Cornwall

Cornwall is the setting for a tense passage in which an apparently ordinary journey through holiday country leads Don Challenor toward the ruined ancestral home of the Fry family. Its bright streets and patchwork fields stand in sharp contrast to the threat accompanying him: Amos French and Zlenko are armed, and Don fears they will leave no witnesses once they have what they came for.

Route Through the County

After driving west to the main road, the group travels north to Mullion. Jack Harkness then takes the road to Mullion Cove and turns onto a lane signposted to Predannack. The route descends into a valley before climbing between low-hedged fields; partway up, Harkness turns onto a rough track and stops at a five-bar gate. At French’s direction, Zlenko orders Don out at gunpoint to open it. The brief task makes the danger of the journey tangible: Don cannot safely run while his captors are armed.

Ordinary Life and Foreboding

In Mullion, shoppers and holidaymakers move along the main shopping street beneath clear air and bright light. Don sees them as belonging to a world from which he has been cut off. The pleasant weather does not ease his fear; he suspects the killings at Chybargos have followed the group, and worries that French and Zlenko may kill any witnesses after reaching their destination. Cornwall’s open, inhabited streets thus provide a stark counterpoint to Don’s confinement and sense of impending violence.

Tredarvas and the Fry Family

Beyond the gate, the track leads to a derelict farm: a weed-covered yard, a house missing its roof and most of its front wall, a partly collapsed barn, and a fallen corrugated-iron structure sheltering the barely visible remains of an old tractor beneath ivy. Harkness identifies the place as Tredarvas, the ancestral home of the Fry family. When Zlenko asks whether the witch was born there, Harkness answers that the birth took place in 1953, adding that the farm looked very different then and during his own childhood. The ruined site gives the journey a destination rooted in family history, while Harkness’s recollection sets the present decay against a remembered past.