Where am I Now?

In October 2004, Sue, Andrew, Colin and I met up to walk a section of the South West Coast Path that we'd previously missed. Collating the diary entries and photos from all these trips is still an outstanding project. 

Does anyone know the identity of the subject of this picture taken on 7 October 2004 during that trip? I'll add that information in a couple of days if nobody guesses.

See Comments:
BC: The Bude Light Statue. But did you see it at night?
Me: Well done BC. My diary says 'The Bude Millenium Spire', and we didn't see it at night. We continued to Widemouth Manor, but staying in Bude may have provided a superior experience!

Friday 11 June 2021 - Boscastle and Tintagel

Sue and I drove to Boscastle and parked near the doctors' surgery. We then ambled down to the harbour via the site of the twelfth century Bottreaux Castle that gave the town its name, and set off on the coast path. It was overcast with low cloud; trying to rain. Failing.

Sue continued in her bid to be granted a diploma in horse whispering.

We admired the views whilst chatting to a girl we'd seen yesterday on the coast path. 

Various birds posed for us. I'll try to post photos and clarify identities when I get home. Easier to identify is the coastguard station on the headland by Boscastle. They were scanning the sea for signs of the Russian submarines that are spying on the G7 summit being held today in St Ives.

There are many rocks strewn around the landscape of this coast. This may be Grower Rock, with Meachard in the distance.

Elevenses were taken early today. On a bench with a fine view.

At this point a lady backpacker (B&B rather than wild camping) appeared. We stayed near her all the way to Tintagel, catching up at one point when she became terrified by a few cows. Our resident cow whisperer soon sorted them out and eased the rigour of our erstwhile companion.

We left the coast path by Bossiney, on the outskirts of Tintagel, and soon found ourselves amongst crowds of folk on a path to a waterfall in St Nectan's Glen. We chose not to spend £5.95 each on viewing the waterfall, which judging by the low level of the 'river' may have been less than spectacular. We'll never know!

Anyway, we found a fine, brand new, picnic table for lunch, featuring last night's left over sausages and, at last, some very tasty crisps.

After that, a good path led up the valley and on to Treweens Farm, but the section from there to the Minster Church was largely through fields of crops where no effort had been made to maintain the stiles, which were horribly overgrown, or to acknowledge the existence of the field paths.

(Sue was on the phone to her mum, not the footpath preservation society.)

Once we reached the church, an ancient place of great interest that I may relate to you later, the paths through the National Trust woodland were excellent.

We took a path that crossed the river by way of a footbridge before Newmills. Hard to believe that this was the conduit of serious flooding just a few years ago.

Stepping stones soon led us back across the river and on along the path up Jordan Valley as far as a path to the main road and our car.

Here's our route - 21km in less than six hours.

Thursday 10 June 2021 - Jacket's Point to Trebarwith Strand

Much to our surprise, we woke after 8:30. Luckily we had offered no lifts, and had planned a walk from home.

Setting off after 10 in low cloud, we made our way past the church at Lanteglos. 

Our route headed directly west, aiming for the coast at Jacket's Point. The long wet grass failed to penetrate our boots - gaiters were very helpful today.

Various stiles and gates were encountered, some of which (not those shown below) were in need of urgent maintenance.

By the time the coast appeared, after a break for elevenses in a field of sheep, and beyond Tregaron, it was shrouded in mist, beyond a haze of willowherb.

The coast path was busy with people, whereas during the 2.5 hours and 8.5km taken to reach it, we had seen nobody apart from a workman who had sent us in a wrong direction.

Flowers abound on the coast. I paused on the steep climb to Tregardock Cliff to take the next picture.

We could have reduced the climbing by taking a higher level path from Tregragon that's not marked on our map. Once on the cliff top, we could admire the view back towards Port Isaac.

As we continued along the high path, Gull Rock, which is roughly level with Trebarwith Strand, came slowly into focus beyond many clumps of ox-eye daisies.

We lunched on a bench overlooking Tregardock Beach, and before descending to the Strand we stopped for a lengthy chat with some backpackers who are wild camping a section of the SWCP. 

A pair of peregrines was very active in the air above us.

After the steep descent, we stopped for a cream tea in the Port William pub. Not the best choice, but the cheapest cream tea ever as they recognised the defects in their service (eg they failed to see through our invisibility cloaks, no tea was provided with the scones until we asked for it) and provided a full refund without us asking for one.

After that we headed inland again, on mostly good paths to Rockhead, then quiet lanes before the final field path to Juliots Well. 

