It has been a very wet winter and most footpaths are muddy, so I wanted to find a walk that would not be slippery. In the past we have cycled the Camel Trail from Wadebridge to Padstow, which is the most common part of this cycle path. But it does extend much further (over 17 miles in total), so we thought we would explore another part of it. Looking on the website I found out that there was a free car park at Dunmere, just outside Bodmin, so we headed to there to join the Camel Trail and started to walk towards Wadebridge. This is a distance of 5 miles, too far for us today as we would have had to walk back and rain was threatening, but we continued walking to Grogley Halt, which took us about 40 minutes.
It was an excellent walk for winter, with a firm path, and not muddy except at the edges. There were not many cyclists on the route and the path was wide enough for them to pass us without us having to go to the muddy sides. It is completely flat which makes it a very easy walk.
At the side of the path and beside the river Camel there were snowdrops.
After we had returned to the car and eaten our lunch - Cornish Pasties, of course, we returned to the Camel Trail and walked in the opposite direction. We soon came to a junction, one path went to Bodmin and the other to Pooley Bridge. We took the latter and the path was narrower and muddy in places. We continued until we came to a salmon leap. With a lot of water coming down the river it looked impressive, particularly as there was a heron on the side looking for his lunch.
Before lunch we had seen a number of clumps of daffodils in bud, but none out. On this path we did find a couple of daffodils in flower.
I am sure this is an area we will return to. The Camel trail from Bodmin to Padstow is ideal for a winter walk, and we will do the other part in the summer when it is drier.
