St. Ives to Pendeen Watch

Today was a lower mileage but longer day. This morning we left our hostel in St. Ives and walked along the harbour. We were very surprised to see people swimming in the harbour at 08:30 (one without a wetsuit) but we're even more surprised to see two seals bobbing around near the swimmers. My life goal is now to live somewhere where you can swim with seals on a casual Sunday morning.

We continued out of the town, today's section is listed as "rugged" on the South West Coast Path website. It felt like we did more clamouring over boulders than actual walking today and it was very tiresome by the end. This path also has many steep ascents and descents, and boggy patches with big granite stepping stones. However, the view is lovely when you stop to look. It took us a full 8.5 hours to reach Pendeen Watch but we decided to carry on an extra hour before finding a suitable place to wild-camp. We are now in tin mining country, passing the workings of Geevor, Levant and camping behind one of the walls containing one of the of Botallack Mine shafts. 

Geevor Mine was working until the 1980s but closed after cheap tin from Malaysia became more prevalent. Levant Mine had workings nearly 600m deep which extended over a mile under the sea. I would thoroughly recommend a visit to Geevor Mine (now a museum) if you are in the area. 

As a side note I know this area pretty well as many ore samples I analysed during my PhD came from these mines.

The caterpillar above can grow to 7cm and hibernates through the winter before pupating in spring. We see 10+ of these on the path a day and are careful not to tread on any!

Pendeen Watch to Lamorna Cove

We started early this morning, setting off in the dark at 7am. Passing some more disused mine workings we continued round to Cape Cornwall. I’d assumed that the spire was a monument, but in keeping with the old industrial theme, it transpires it was a chimney for two steam boiler rooms.

Passing Cape Cornwall, we passed Lands End Youth Hostel (which is nowhere near Lands End), and traversed round the cliffs and along the beach to Sennen. We stopped here  for a mid-morning bacon bap in a local café.

Leaving Sennen for Lands End, we passed a shipwreck which we’d explored when we visited Sennen earlier in the year for Anya’s birthday. 

We reached Lands End, the most westerly point in England. It’s a bit of a weird place though, and as we’d just eaten, we continued on. Crossing over undulating headland until we reached Porthgwarra where we stopped for some lunch.

We continued on to Porthcurno. It’s here that some of the first submarine telegraph cables were terminated in the 1870s. Which meant that this small, remote beach was very important for the UKs international telecommunications. It’s still used to this day as the landing point for 12 fibre optic cables.

For here we carried on until just outside Lamorna. We wanted to push on, and gain some more distance, but also we wanted to make sure to grab a good space to camp when we found one. You always hope when you pass a good spot, that they’ll be a better one later on.

Lamorna Cove to Praa Sands

It's always disconcerting when after setting up your tent in a seemingly good wild-camping spot and you are about to drift off to sleep you hear some loud horse noises.

After a fretful night, where I dreamt a horse had sat on our tent; we packed up, tiptoed around the ponies, and back onto the path.

We passed Lamorna Cove just as it was getting light and were in Mousehole for a 9am breakfast. We could see the Lizard peninsula (Wednesday evenings destination) on the other side of the bay and it looked very, very, far away.

We continued along promenades to Newlyn passing a memorial for the Penlee lifeboat. In 1981 the lifeboat went to the aid of the Union Star vessel which had engine failure in heavy seas. After radioing in to say they had rescued 4 crew all communication was suddenly lost, know one knows what happened but there were no survivors. The 8 lifeboat crew were all locals from Mousehole so the community was hit very hard, the old lifeboat station has been left as a memorial.

We continued into Penzance, stopping to pick up some supplies from Sainsbury's on the way. We now know its a bad idea to go into larger supermarkets as you end up doing an extra kilometre traipsing around trying to find anything. We also know that high calorie dehydrated foods are tricky to buy so couscous it is again!

