Welcome to issue two of Tir Teg (Beautiful Land), the electronic newsletter from the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). The AONB consists of 12 separate geographical areas - ten stretches of coastline, the Camel Estuary and Bodmin Moor. Here you will find the latest news on and from ‘the best bits’ of Cornwall.

Part funded by the AONB Partnership, a new booklet explores this ‘forgotten’ corner of Cornwall, taking you to remote hilltop chapels and country churchyards, along cliff paths and winding lanes, down to sandy coves and estuary mudflats.

It is packed with informative historical, landscape, archaeological and wildlife information.

For further information on where to purchase a booklet, please contact the AONB Unit.

1. According to a local legend in West Penwith, who did Mathew Trewella run (or rather swim) away with?

2. Quite a lot of ‘plushing’ goes on in the AONB area. What is it?

3. From which railway station would you go north to go south to an AONB area?

4. Written by ‘Parson’ Hawker in the northernmost section of the AONB, by what name is ‘The Song of the Western Men’ better known?

5. Which famous poet lived in Mousehole during the 1930s and said it was 'really the loveliest village in England'?

6. Which of these villages is not in the Cornwall AONB? Rock, Shop, Feock, Porthoustock?

7. Which famous seaman was MP for the Borough of Bossiney (Pentire to Widemouth AONB section) in the 16th century?

8. The fictional village of Port Wenn in TV’s Doc Martin is based on which real place?

9. Which Bodmin Moor village is the highest in Cornwall?

10. What metamorphic rock, used for ornaments and jewellery, is found almost exclusively on the Lizard?

The Cornwall Artist Network has received Arts Council England support to research and plan a multi-partnered photographic arts project that will explore the ‘essential nature’ of the Lizard Peninsula. This project will involve six artists making new work on and about the Lizard for six months. The results will be shown as a series of exhibitions and a publication in September 2008.

The six artists involved intend to develop a ‘compelling project that investigates, through lens-based media, the experience, harmonization and associations to the landscape of the Lizard and the relationship that the community has within this landscape’.   The AONB is supporting the project. 

Keeping the best bits of the County as beautiful as possible is in everyone’s economic interests – they are part of our environmental capital. Tourism is our most important industry and the landscape is one of the primary reasons that visitors come.

Businesses, traditional and modern, often thrive in our most important areas (and many would love to relocate to them). Fishing and the marine industries contribute to the character of the AONB and the landscape is often the inspiration for Cornwall’s impressive theatre, art, craft, writing and music industries.

For example a new project in Mawnan Smith, in the Helford river section of the Cornwall AONB, is centred around the original blacksmith's shop. The Old Smithy and Workshops includes a working smithy and three further craft workshops which are used by a woodworker, a weaver and a ceramicist specialising in hand-built work. All items on sale are made on the premises.

Next year the Cornwall AONB Partnership plan to explore the importance of the AONB to business and will be producing a guidance leaflet.

News from Defra that the European Union’s Rural Development Committee has agreed the Rural Development Programme for England 2007-2013 has been greeted with relief in Cornwall. Through this Programme, Natural England will provide £2.9 billion of Environmental Stewardship Scheme funding for farmers across the UK.

However there are still some concerns that the entry level and higher level ESS funding will be harder to access for local farmers, that some farms are ‘falling through the net’ and that ESS will ultimately not deliver the same landscape benefits as did Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) grants.

A series of regional priority maps have been produced and can be found at:  http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/regions/southwest/land-management.htm.

Natural England has agreements with over 32,000 farmers and landowners covering some 5 million hectares, which amounts to more than half of all the farmland in England.  

All three SW Uplands, Dartmoor, Exmoor and Bodmin Moor are facing imminent change due to the loss of grazing animals and the decline in the number of the hill farmers with the necessary skills to manage the landscape.

The Single Payment Scheme (SPS) together with the proposed reform of the Hill Farm Allowance and the changes to Environmental Stewardship Scheme funding will significantly reduce the support to hill farmers. There is a real danger that the moors will change; archaeology will disappear and access become more difficult. Also, and probably more important, the tradition of common grazing in place for over 6,000 years will be broken and a unique community may be lost forever.

A leaflet is available, please call or email the AONB Unit if you would like a copy. 

A planning application at Talland Bay, Polperro in the heart of the AONB, for the construction of new holiday units has been turned down. The development would have been permanent, unsustainable and a blot on the landscape. The Cornwall AONB Unit provided a comprehensive 145 page statement to support the decision by the the local authority to reject the application. It has welcomed the withdrawal of an appeal against the decision.

The Cornwall AONB Unit has moved from its former portakabin to a new office within the Old County Hall complex.

We are now in the Par Building (formerly the Council's Weights & Measures building).

At last the AONB Partnership has its own promotional leaflet. These are being widely distributed around the County (and beyond). If you would like some to hand out, please get in touch.

Our Annual Report is available on our website as a downloadable (printable) file in a ‘pdf’ electronic version. Information is included on agriculture, tourism, rural development, climate change, land use and Cornwall AONB Sustainable Development Fund support for a number of community based projects. The report is also summarised on the news section of the site.

Perfect for Christmas, a striking new 2008 calendar featuring images from all across the South West has been produced by the SW Protected Landscapes Forum. These are available FREE from the AONB Unit but please send us an A4 stamped addressed envelope with your order. Please order as soon as possible as numbers are limited.