As well as their residence at medieval Cotehele, the Edgcumbe family’s later home was at Mount Edgcumbe, 14 miles downstream along the winding tidal Tamar, on the Rame Peninsula. Now, with its gardens and pleasure grounds, it is a popular country park opposite Plymouth, accessible via the Cremyll ferry.
High clipped hedges shield the orangery and formal gardens from sight, as across the water are the Royal William Yard, the marina, modern flats, and Drake’s Island out in Plymouth Sound. Lawns studded with bedraggled daisies extend from the blockhouse, and below the old saluting platform, the calls of oystercatchers carry across rocks strewn with bladderwrack and a pebbly shore of calm water. Above an ornamental temple, woodland is underplanted with the garden’s national camellia collection, showing cerise, pale pink, white and flamboyant red blooms on bushes of shiny foliage; but no Cornish Snow, which has been flowering at home since before Christmas.
Past a grotto of piled blocks, the coastal path continues above the swish of gentle waves, through woodland of old and fallen sweet chestnut, oak and beech, with pale green glades of onion-scented three-cornered leek. Up in the deer park is the folly ruin tower – just visible on clear days from the high ground near home in St Dominic. Today’s intermittent misty cloud shortens views towards the islet of Mew Stone, and the 1,500m breakwater which protects the sound. Glints of sun sparkle on the damp leaves of holly, bay, rhododendron and flowering laurel, which shroud the steep winding paths that part-follow scenic driveways that once led to Penlee Point. Above Picklecombe Fort, ubiquitous holm oaks with lichened silvery trunks resemble a dripping grove of ancient olives.
Out in the open, above Cawsand Bay, the way across Minadew Brakes is streaked with red earth, edged with fresh growth of alexanders below thickets of yellow gorse and budding blackthorn. We return via the church on Maker Heights; from there, Dartmoor and Kit Hill remain gloomy but, in the middle distance, a brief shaft of afternoon sun highlights Brunel’s railway bridge across the Tamar. Nearer, around emissions from Devonport’s waste plant, a small segment of rainbow quickly disappears.
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