Here's our route - a good 22+km in about 7.5 hours including some lengthy stops.

The rest of the group are leaving tomorrow, so we visited the big house (Polmear Barn) and enjoyed the evening with our friends before saying our farewells and leaving them to pack in preparation for an early start.

Port Quin and Port Isaac

What a lovely day for a walk!

Ten of us congregated at the NT car park in Port Quin, from where we set off on this delightful 10 mile stroll.

A high level cross country route proved to be a quick way of reaching Port Isaac, where we found some benches on which to enjoy elevenses and a mandatory helping of Sue's chocolate caramel shortbread (above).

Five of the crowd turned around, and the rest of us continued a little further along the coast path, admiring banks festooned with thrift as we went.

A very leisurely lunch was taken by a point where a side path then took us inland to a road. My planned route then took a hit from an uncooperative farmer who has effectively blocked off the path I wanted to access. So we retraced our steps and found our way past rampant foxgloves to return to the coast path at Port Gaverne.

It was annoying to effectively be barred from using some of the public rights of way around here, but now we could enjoy the splendour of the relatively quiet coast path all the way back to Port Quin.

Steep steps led out of Port Isaac, after which we were rewarded with a fine view back to the town, where a red double decker bus was plying the streets.

The coast path offered fine views and steep undulations, and took much longer than the morning's more direct inland route.

After a while, all but Sue, Gaynor and me opted to avoid the final headland leading to Port Quin. The three of us continued along an excellent path with fine views seawards.

We finally regained the car at around 4:30, having walked about 16km, with a fair amount of ascent, in a little over 6 hours.

Then Sue and I joined 'the gang of 13' at Polmear Barn ('the big house') for a sociable evening involving a bbq, and tasty desserts on the patio.

Cornwall Again

Well, browsing through my hard disc's 'Pictures' I found this nice Cornish snap from 2004 and decided to upload it as an antidote to today's pandemic worries. Nice, isn't it? Then I discovered that my brain must have been running in parallel with what it was doing on 15 August 2019!

An unfinished (hardly started) project...

The Path to Cremyll - Tuesday 31 May 2005

In a slight change to routine, I've gone back 15 years to the day for this posting, on a day when we walked from Portwrinkle to Cremyll.

I can't precisely identify the picture locations. I think the picture above may have been taken from the Fort by Picklecombe Point, looking back in the direction of Kingsand.

The picture below appears to be of Rame Head, looking east.
 

 

But I stand to be corrected.

 

Oh to be able to be there now!

 

Stay safe, it's not over yet...

 

On the South West Coast Path (6)

 

Durdle Door, in Dorset, featured on our South West Coast Path trip in 2012, during which we just about finished that project. However, recording of said project has fallen behind, the various sections having been left as stand alone trips, with photos just left in folders or slide boxes, or on this computer's hard drive, totally unedited.

 

Another project, good health permitting....

 

My original entry for 2 June 2012 is here - the use of the same picture twice is just a coincidence.

On the South West Coast Path (5)

 

From the early days of digital photography, here are three images from our 2003 trip to Cornwall, when about 16 of us walked the section of the SWCP from Marazion to Helford Ferry.

 

Being hard at work at the time, I never got round to properly indexing the photos, which are labelled 'corn2' to 'corn32' and various other puzzling designations, so my identification of the locations and timings (not attributed to digital images at that time) are to some extent guesswork.

 

The top picture could be of Porthleven on 24 May 2003, and the rooks shown below can definitely be identified as being at Church Cove on 25 May. The bottom picture must have been taken in the vicinity of Kynance, with views towards Lizard Point.

 

 

 

I'll continue from time to time with these snippets from a long and enjoyable walk over a period of some years.

 

It's still raining in Timperley... and there are TGO Challenge routes to be vetted.

On the South West Coast Path (4) Polruan

Back briefly to my SWCP project. Here's the Polruan Ferry on 29 May 2005, transporting some of our 'team' across one of the many estuaries that have to be crossed during the undertaking of this walk.

We've been back from Canada for a week now, and I still haven't downloaded the photos. It has been raining for much of the time we've been back here, so I've been concentrating on a huge backlog of 'indoor projects'.

I'm conscious of not having updated topwalks.com recently (the Windows XP computer that houses the Dreamweaver software is out of action due to decorating) and I haven't arranged a programme of bike rides and walks. I'm not depressed, just haven't got around to those jobs, for which I won't have a vast amount of enthusiasm until the weather improves.

