Portreath to Perranporth

Here we go again - and it's great to be back on the trail, I've missed it. At the end of the previous section I'd gone back home to a pre-booked massage followed that evening by a game of squash and the following day my knees finally started to protest. To the point where I was uncertain starting today if my left knee (which had surgery some time ago) would be up to it. Thankfully it was fine and no alarms but I suspect first signs of arthritis! Or maybe hypochondria.
A great day to walk today: cold and sunny, my ideal weather. It could have been just a little bit less windy though - it was hard to walk in a straight line. I went a bit overboard again with the photos, as you'll see on the Komoot summary here.
Starting out from Portreath on a crisp sunny morning, after a beautiful sunset last night. Almost as good as South West Portugal:

Straight up onto the hill tops, that got the system warmed up. Blowing a hooley up there to be frank and I was glad I'd brought my hat and gloves. Buffeted by the Northerly winds I was grateful for my poles as well, to give some stability. The cliffs on this section are as high as any I've seen so far and although superb they're also vertiginous and a stumble in the wrong direction wouldn't be good. After following the perimeter track of an old RAF airfield (Nancekuke Common) - now a remote radar station - the path was soon up to its tricks of up and down. I hope this gives some idea:

There are extensive mining remains all along this area of the North coast so it’s no surprise that Redruth, arguably the UK’s mining capital, is nearby as is the Camborne school of mines. The first signs of old mining remains soon appeared.

This is Wheal Tye where they mined tin and copper for centuries. The long inclined bit leading up to the chimney is in fact a flue, presumably to give in effect a longer chimney without risking it being blown down.

There's an explanatory board in the Komoot pictures.

It wasn't long then before coming to Porthtowan. Karen and I had stopped here once, on our abortive campervan excursion (we lasted one night before handing it back and de-camping (!) to the Mullion Hotel) and I'd completely forgotten until I saw it again. It wasn't much then and it hasn't changed a lot since but beach access makes it popular. Rather windswept today, as was everywhere

At least 7 mines are associated with Porthtowan, though all of course now closed. Wheal Towan was one of the most successful. In the 1820s it generated a fortune estimated at “a guinea a minute”. That’d be about £200K on an 8-hour day and presumably it operated longer hours than that. The mines’ so-called burrows can still be seen on the surface.

It’s also where the annual SAS Rip Curl Cornish and Open Longboard Championship is held, should you want to join in, or indeed just watch.

After a quick pit stop for tea and a brownie (well, have to keep the energy levels up 😀) it was back up onto the cliff tops again. Up and back down again to Chapel Porth (and overtaken by a silver walker) where there's even less than Porthtowan and you can see more mine workings in the distance

I'm not sure which Wheal this is but it sure has a good view. Believe it or not that's actually St Ives in the far distance, just over a couple of days walk away.

I'd hoped there would be more flowers this time and I wasn't disappointed. The garlic was still going strong but now the thrift is out as well, adding a bit of pink to the palette. Also lots of Cornish gentian which I hadn't heard of (as if that's a surprise).

The St Agnes Heritage Coast here has been a nationally designated area for wildlife protection since 1986. Like much of this area it has been an important source of metals since the bronze age, particularly for copper and tin, but mining pretty much stopped in the 1930s.

After rounding St Agnes head, and finally losing sight of St Ives, it was another descent, this time into Trevaunance Cove which is effectively the harbour for St Agnes.There have been at least 5 attempts to establish a proper harbour wall here but all have eventually succumbed to the Atlantic.  It's better seen leaving to the North

Again, a very narrow valley with few houses and a steep approach to the beach. A good cafe though - carrot and coriander soup since you ask. Of all the villages so far, Trevaunance seemed closest to its mining past and the pictures on the cafe wall show how the mine used to tower over the village. You can still see some of the ruins there. A pretty hazardous beach for any commercial activity you'd think but amazingly they used to build sizeable sailing ships directly on the beach.
The Blue Hills tin mine where they still practice alluvial tin mining is just around the corner from Trevaunance. There is a visitor centre there (closed today) and you can read more about it here.

