Great British Railway Journeys Ep 14/20

Perhaps, as expected, Michael Portillo begins today’s leg of his journey from Swindon to Penzance in a railway carriage, but this one’s not moving. He’s just spent the night in a converted travelling post office railway carriage owned by Lizzie and David Stroud at St Germans.

After finding out about the history of the post office trains, Michael heads for Par, the centre of Cornwall’s clay mining industry. This was a thriving industry in George Bradshaw’s – the man who transformed travel in Britain – time and still is today.

Clay miner Ivor Bowditch shows Michael around the largest clay mine in the world and lets him try his hand at flushing clay out of the ground using a powerful water cannon. Together, they take the single gauge clay train to the port of Fowey through some of the most scenic countryside in Cornwall.

Next, Michael makes his way to Mevagissey via St Austell. Mevagissey was a busy pilchard-fishing village in Bradshaw’s time and there are still pilchard fishermen there today. In the evening, Andrew Lakeman takes Michael out on his boat to see how methods have changed since Bradshaw’s day, and tells Michael about the recent renaissance in the fortunes of pilchard fisherman. For a while, pilchards were unpopular but, having been remarketed as Cornish sardines, sales are taking off again.

Just outside Mevagissey, Michael stops off at the Lost Gardens of Heligan. The estate of Heligan is mentioned in Bradshaw’s guide but it was a private house in those days. Today, it’s one of Cornwall’s top visitor attractions. He meets horticulturalist Philip Macmillan Browse who explains how, in Victorian times, estates like Heligan sponsored plant hunters to collect exotic seeds from around the world. Many of these plants spread throughout the country, finding their way via the railways into many a suburban garden.