Signs of the industrious

Sydenham Damerel, Devon Along the Tamar were mines yielding tin, copper, lead and arsenic

On a rare sunny morning, river mist wafts up the north side of Hingston Down. Above that shadowy hillside the old chimney of Greenhill arsenic works and the mine stack on Kit Hill are silhouettes against the blue sky, and sunlight catches in smoke from the road-stone quarry near Chilsworthy.

Here, on the Devon side of the Tamar, opposite Latchley, lanes and bounded tracks thread past stubble, turnip crops for sheep, hilltop copses, strips of steep woodland, undulating pastures with belts of maize and kale that shelter pheasants, and isolated farmsteads with converted barns.