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The village of BOLVENTOR , lying at the centre of the moor midway between Bodmin and Launceston, is an uninspiring place close to one of the moor's chief focuses for walkers and sightseers alike - Jamaica Inn (tel 01566/86250, ; GBP50-60). A staging-post even before the precursor of the A30 road was laid here in 1769, the inn was described by Daphne Du Maurier as being "alone in glory, four square to the winds", and the combination of its convenient position and its association with her has led to its growth into a hotel and restaurant complex. One corner exhibits the room where the author stayed in 1930, soaking up inspiration for her smuggler's yarn. At the other end of the building is the entertaining Museum of Curiosities (daily: Easter-Oct 10am-6pm, until 8pm during school holidays; Nov-Easter 11am-4pm; GBP2.50; combined ticket with Smuggler's Museum GBP4). The inn's car park is a useful place from which to venture forth on foot. Just over a mile south, Dozmary Pool is another link in the West Country's Arthurian mythologies - after Arthur's death Sir Bedivere hurled Excalibur, the king's sword, into the pool, where it was seized by an arm raised from the depths. Despite its proximity to the A30, the diamond-shaped lake usually preserves an ethereal air, though it's been known to run dry in summer, dealing a bit of a blow to the legend that the pool is bottomless. The lake is also the source of another, more obviously Cornish legend, that of John Tregeagle, a steward at Lanhydrock, whose unjust dealings with the local tenant farmers in the seventeenth century brought upon his spirit the curse of endlessly baling out the pool with a perforated limpet shell. As if this were not enough, his ghost is further tormented by a swarm of devils pursuing him as he flies across the moor in search of sanctuary; their infernal howling is sometimes audible on windy nights.
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