New steps at Higher Condurrow open up a mining-country view

The old steps up onto the hill at Higher Condurrow had done their years. Wet and dark, half-swallowed by ivy, the timbers had softened and split until each one asked a question of anyone putting a boot on it. Climb here at all, and you did it carefully.

There is a clean flight of oak steps in their place now, and from the top the ground falls away for miles across old mining country.

The Countryside Team West at Cormac have finished installing a new staircase stile at Higher Condurrow, replacing a structure that had reached the end of its life. It is a small piece of work in the scheme of things, and one that a lot of walkers will be glad of.

📷Credit: Cormac

The stile that had reached the end of its life

Anyone who knew the previous steps will recognise the before picture. Rotten treads, a leaning post, ivy creeping over the whole thing and standing water at the foot of it. A stile like that does not fail all at once. It gets a little more awkward each season until people start eyeing it and wondering whether the path is still worth the bother.

That slow decline is exactly what the team set out to stop.

📷Credit: Cormac

Easier and safer, with the view thrown in

The replacement is a proper staircase stile, wide oak treads set into a fresh timber frame with handrails to either side. It makes the climb easier and safer for walkers on what is a well-used countryside route, and it takes them up to far-reaching views across the former mining district, the sort of open Cornish outlook that people walk this way for in the first place.

Good access work tends to be invisible when it is done well. You notice a bad stile every time. A good one you barely think about, which is the point.

Funding, a landowner and a team

The new steps were delivered with capital funding from Cornwall Council, the support of the local landowner and the expertise of the Cormac countryside team. None of those three parts works on its own. The money needs the permission, the permission needs the people who can actually build the thing, and the walkers at the end of it need all three to line up.

Cornwall’s countryside is stitched together by thousands of these small crossings, and every one of them wears out eventually. This is one that has been put right.

📷Credit: Cormac