This is as close as I got to St Agnes which is just inland - maybe another day. I can tell you though that the only Stippy Stappy (a steep row of cottages) in Cornwall is to be found here and it’s where George Smiley came from. Poldark author Winston Graham also lived just down the road (he wrote most of it while living in Perranporth).

From here it's a really long section along the cliff tops, around the edge of Perranporth airfield (see below) and through old mine workings that look like a huge dog's been digging there, with high, steep and unstable-looking cliffs

After that it's round Cligga Head to reveal the huge sandy beaches of Perranporth and a nearly-constructed apartment block, with balconies just right for an evening gin and tonic.

Just below the large rock is a millenium sundial, set to show local noon (later than GMT). I have a picture of Karen by the rock, from when we visited and first hatched the idea of buying a place here.

Perranporth  means ‘The Cove of St Pirran’ (the patron saint of Cornwall). It's one of my favourite towns because it has an airfield! Back when I had a licence Karen and I once flew down from White Waltham to visit my mother for a weekend. All very impressive until the weather closed in and Karen had to come back by train. Oops.

Huge beach of course - the sand dunes stretch nearly a mile inland and there’s a naturist beach at the north end, if it gets too hot.

Two miles east is Perran Round, an Iron Age fort that during the Middle Ages was used as a performance place for miracle plays to entertain pilgrims. It is one of the oldest theatre spaces in the UK

Among other claims to fame Perranporth hosts an annual Sea-song and Shanty Festival in late April (sadly I’d just missed it). 

Pete and Deb from the US have joined me for tomorrow and Wednesday which is great. Pete and I go back to school days (Debs reckons the humour hasn't improved since then) and I always enjoy their company. They're old hands at this walking lark, having completed the Coast to Coast (UK not US) last year and Deb is a great photographer so hopefully you'll get some even better pictures.

Tomorrow the aim is Newquay and the weather forecast is promising some rain in the afternoon. Gaiters, I think, may be called for.

Peter

Hayle to Portreath

Hot and sunny forecast and whaddya know - it is! Slapped on a load of sunscreen (especially on the vulnerable nose - it once got fried in Nivea when I fell asleep on Beachy Head; never been the same) and headed off for Hayle. I'd intended to get just past Godrevy Point but the weather was so good I just kept going, all the way to Portreath so I'm now a day ahead of schedule. If pictures of the coast bore you, look away now. Otherwise, check out the trip summary on Komoot here.

When I left it yesterday, the tide was out. Way different today, all this was sand before:

On first acquaintance Hayle feels like St Ives' poor relation. The approach on the path leads over a bleak expanse of estuary (the wildlife sanctuary) and along a busy exposed road. The first major building is Asda (yes, I'm probably a Waitrose snob) and there is a slightly neglected feel to the environs of the harbour. Peter de Savary failed to get a regeneration scheme started here, as have others. All this would be unfair to its history though. Not only was it very important in pre-history, being a major trading port for Neolithic tin, it was heavily used in the Industrial Revolution and its harbour was first developed in the 1740s by local merchant John Curnow, to service the mining industry.
A local foundry (Harvey's) was established, supplying beam engines world-wide and a world first steam powered rock boring machine. Engineering remains an important activity in the town.

A national explosives works was established in the nearby Towans, an isolated area of undulating sand dunes, employing up to 1,500 people until its closure in the 1920s. Today that's all long gone and visitors are encouraged to roam there. Bet they have a good fireworks night.

Hayle and its harbour today are part of the World Heritage historic mining landscape of Devon and Cornwall

 If the tide had been out, I could have walked the 4 miles along the beach towards Godrevy Point. Today I had to walk through the Towans. The views back to St Ives and the nature of the Towans themselves were spectacular.

All along this section I'd been following the progress of a helicopter operation just offshore. Jess & Soph will confirm I'm easily distracted by any aviation activity . Alarmingly enough even when driving, as I'm sure they remember.

