Cirbo Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall, England

A 20-minute drive inland from the immaculate little new airport above the resort of Newquay takes the visitor to the market town of Bodmin situated on the edge of Bodmin Moor and midway between north and south Cornish coasts. Flat moorland scenery is broken up by ‘artificial’ hills — conical waste dumps characterising china-clay country. The moors are also home to Bronze Age stone circles, Iron Age hill forts and ruined engine houses, a relic of the 19th century tin-mining industry. Bodmin itself, Cornwall's historic county town, boasts as its latest tourist attraction the former county prison — Bodmin Gaol — now open to the public. Dating back to 1776, the jail offered protection to the Crown Jewels and the Domesday Book during World War I, and prisoners were still being hanged there less than 80 years ago. Further points of interest are the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry Museum and a standard gauge steam railway. On a day when British Rail signal operators had almost paralysed the public rail service nation-wide, the rhythmic puffing of ‘Swiftsure’, the Bodmin & Wenford Railway engine, as it climbed the gradient to Bodmin General Station, was a welcome, if unexpected, sound.