The Caradon Hill Area Heritage Project was about helping people to recognise and preserve the area’s heritage and landscape. As with any area with special characteristics, it’s important to use common sense when visiting and respect the people, places and animals that make the area somewhere worth visiting.
The following information and advice is a useful guide for people coming to the area.
General advice
- The moorland is dangerous if you don’t take sensible precautions and prepare for your visit
- Follow the Countryside Code
- Leave the landscape as you find it, so others can enjoy it as much as you did
- Don’t do anything that leaves a mark or degrades the fabric or vegetation
- If exploring the area remember that the weather can change very fast and can be extreme; it is very easy to get lost and disorientated. Make sure your mobile phone is fully charged and that someone knows where you’ve gone
- Biting tics are endemic on the moorland so advice is to wear boots/leg coverings and check yourself and dogs
- Keep a close eye on children and dogs, they can cause serious damage to the landscape or livestock no matter how well-behaved they are
Animals
- Never feed or approach the moorland animals
- Livestock on the moors are semi-wild so don’t confuse them with pet horses! They bite, kick and are aggressive. Don’t try to stroke them, don’t walk up to a foal that’s lying down and especially never feed them. This also applies to sheep and cows (some of them are bulls or rams)
Monuments and mines
- Respect the scheduled ancient monuments of the area, most are protected by law, but are under threat from the both environment and people
- Many of the mining sites support very rare plants that must be protected. Don’t assume that because it’s an historic site that the archaeology is the only important feature. It may also be the habitat for rare plants and protected wildlife species. Mountain biking on old mine-waste land causes irreparable damage.
- A team of monument watchers work in the area, to ensure that the sites remain viable legacies for the generations that will follow
- The hidden underground workings are massive and accuracy of mapping is very variable, so not all workings are known or shown on maps
- Disused shafts and other old workings tended to be covered over with old mine timbers and a few feet of soil. The timbers will now be over 100 years old and are liable to collapse without warning.
- Anything that looks symmetrical in nature should be treated with caution. If it looks like a slightly sunken circle or sounds hollow, it’s probably a deep hole!
- The publicly accessible mine sites are almost all also designated as Commons Grazing Land so will have freely roaming livestock.
Designations and permissions
- Be aware of national legislations such as the Open Access (CRoW) Act, and keep dogs on leads during the designated periods.
- Driving any type of powered vehicle on Access Land is against the law without landowner consent, cyclists and horse riders also need landowner permission.
- Metal detecting and cairn building are illegal on scheduled sites, and at others landowner permission for detecting is mandatory.