It turned out to be the Trinity House vessel Galatea, ferrying supplies out to the Godrevy Point lighthouse. The operations continued for most of the day and attracted a crowd - and me:

Leaving Godrevy (the lighthouse is said to have inspired Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse) and rounding Navax Point the coastline is revealed (and some basking seals - see Komoot)
.

It's fundamentally different from anything I'd walked before. Much less fissured than the earlier coastline, with large flat open areas behind. Whereas South Cornwall has many little inlets, each with their own village and fishing community these are absent here. They reappear further north.

It all makes for easier walking, essentially level for miles. Mindful of running low on energy at Zennor, I stopped at a cafe by Hell's Mouth (near Deadman Cove, not encouraging is it?). The view was so spectacular that if this is Hell's Mouth, Satan's going to get applications.

I find the key to walking is establishing a rhythmic pace. This varies according to the incline of course. On this stretch, as my mind wandered, I found Nellie the Elephant fitted the level walking. Slow it down a notch and it's the Peter O'Toole classic, Auntie Mary had a canary.... , then a bit slower and it's Gene Pitney's 24 hours from Tulsa and for steepish hills it's the Marseillaise. Really steep stuff it's just panting for breath (maybe the Volga boatman's song - must try it). Is it just me or do others have similar favourites?

The coastline is so scenic here on a day like this I got snap happy, so here are a couple of photos (more on Komoot):

Finally, after a couple of steep (marseillaise) ups and downs, into Portreath (=Sandy Cove), one of the few hedgehog friendly villages in the UK:

The harbour was mostly built, like so many of them, to support the development of nearby mining in the 1700s. By 1827 it was Cornwall's most important port and in 1840 100,000 tons of copper ore were shipped out.

The airfield to the North is now a radar station but in WW2 was the main fighter airfield in Cornwall

So that's it for this visit. Good progress, useful navigation lessons (!), great weather and a day ahead of schedule. Feeling much more confident now about completing the journey but not sure about the advice to see everything I've missed by "doing it again, in the other direction".

Peter

Zennnor, St Ives and Hayle

After yesterday's near melt down, much revived today. Thanks to all for messages of encouragement and stories of their own navigational misdemeanours. Forecast hot sunny weather never materialised which made walking easier and the final section was a stroll on the level. So a better day all round. Still 14 miles though, but I split it up with a break at lunch time. Both trips are, as ever, shown on Komoot here and here. 
I've now finished my plan for the week so tomorrow I'll knock a few miles off the next week's plan and have the afternoon just wandering.
Today was 7 months to the day since Karen died and we'd enjoyed our last visit here, so that triggered some good memories for the day.

In my tiredness yesterday I forgot to mention a few things about Zennor. The 1993 novel Zennor in Darkness by Helen Dunmore is set in and around the village at the time when D H Lawrece lived nearby with his new wife Frieda. It was during this time that he finished Women in Love. The couple were later accused of spying and signalling to German submarines off the Cornish coast. There is also a legend of a mermaid of Zennor which inspired Helen Dunmore’s Ingo Chronicles.

The artist Patrick Heron also lived in Zennor after working with the potter Bernard Leach in St Ives.

I also missed an interesting snippet about a location on yesterday's walk. In 1943, the middle of WW2, No. 4 British Commando were involved in a mock seaborne raid codenamed "Exercise Brandyball", which took place on the 300-foot (90 m) cliffs, near Bosigran, known as the 'Brandys'. The training exercise was deemed one of the most hazardous and challenging of the war, beginning with a seaborne landing, followed by a climb up the vertical cliffs with full kit to destroy the target, an old disused tin mine. That same location was later used by Bear Grylls for a climb with the boxer Anthony Joshua and this is the picture of what is now known as Commando Ridge.

