Coastlining 30: Bude – Marsland Mouth

Date: Thursday 25th September 2014   Distance walked: 9.5 miles  Total distance: 296 miles

Bude

Bude was quiet at nine in the morning. A few dog walkers. A few determined swimmers in the sea pool. To the south a pale blue glimmer in the sky, the rest was grey with lowering clouds that had me fretting on the way in that it might rain and I’d brought the wrong coat. Cee and I parted at the car park tucked in behind the beach and the harbour. I set off up round by the sea pool. Past a row of 1920s beach huts with painted doors and window shutters: red, blue, green, navy, light blue, red. The tide was low. Bude beach was a deserted spread of smooth sand the colour of foundation for a skin tone darker than mine, pocked with morse code lines of footprints

Coastlining 29: Crackington Haven – Bude

Date: Wednesday 24th September 2014   Distance walked: 10 miles  Total distance: 286 miles

Crackington Haven

Woke to showers which cleared to a brisk wind from the north-west, bright colours, cloud-shades indigo on the sea and crisp white waves. There were sharp shadows on the double peak of Cambeak to the west of Crackington Haven. I climbed the first hill, 100m or so above the dusky pink beach and handful of dwellings in the crease of the valley mouth, and could see Lundy for the first time since Pentire Point on the Camel Estuary.

Coastlining 28: Tintagel – Crackington Haven

Date: Tuesday 23rd September 2014    Height climbed: 4045 ft   Distance walked: 11 miles    Total distance: 276 miles     

Tintagel Head: the haven, Merlin’s Cave, the castle remains and the Island

I returned to Tintagel at about 10:30am this morning to find it bright and misty, which sounds like an oxymoron but in early autumn on the Cornish coast this is what it’s all about. The shadows were sharp, rocks, corners and caves black and deep; the remains of the castle on the headland known as the Island were picked out by the morning sun from the south-east. From the bottom of Tintagel Haven, where the tide was out exposing the caves and cove below the land-bridge to the castle, I headed on up to Barras Nose, the next cliff-head east of Tintagel Head, to get a view of the coastline ahead.

Coastlining 27: Port Isaac – Tintagel

Date: Monday 22nd September 2014    Distance walked: 9 miles    Total distance: 264 miles

view from Main Head, Port Gaverne north-east to Tintagel Head

Late September and it was perfect weather for walking. The sky was blue as a robin’s egg, the sea a pale topaz with a slight haze on the horizon and the lightest breath of a northerly breeze moved through the air. It felt like summer but was starting, ever so slightly, to look like autumn.

Coastlining 26: Padstow – Port Isaac

Date: Sunday 26th August 2014      Distance walked: 12 miles      Total distance: 255 miles

Padstow-Rock Ferry

It’s good to be back on the (other) coast again. It’s somehow been two months since I wandered down into Padstow with my soggy jacket hung on the back of my rucksack to dry out in the June sun. I’ve got to the point where day walks are no longer feasible due to the length of time it would take me to get to and from my start and end points. I didn’t manage to get two days off work together during July excepting one occasion when it was so hot I couldn’t even sit in my back garden in Falmouth for more than five minutes let alone endure ten plus miles of strenuous coast path.

Coastlining 25: Porthcothan – Padstow

Date:  Thursday 26th June 2014   Distance walked: 13 miles       Total distance: 243 miles

Minnows Islands, Porthcothan

snails at Constantine Bay

I set out from Porthcothan in a lull in the downpour. Pushing through the waist high vegetation up the cliff path on the northern side of the inlet that sloped up from beach to dune to cliff I was glad I’d had the forethought to roll my waterproof trousers up in the bottom of my bag when I set out yesterday morning. 

Coastlining 24: Newquay – Porthcothan

Date: Wednesday 25th June 2014     Distance walked: 12 miles      Total distance: 230 miles

Bedruthan Steps

After two weeks of glorious Cornish sunshine, clear skies and temperatures well into the twenties I finally returned to the coast path. I spent five days visiting family, one day back at work, one day at home to do many loads of washing and hoover up the depositional end of my walking boot coastal erosion up off my bedroom floor, then seven days in a row at work in sundresses and sandals being mocked by my colleagues for my ridiculous sock line. Three days off in a row. We all know what that means: the weather’s going to break.