Final leg, this trip: Kynance to Porthleven

So far, so good. Completed my plan on schedule and looking forward to a long hot bath and some squash before getting back on the trail next week with Nic. Today not quite as sunny but still glorious weather for seeing again some old favourite places and reliving some fun times. Full summary on Komoot here, as usual. The coastline is so spectacular I went a bit nuts with the photographs. Luckily for me, Komoot keeps track of where they are - I'd forget in a hearbeat.

So first, down to Kynance. I took the wimps route (no steps, for old dodderers like me and pushchairs) in case the direct route was block by the high tide. National Trust have done a great job here with their cafe and the beach is deservedly popular. Sadly you can't see the sandy bits properly until low tide but it's still lovely. Happy memories of here with Karen and my mother.

It's a stiff climb up to the cliff tops but from there on mostly level ground, not least because it runs alongside the Predannack airfield. Unused when I was last there but now used as a satellite airfield for Culdrose. My inner pilot approves. There are one or two steep clefts down to the beach, not least that to Soap Rock. The photo doesn't quite convey the steepness of the descent but hopefully you can get the idea:

 It is possible to get down to the beach here, Karen and I did before, but not today as the tide's in. 

The Soap referred to is soapstone which was extensively mined here between 1740 and 1820, from Kynance to Mullion, an area known as the Soaprock coast. Gew Graze ("Soap Cove") in particular produced white serpentine rocks but all of them when ground down into a paste were used in the production of soft paste porcelain (the Chinese variety was hard paste porcelain). Only porcelain was able to withstand boiling water so this discovery allowed Britain to compete with the Chinese imports at a time when tea drinking was rapidly increasing.

So this is a very important area for industrial history. I'd no idea until I started to investigate. There's an interesting web article on it here and there's even a book about it: Soaprock Coast, by 

Robert Felce.

From there the path soon arrives at Mullion, an extraordinarily neat harbour tucked into a small cove. The walls were built in the 1890s with financial help from Lord Robartes of Lanhydrock at the height of the pilchard boom but today it's owned and maintained by the National Trust.

Named after St Melanius the bishop of Rennes in 519, Mullion is the largest village on the Lizard but set high up away from the cliffs. The church of St Mellanus has a 13^th century door with dog flap (for sheepdogs) and one of the carved bench ends depicts Jonah and the whale. 

The Mullion hotel sits right on the cliff top. It was our sanctuary after our abortive campervan experimental weekend and our room had extraordinary views, particularly from the ensuite bathroom – a poo with a view, you might say. 

Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alleluyeva, lived in Mullion for a bit as did Sheila Tracy, a performer who started her career as a trombone player in a 50s all-female band.

Almost immediately after Mullion the path arrives at Poldhu (Black Pool), famous for the early experiments in radio communication by Guglielmo Marconi and there is now a monument on the clifftop on land granted to the National Trust by the Marconi company (RIP). This was the site of the first transatlantic radio message in 1901. What looks like a hotel nearby is actually a care home - I can think of worse places to go.

Just below this is Poldhu Cove:

Curiously, there's a post box right in the middle of the bridge:

A little further along the coast path is Gunwalloe – the first entry for Cornwall in Domesday. The church (of St Winwaloe) there dates in part from Norman times and is right next to the beach, indeed almost in it, at Church Cove.

Up onto the headland again and passing Halzephron (great little pub here) and Gunwaloe fishing cove, one of the few places to get down onto the beach before Porthleven. It's a spectacular beach but not safe for bathing because of the strong currents.

With Porthleven in sight, and ahead of schedule, I was entertaining thoughts of pressing on to Par Sands, to ease Nic's first day next week. I should have known better - a very large diversion because of storm damage to the cliffs added 2.5 miles to the journey and all for a closed section no more than 100 yards long (which I've walked before, for heaven's sake). You can get some idea of just how circuitous this was from the information board - the red line's the diversion.

Anyhow, enough whingeing. Finally made Porthleven. The most southerly port in Great Britain – many places here are the most-something-or-other – it is the home town of the Dambusters’ Guy Gibson and there is a plaque to commemorate him on the town hall.

The village faces the prevailing weather and needs its substantial stonework defences but the harbour was only started in 1811. Winter gales erupting over the massive sea walls are an arresting sight. An interesting building next to the pier and harbour entrance is the Bickford-Smith Institute with its 20m tower. It looks like a church but is currently a snooker club and has figured in episodes of Wycliffe. There is a large annual food fair (in April, wasted on me) and Rick Stein has a restaurant here.

Tregonning Hill can be seen from Porthleven – it’s an extinct volcano and the place that china clay was first discovered in Britain. The clay is a type of decomposed granite finer than talcum, itself the softest material on the Mohs scale of hardness. The large deposits in St Austell were the largest in the world in the early 1800s and by 1910 were producing 50% of the world supply. The clearly visible spoil heaps are known as the Cornish Alps.

Just west of the village is the Giant’s Quoit, a 50 ton rock of a type not found anywhere else in the United Kingdom. The latest theory is that it floated down on an iceberg from northern Europe. Investigation of that will have to wait until the next trip.

For now I was going to leave you with a picture of Porthleven, taken from the cafe while I waited for my taxi pick up back to the B&B. But it's not very good so instead here's some extreme recycling I found on the way down into the village:

Well, I enjoyed this trip and finding stuff to blog about, so I hope you did too because there's going to be more of it!

Until the 16th

Best wishes

Peter