Back to today. Given the forecast I'd decided to leave my Paramo all-weather jacket behind in favour of my lightweight running jacket. OK as it turned out but the start was in cloud with a moderate northerly wind so a bit chilly. All fine as long as I kept moving. I had really no idea where I was with any accuracy until finding the occasional waymarks with grid references on but eventually I came down out of the cloud towards Wicca Pool

I'd been warned about this, it's a 100yd scramble over/through/round some pretty big rocks. I was lucky that they were dry and that rock-hopping was always my favourite beach-time activity as a 5 year old, so I'd had plenty of practice. It quite took me back....

Along the way I'd met a runner out for a quick sortie before joining his mates for a late breakfast. (Good grief.) I'd met him after he'd bashed his knee on a rock and sat and cursed for a bit until the pain wore off. He was happy because the damage was on a bony bit not soft tissue. Well, maybe happy's putting it a bit high. Apparently there are often running competitions along the coast path and a Zennor resident who chatted with me while I got my gaiters organised told me they even do it at night! He can just see little lights bobbing along the route as he sits in his garden. Given my exertions I am truly in awe that they run it but at night as well, that's just taking the mickey. I know, they're young and immortal but I hope they have good medical support. (I may have to write to the editor of the Bridport News about it).

I pretty much gave up with photos at this point, there's only so many times you can photograph cloud (from the inside). It did make me think about the smells instead though. Yes there are the agricultural ones but those aside, the first I noticed was the wild garlic. You'll have noticed a lot of it in the photos I expect and it's at its best just now. As the temperature increased it seemed to prompt the gorse next, with that strange coconut smell. Of course above all the smell (and sound) of the sea.
Then there are the flowers. Violets, primroses, celandines, some daffodils and quite a few camellias. I even saw cherry tree blossom, well ahead of mine in Litton Cheney. Joy of joys the bluebells (proper ones) are also just starting so when I come back on the 29th I hope to see spring in full colour. The blackthorn was also in full blossom of course and later in the day I got this nice snap of the bumble bee working away in it.

 The ground is pretty challenging with uneven and boggy ground, but there have been substantial efforts to make it a little easier for the average walker and I particularly liked the stone bridge below. 







I have absolutely no idea how they managed to get not one but two huge granite slabs in place for this!

One of the advantages of doing the SWCP the 'wrong way round' like me is that you meet more people, as they're all going the 'right' way. Most are clearly seasoned walkers and well equipped but some clearly have no idea what they're going to find. I met three lads like this, with no jackets or water supplies, street shoes and clean trousers. They may be immortal but they'll be muddy by the time they make it to Zennor, if they do. It's noticeable by the way that women are generally much cleaner than their mud bespattered male partners. I don't know how they do it.

I'm rabbitting. Eventually St Ives appears out of the mist, or rather I do. Under the low cloud cover it was not at its best but you can see I think why folk love it. The beaches are superb, it's a working port and the town has that Cornish charm with the clear light, higgledy-piggledy streets and friendly atmosphere. The flip side to its popularity is the high building activity for second homes and new hotels, all of which are pricing locals out of any prospect of buying homes. A hot topic here and in many places.

St Ia’s cove (St Ives) is home to the well-known school of painting, the Tate gallery, Leach Pottery and the sculptor Barbara Hepworth. Incidentally, the nursery rhyme ‘As I was going to St Ives’ isn’t necessarily about this St Ives, there are several.

Much of the modern town developed after the arrival of the railway in the late 19th century. In August 1999 the BBC scheduled a programme with Patrick Moore to cover the solar eclipse – inevitably it was clouded out.

Sir John Nott, secretary of state for defence during the Falklands war, lives on his farm at nearby St Eart.

I strolled through the town, already crammed with visitors so it must be an absolute zoo in season. You might not believe how many artisanal bakeries one town can take!
I went past the gallery where Karen and I bought a picture on our last visit and that sparked a few more pleasant memories. I think it was warmer though, back then.

