There and Back

There were a few places that we had earmarked for today and the first ones were really just plucked from the map - `Picturesque village.` Well, we had to have a look at that one! The village in question, on the edge of Bodmin, was Altarnum which had this wonderful packhorse bridge, and a magnificent church, perched at the top of the village. Well worth a visit. A packhorse bridge is a bridge intended to carry pack horses (horses loaded with side bags or panniers) across a river or stream. Typically a packhorse bridge consists of one or more narrow (one horse wide) masonry arches, and has low parapets so as not to interfere with the horse's panniers. Multi-arched examples sometimes have triangular cutwaters that are extended upwards to form pedestrian refuges.  Packhorse bridges were often built on the trade routes (often called packhorse routes) that formed major transport arteries across Europe and Great Britain until the coming of the turnpike roads and canals...