By the time we had finished wandering around Sainsbury's the sun had come out and we walked along the promenade avoiding the giant piles of seaweed deposited by storm Callum. You could see which cars hadn't been moved in a while, also it appears they are emptying the lido as I assume it's now full of seaweed and sand.

After zipping through Marazion and admiring St Michael's Mount we followed a collapsed cliff coast path diversion and headed back into more traditional paths; soon passing the village of Peranthonoe. After a quick feet break we did another 4 miles to Praa Sands which is where I have been on holiday annually with my family for probably 10 years. We grabbed some food in the Sandbar before continuing up the cliff to find a decent horse free wild camping spot. We both thought today was going to be a boring plod through towns and tarmac but it actually turned out to be a very scenic great day.

The Ruby Tiger Moth has 2 broods per year, we are seeing the second brood and the caterpillars will over winter before pupating in the spring.

Praa Sands to The Lizzard

We packed up camp and set off for Porthleven. The path along the headland was was fairly easy going. Just as we reached Porthleven, we could see several surfers catching some big early morning waves.  

We found a café for breakfast. It definitely wins the best value award of the trip so far, with a whopping “Hungry Hideaway” full English breakfast for £8.50.

Full; we carried on towards Mullion. The route continued as before with easy going grassland, and gentle ascents and descents. We saw some more surfers enjoying the waves at Poldu.

Up on the cliff top, just outside Poldhu, there was a monument to Marconi.  It was from here that he made the first trans-Atlantic radio wave transmission in 1901.

We stopped for a bite for lunch at Mullion Cove, and then set of for the youth hostel at Lizzard Point, the most southerly point in mainland England. The path here was much harder going, with a number of valleys to cross. 

We made quick use of the hostel’s showers and laundry facilities as we’d been wild-camping for the last 3 nights, and definitely needed it.

The Lizard to Porthallow

Half way day!

We left after sunrise from the YHA saying hello to the resident garden rabbit on the way back to the path.

We headed around the point until we had to wait for a heard of particularly short cows to be shooed back into the field after they had escaped through an open gate.

Continuing on we passed one of the volunteer coast guard watch stations. The funding for these was removed in 1992 (and given to a small number of centralised offices). However in 1994, after a small fishing vessel with 2 aboard was wrecked off the Lizard Coast (with no witnesses), the local community decided to set up a volunteer watch which is manned at stations though the country in daylight hours.

The guy manning the station said it was unusual to see coast path walkers before 10am! A little further around the coast we passed the new location of the Lizard life boat. The old slipway at Lizard Point was destroyed in a storm so the decision was made to move the lifeboat to a more protected location. The RNLI is all run on volunteers and through donations which always amazes me. 

We made it to the quaint village of Cadgwith by 10am and were in Coverack for lunch. Lots of Coverack was damaged in a flash-flood last summer, a volume of rain equal to filling the Royal Albert Hall more than 4 times fell in 7 hours over a 2.2 mile catchment area. Many shops and houses were flooded, residents had to be rescued from their roof by helicopter, and lots of the roads were destroyed. Additionally, a larger chunk of the coast path was destroyed and there is now a large diversion. 

The second half of today took us through some inland routes and through the villages of Polthoustock and Porthallow. The inland section bypasses the coast line at Porth Kerris which is owned by a diving company. The University of Bristol dive club has the annual Easter training trip here every year (so I have been there a lot). It never occurred to me before that it was odd to own a section of coastline. But this is the biggest inland diversion we have done yet. 

The village of Porthallow marks the South West Coast Path half way point, 315 miles! There is a large marker but we somehow managed to miss it so the picture below will have to suffice.  

We found a flat spot near the coast watch point at Nare Point to set up camp.

I was beginning to despair that I had not seen a new species of caterpillar in the last two days. Then at 4pm I saw this one! I think it is a Brown Tail moth caterpillar. Fun fact; the hairs are incredibly irritating to human skin, if an infestation of these caterpillars occurs in an urban environment the hairs carried by the wind can cause problems for the public.