So a quick pit stop at the B&B and back out for Hayle. This is 5 miles rated easy, though pretty hilly at the beginning, and had been my target for Saturday. I was keen though to take advantage of being ahead of schedule to give me a head start for the next visit. Still mindful of the Zennor experience, if I can take some pressure off the early sections it can only help. Also it looks like Pete and Debs (my old school chum and his wife) will be joining me for a day or two and although they're both very experienced walkers they may be a bit jet-lagged. They did the Coast to Coast walk last year, a much more navigationally challenging route, and helped me get the right boots for this trip when we were all in Denver. It will be great to see them again.

The route to Hayle is alongside the railway for quite a while until eventually emerging onto the dunes above Porth Kidney Sands. This is another huge stretch of sand that becomes the estuary for the river Hayle.

 At low water the river Hayle is quite small but it's completely impossible to ford it and the only route is to walk into town and back out again - about a 4 mile detour (hmm, didn't I do one of those yesterday?). Although there's quite a bit of road walking it's actually very pleasant (the non-road bits) as it follows the bird sanctuary and for train lovers there's the old station house right next to a working line, though the station is now a halt (Nic, is this like a request stop?).

Across the causeway, a sea fret was starting to roll in from across the sanctuary, though it isn't very clear on the photo:

After my usual isotonic recovery diet (this time, tea and crisps) I got a cab back to the B&B.
Tomorrow looks like more of the same weather, with perhaps even less sun, so should be good for walking.
Let's see how far I can get.

Peter 

Cape Cornwall to Zennor - nearly hit my limits today

Really, how hard can it be to follow a map? Self delusion certainly gets in the way (see earlier blogs) but being tired and thirsty don't help either. All factors in today's cock-up that added 2 miles to the journey. Silly mistakes, I'm still embarrassed at my own stupidity, but it's important to learn from them. You'll see later but you can also clearly see it on the Komoot summary map here.

The day started OK, my hosts were gracious about my kettle handling failures. I paid them £40 which means overall I might as well have stayed in a proper B&B and had someone else operate the kettle. The day was forecast to be a scorcher but stayed cloudy for most of it and that made the walking cooler. Not so good for the photos though, this is from Cape Cornwall looking back to Land's End

In Cornish: Kilgoodh Ust, meaning "goose back of St Just. A cape is the point of land where two bodies of water meet and this is where the Irish Sea officially starts. Until the first Ordnance Survey, 200 years ago, Cape Cornwall was believed to be the most westerly point in Cornwall. The locals still think so. One mile from the Cape is the westernmost school on the British mainland, Cape Cornwall School. Cornwall's only school that specialises in art, photography and music

Cape Cornwall mine was operated intermittently between 1838 and 1883. The mine's 1864 chimney near the peak of the cape was retained as an aid to navigation and in 1987 the site was bought by H J Heinz and donated to the nation.

The beach just below here is Porth Nanven, referred to as 'Dinosaur Egg Beach' because of a remarkable deposit of ovoid boulders covering the beach and foreshore. These boulders come in all sizes, from hen's egg to a metre or more in length. 

From there it's a relatively short hike to Pendeen Watch, a lighthouse. (Pendeen was the subject of the book 'Life in a Cornish Village' by the Rev. F. J. Horsefield in 1893.)

Along the way I had an interesting talk with a specialist bird watcher, part of a group monitoring the chough population. This is the 'national' bird of Cornwall (which likes to think of itself as a nation, not unreasonably at least from genetic studies) but I've never seen any. He taught me about its flight and habits and a hundred other things - I had to 'make my excuses and leave' or I'd still be there. A great enthusiast and keen to share his knowledge, irrespective of the desire to receive it - a case of the biter bit, I'm afraid.

Beyond Pendeen I started to see evidence of all the mine workings along this coast (remember Wheal Sea?) which made me realise that yesterday's 'round thing' must have been a mine shaft rather than a well.

As we all know from Poldark, there was a lot of mining here. A bit further on is Geevor, now a museum and part of a Unesco world heritage landscape, but in its day a very significant operation which dates back to the late 18th century and only ceased mining in 1991 after the collapse of tin prices in the late 80s.

