Friday, September 14, 2018
This was the fourth night in a row in which we had stayed in rooms above a pub owned by the St. Austell brewery and the fourth night with really lovely accommodations. Highly recommended!
We walked down to the sea along a farm lane; as soon as we reached the coastal path, we were on a roller coaster that would carry us all the way north to Coverack.
The first four miles to the Fishing village of Cadgwith were on broader, graded paths like the one you see here. Even the coves weren’t too bad.
My walking companion in uncharacteristic repose.
Cadgwith was the first Village we saw with thatched roof cottages. This side of the lizard peninsula is more sheltered: the villages on the other side tend to have slate roofs. There was a particularly inviting cafe, where we could sit in a walled courtyard..so of course we treated ourselves to a cream tea.
As the picture below shows, the cliffs after Cadgwith became lower, but the coves more frequent, and the entire path ran over rugged, rocky ground.
This of course had no effect on wonder woman.
A few miles further along we reached the beach at Kennack Sands, where we took advantage of the warm sunshine following a squall.
After the beach, the going got even rougher. This picture gives you some idea of the ground over which we were walking.
The final headland, what you see in the distance here, is called Black Point.
This part of the walk had, in addition to the beautiful views, other compensations as well, like wild ponies…
and secluded beaches in trackless coves.
This shot, taken near the end of Black Point , looks back on the entire bay that we had walked today – – the coast northward from Lizard Point.
And so, after a rather rugged 11 miles we walked down the slope into the village of Coverack..not without a real feeling of sadness at the end of an extraordinary week of walking.
The end of the story didn’t quite measure up to the rest. Coverack is a rather nice, rather touristy town in a sheltered bay at the very top of the Lizard. I had booked us into a regular hotel rather than an inn, as a kind of reward for walking 100 miles. So of course we hadn’t walked the full 100 miles because of my illness (we had skipped 5 miles between Zennor and Pendeen and another 7 between Porthcurno and Lovarno)…and perhaps the walking gods took their revenge. The rather pricy Bay Hotel put us in a tiny attic room: we couldn’t walk around the bed, I couldn’t stand up straight in the shower, and I knocked my head hard on the sloping ceiling more times than I care to remember. We longed for the luxury of a St. Austell pub room!
But that was a minor bump in a fabulous journey. We took a taxi the next day to Helston, where we boarded the train for London. Farewell, Cornwall; we’ll be back!