Port Isaac to Padstow, Monday, June 8, 2026
The day started with rain spitting outside our hotel window. We were up early, so took a spin around Port Isaac before breakfast.
It’s a rare doorway where Sue has to duck her head!
As we walked around the little harbor, the sun began to come out…and stayed out all day.
We walked first up the street to Fern Cottage, Doc Martin’s dispensary.
On the way up, Sue spotted this extraordinary wall made of the local slate.
And here is how houses cling to the hillside in this precipitous valley.
Not all rooms at the inn are created equal. In repeated acts of age discrimination, Gary and Cindy were assigned the topmost room in hotel after hotel. This room was on our level, but when you open their door. The Inn offered a good breakfast. David and Gary braved the “Fully Loaded Breakfast Bap,” with everything they could find in the kitchen.
Sue and I did a bit of walking along the coast path.This is a sea cave in the harbor.
This is a view looking back at what the walkers had done the day before.
After their brutal walk yesterday, the group elected to cut off the first four miles of today’s walk, a 12.5 mile marathon to the ferry across the River Camel to Padstow; those first four miles contain another series of very steep valleys and no one wanted to see any more of those!
We boarded a bus that took us near the beach town of Polzeath. From there we walked up gentle slopes to a National Trust site, Pentyre Farmhouse, that sits just below the coast path.
The path follows the outline of the Pentire Peninsula, a remarkable intrusion into the sea.
The path became a bit of a roller coaster, but the views are so spectacular that no one noticed.
As we walked, we approached a shark fin island with peculiar honeycombed rock.
Just around the bend was The Rumps, a steep projection into space. We had a long walk ahead of us and spared our knees the descent from the top.
Here we are at Pentire Point itself, with views all the way back to Hartland Point and ahead almost to St. Ives.
A gently rolling path brought us to the beach at Polzeath.
The beach even features ice cream room service!
Walking around a headland, we reached Daymer Bay, with another gorgeous beach. There was a little beach shop, and we fueled up with ice cream, tea, sandwiches, and chips (that’s for the whole group, not just me).
Looking across the estuary leading to Padstow, we had a clear view of the path we walked on the first day of our walk just a year ago.
Rising onto yet another hill, the path rolled through dunes to reach the ferry at Rock. Here is a look back at where we had walked.
A pleasant few minutes brought us to Padstow Harbor and a few minutes more up to our lodging, the rather swish Harbour Hotel (where we had eaten dinner last year).
It felt like a definitive return to civilization: spacious room, big shower, and, best of all, a lift, so no more lugging our bags up narrow flights of stairs.
After cleaning up, we all repaired to the bar for some drinks…and a search for a cab to our train the next morning. There are lots of cab companies, but they’re almost all single driver operations, and almost all of the have contracts to get kids from their remote homes to school in the morning. Gary finally called the firm that had brought us to Padstow last year, Parnell’s, and they could take us in their eight passenger van.
The impression that we had returned to urban life was reinforced—massively—by our meal at Rick Stein’s Seafood Restaurant. Stein is a celebrity chef in England; he and his partners own a dozen or so restaurants in England and Australia. The Seafood Restaurant is where it all started in 1975.
The large, modern room flows around an ovular zinc bar with an eclectic assemblage of art on the walls.
We opted for the tasting menu. I had oysters, Cornish cod in a apple velouté, a Indonesian seafood curry, and a cheese course; Sue had octopus salad, pan fried bass, lamb and potatoes with garlic aioli, and crème brulée. It was all delicious!