This is the Levant mine on the north edge of the Geevor site. It still has a working beam engine and runs tours of the site although I didn't stop. There are more pictures and explanations on the Komoot photos of today's trip.

From here on the going got pretty tough with few waymarks, boggy ground and no villages (they're all set back from the coast). There is a succession of beautiful coves and beaches and it gets hard to tell where you are without some care.

There's Portheras Cove

and Porthmeor Cove

and perhaps the prettiest, Treen Cove:

It's a real effort to get here and then some more just to get down to the beach so I can't imagine they're actually crawling with 'Grockles' even at the height of the season. A RIB would be ideal for impromptu visits - now where could I get one of those?

This is an attempt at a panoramic view from near Gurnard's Head:

My aim had been to get to Zennor and call a cab back to the car I'd left at Land's End so I was looking for (a) when I got to Zennor Head and (b) the path there going inland off the SWCP to the village. By this time I was pretty tired, had had few stops (no nice cafes along the way) and was running short of water. So I did what I've been blogging about again and persuaded myself I was at Zennor Head. Of course I wasn't and on the Komoot map you can see the extent of the improptu diversion of about 2 miles. I had an Ordnance Survey map in my pack for heaven's sake but didn't think to use it until I'd reached the road and found Zennor wasn't there (!). What a wally. 

There was nothing for it but to retrace my steps and get back on the SWCP. I did think about hitching into Zennor and forgetting the missing part of the path - as you know I'm not purist about that - but it felt like a fudge too far. So I got a water bottle refill from some random house (where a jet-lagged and somewhat bemused Australian visitor had just arrived) and carried on. I'm sure had Nic or Crispin been there they'd have caught the error in time - it's always useful to have a second view. In the end it just underscored the need for care, particularly when tired. That, and I'm not as good as I thought.

Still, only bruised pride and arrived finally in Zennor, at the Tinners Arms:

Just in case you'd forgotten what they did a lot of round here. 
One packet of crisps and a pint of lime and soda later (isotonic recovery diet) and all well, though my dogs are barking, as they still say.

I'm now in St Ives and will go back to Zennor tomorrow to pick up the trail and walk back here. Since the section from Pendeen to St Ives is rated severe I'm glad I opted to do it in two sections and I couldn't have done that without getting ahead of schedule in the early days, so thanks again to Nic. This will have implications for future plans, too as there's one more section rated severe and I'll have to see how I can split it up. It looks harder than this section. Yikes!

Peter

Porthcurno to (almost) Cape Cornwall

A beautiful day promised, so how does it start? With low cloud and fog. Arrgh. But then magically as we get to the top of the cliffs at Porthcurno - sun!! It's been a beautiful day ever since: trip summary and lots of coast/surf photos on Komoot here.

It was also the last day for Nic who goes home tomorrow so hats off to him for soldiering through the conditions with me and generally providing a confident companion. Not that the confidence was always well founded, any more than mine was, but it sounded reassuringly authoritative. 😀
This is what the headland looked like this morning

Just sparkling: and the beach, which we couldn't see yesterday -

Sadly the Minack theatre wasn't open to visitors until 9.30 and we wanted to get underway. This is the closest I could get but you get a better sense of what an extraordinary place it is from the picture below - taken on a somewhat calmer day.








A stiff walk up the hill from the car park at Porthcurno to the Minack but from here it was a pretty easy stroll along the hillsides, enjoying the warmth and the sea, just stunning after all the wind from yesterday with the resulting large Atlantic swells creating spectacular surf all around the coast. We saw this all day and never got tired of it. The wind was offshore, unusually, which held back the waves as they were about to break and added to the drama. We learned later that these are the preferred conditions for keen surfers so today was special for them too.

Shortly after leaving Porthcurno you come to the tiny hamlet of Porthgwarra. I hadn't even realised it was there (must do my Ordnance Survey homework the night before). It has a curious feature of this tunnel

which was dug by tin miners from St Just to give farmers horse-and-cart access down to the beach to collect seaweed for fertiliser. Could't resist it, even though it increased my climbing for the day - if you go downhill you usually have to pay for it.