Meanwhile, TGO Challenge vetting continues.... and yesterday I discovered that I have a place in Andrew's taxi from Inverness to Torridon on 7 May. So I booked a train from Manchester to Inverness on that day. The seven hour journey came up at £22.95, so I didn't feel inclined to carry out the usual detailed costing exercise involving different routes and splitting the journey!

I've noticed that I left our Pyrenees HRP 2004 postings in a state of suspense that nobody seems to have noticed. I'll try to reach the end of that walk tomorrow.

The Salt Path - Raynor Winn

Sue and I have both enjoyed reading this book about a homeless couple, one of whom is terminally ill, walking the South West Coast Path with inferior equipment and a budget of about £30 a week.

It's rather a contrast to Simon Armitage's contemporaneous story (also an entertaining read - I wrote about it here), if rather amusing when Mole, Raynor's husband, is mistaken for Mr Armitage.

When homelessness is forced upon this hapless couple, they embark on a long walk. Raynor must have kept some sort of diary, or how else could she have written so vividly about her experiences on the coast path? In authoring this book it must soon have become apparent that she's a talented writer, and no doubt she is now making some sort of living by employing that new found talent.

Raynor and Mole certainly have my admiration.

On the South West Coast Path (3) Polperro

 

We passed through Polperro, one of the 'beauty spots' of the Cornish coastline, on 29 May 2005.

 

Whilst I remember it well, I don't have the relevant volume of my diary to hand as it's in the guest bedroom that's occupied by Ken and Helen, our visitors from Canada.

 

So I hope these four pictures might rekindle some other fond memories.

 

I think the bird is a herring gull, and I don't recall it snaffling any of our lunches - but the diary may prove me wrong...

 

 

 

On the South West Coast Path (2)

Here's a picture taken on our 2005 trip to the SWCP. Most of that route was undertaken in May - over a period of years - during which the cliff top meadows are laden with Thrift (Armeria maritima).

A delight to behold.

On the South West Coast Path (1)

Another Project?

Over a period of several, if not 'many' years, Sue and I just about completed the South West Coast Path (SWCP) on numerous trips with a group whose common connection was Johannesburg Hiking Club (don't ask!).

Here's a picture taken on 7 October 2004 (so we did make it back from the Pyrenees) near the Devon/Cornwall border at Marsland Mouth.

It's the view from near the hut of a playwright, Ronald Duncan, 1914-82. The hut is high on a cliff, with this magnificent view, a fifteen minute walk from the car park at Marsland Mouth.

And the Project? That would be collating reports and photos from the various SWCP trips into one volume. Not a 'five minute' job. Unlike this 'fill-in' posting after a busy day when I have insufficient time to do much else.

The picture was taken with an early digital camera - 1600 x 1200 px, but other pictures in this project will be mainly from slide and print film.

Walking Away, by Simon Armitage (Further Travels with a Troubadour on the South West Coast Path)

I don’t often read ‘proper’ books these days, thanks to a lack of shelf space and a very convenient electronic gadget, but Nell lent me this book before we went to Canada, and I’ve very much enjoyed reading it.

I still have to produce a compendium of our own visits to the South West Coast Path, which finished back in 2012, and that will have minimal literary stature compared with Simon’s offering. The Troubadour is Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield, and not somebody who regularly undertakes long walks. His walk is fully ‘orchestrated’ with his ‘Galapagos Tortoise’ (a giant case full of poetry books) necessarily being transported from B&B to B&B whilst Simon trots along the route with a variety of companions in a disintegrating pair of boots. The plan is to pay his way by giving poetry readings every night, after each of which a sock is passed around for donations.

His starting points each day are advertised so that he gains the company of random people from the previous night’s readings, plus a few longer term hangers on such as his wife, who appears from time to time, and a chap called ‘Slug’.

I don’t know the time frame for writing the book. Perhaps Simon had a notebook or a dictating machine with him, or a fantastic memory, as he captures every nuance of the walk. As a poet, he is entitled to ‘poetic licence’, and he demonstrates that on a few occasions, for example when he describes a blackbird singing at the end of September. No matter, his descriptive prose is consistently wonderful…

“The spilt mercury of the moon’s reflection extends from the head of the lake right to our feet.”

It’s absolutely crammed full of such prose, even when relating anecdotes about any number of situations and characters.

An excellent read, as was the other book Nell lent to me – ‘Dad You Suck’ by Tim Dowling. (Yes, I already got that message!)