, bloody hell.
OK, ‘giant’ is a bit of a stretch – they’re chunky but only about two centimetres squared – but size is relative, and The Wildlife Trusts website says it’s a ‘large beetle’, so …
Sadly, the song Beetlebum by Blur is not about bloody-nosed beetles’ bottoms. It is apparently – as I seem to find with every song I look up the meaning of – about drugs.
I love this. I'm also cracking up at the first footnote - bloody hell, indeed!