From here it's just one long succession of increasingly glorious views of headlands, surf, sparkling seas and cliff edges so steep that you feel the psychological 'pull' towards the edge. At least I do - never been great with heights. There are more pictures on Komoot but this is perhaps my favourite

Before long we had sight of Land's End with the longships lighthouse offshore.

The Land's End complex caters for high visitor numbers so is pretty touristy but we had our by now customary tea break (and my force-fed flapjack) before moving on.

Developed into a theme park by Peter De Savary in the 80s, after he outbid the National Trust to buy Land's End, it is currently owned by Heritage Great Britain plc, a Liverpool based company that also owns and operates attractions at John O’Groats, the Needles on the Isle of Wight and the Snowdon railway. 

One of the first recorded John O’Groats to Land’s End (JOGLE – or LEJOG if you’re going the other way) was by Carlisle in 1879 who did both, a total of 3,900 miles, in 72 days. Since that’s an average of 54 miles a day I’m guessing he didn’t walk it.

We did see the animal petting farm that Karen and I visited maybe 23 years ago, before we were married. Nice memory.

From Land's End it's not far (just round the corner) to Mayon cliff and the battlemented lookout over Whitesand Bay. Previously part of the coastguard network and now manned by the National Trust it has a glorious view over the huge and popular surfing beach at Sennen Cove; which is not really a cove at all. Bilbo the Newfoundland dog acted as lifeguard here from 2005-2008 until all dogs were banned from the beach. The village features in a book “Shanti The Wandering Dog of Sennen & The Land's End”.

We elected to walk across the beach rather than negotiate the ups and downs of the path around it, and because it just looked so inviting. You can see some rocks near the end - Nic got a bootful from a rogue incoming wave there, trying to walk around the end of the rocks, and I had to go rockhopping but otherwise it was a good decision 😏. 

 We met a couple who warned us of the adders they'd seen where we rejoined the path. Gone when we went by - I'd like to have seen them, they're quite shy. 

From there it was 'just' your bog standard coast path, we were getting quite blasé by then. We'd had various encounters with strangers, as you do, so I amused myself by introducing Nic as my Dad, out for a stroll on "take your Dad for a walk day". Amazingly, or not, some believed me. I enjoyed the joke and I think Nic did as well but sadly his comments were lost on the wind 😁. You can see he's enjoying it all when we stopped at this round unidentified thing - looks vaguely Iron Age (no, not Nic) but probably just a well.

In fairness to him, Nic struggled with a gammy foot that is still recovering from surgery with ne'er a whimper. Although we had a different natural pace on the trail, we made at least as much mileage, and possibly more, as I would have done on my own. Not only that but he also had only one pole and they can make a huge difference.

Plus he saved us from some navigational errors (though not all!) So many thanks, Nic.

You can see the difficulty with how his foot rolls over. To be honest the walk didn't help his recovery but it did highlight the need for different boots.

Hopefully he'll get some corrective footwear for a full recovery. It would be good to see him back on the trail.

So finally we made it to the Porth Nanven inlet - the so-called Dinosaur Egg beach (a little more on that tomorrow) and a walk in to St Just for a cafe and cab back to Porthcurno. I'd aimed for this finish because I'd booked a hostel nearby, ready for the start tomorrow. Except I hadn't - my hostel is not the YHA in St Just but one further away in Land's End. Combined with, as I write, having just put the electric kettle on the hob (lovely smell, melted plastic) the day didn't end as well as it started!

Hey ho, confession tomorrow, hopefully absolution after a penance (new kettle should cover it) and back on the trail. If I can make it a good way past Pendeen Point I'll have stolen a march on the section to St Ives - one of only three sections marked 'Severe' - and be in good shape to make it to Hayle (or better) by Sunday.

Weather forecast good, factor 50 ready, here's hoping.

Peter