The Southwest Coast Path of England: An Appreciation in Eight Days
Yesterday hiked 15 miles along the beautiful Southern coast for Cornwall. I’m lucky to be able to take such a vacation.
I should attempt to describe it, but I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say that a return to nature can be good for the soul after months of dealing with robots and geometry. There is more complexity in a square foot of Earth here than in all the constructed realities of mathematical daydreams. Nevertheless the two enrich each other; flowers are more interesting after a month of trigonometry.
Cornwall is a tame place, but different enough to remind an American that there are different ways of doing things. A garden can be small and magnificent at the same time. Not everybody needs a truck. Rain is a blessing. Nature can recover when left alone and protected. You can build houses to last 200 years instead of planning for them to be torn down.
Day The Second
Today we enjoyed a private tour of public archaeological sites in West Cornwall, from pre-Celtic stone age to the time the Romans abandoned Cornwall, around 200 AD. Cornwall is the Western-most part of England, and has the mildest climate, and was the most important bronze-age source of tin. Since tin is a component of bronze, there might not have been a bronze age in Europe without the mines there.
We saw 9 separate sites in one day; such is the density of such sites (identified and preserved) in Cornwall. These include the Merry Maidens, a circle of 19 standing stones, a unique and mysterious hollowed stone set between two standing stones, and two villages with courtyard houses and possibly weird underground tunnels, or maybe they were just root cellars, although personally I cannot see how they would not have been flooded, so I assert the tenuous and tenebrous theory that they were cisterns.
Also capstone graves, such as one finds all over Europe. On the footpath the day before there had been a stone, perhaps weighing 300 pounds, propped up between two vertical walls. I had joked that some Celt was buried there — but now I think perhaps they were!
Day The Third
The badger set next to the stile was a sign that I was entering a fairy land. Mr. Badger did not in fact come out to charge me a toll, like some troll under a bridge; but I would have paid it. In broad strokes Cornwall is painted in the green of gorse and grass, the grays of slate, and changing aquamarine of the sea. But with your head down on the trail it is a Monet-worthy canvas of pink sea thrift, yellow kidney vetch, white and pink campion, accented by the deeper red of the occasional foxglove, which ranges from merely red to electric pink to burgundy. In a spire of foxglove blossoms, one will shake, revealing a bumble bee hard at work. Looking at the blossom, the inside has white circles like the suckers on an octopus arm — perhaps they came from the sea as well. In some parts of the high moorland of Penwith, you can see the Atlantic on the North and Channel on the South. The moors are covered with gorse, which looks like some witch shrunk a fir tree into a spreading shrub. Apparently Shetland ponies can eat it. It produces a rich yellow blossom a little darker than the vetch. The border of the moor and sea is painted with wildflowers. In Oregon, the cliffs descend from the forest to the sea much as in Cornwall. But the cow, horse, and sheep fields of Cornwall are lined with curving stone walls of unguessable age. They follow the flow of the land, rather than the rigid lines of a surveyor. So covered in flowers are they that it can be difficult to discern a hedge from a wall. Above the flower-strewn land, gulls soar and kestrels hover motionless. Fulmars soar from cliff-nests out over the sea on motionless wings. Jackdaws and crows are about their business above the splintered cliffs of slate and serpentine. With wall-bounded fields on one hand and the omnipresent sea on the other, walking between the stiles you realize you have entered the landscape of our childhood stories.
Day the Fourth
Today we walked from “The Lizard”, the Southern most point in England, to Coverack, a quaint village. The land here was rougher and a bit drier; few flowers and more striking cliffs, some made out of Serpentine, the beautiful semi-precious stone. It litters the beach here and the steps are built of it. Turning a corner we found two beautiful red-brown ponies. If they were Shetland ponies they were in their summer coat; but they were small. They were unafraid of us. In another place I saw something I had never seen before — -a true rabbit warren. In America cottontails do not actually dig communal warrens, but here the live in great apartments with dozens of doorsteps.
Even more magically we took a slight (and now, official) inland turn from the path to sculpture garden, the garden of Terrence Coventry, who (apparently) passed on recently. The sculpture garden was a couple of acres free and unguarded, open to the public. Apparently it had just been a storage area but people kept hopping the fence to see the sculptures and Mr. Conventry graciously left the gate open and put up signs. It was very beautiful. Not Rodin, perhaps, and not the Umlauf garden, which is gated and guarded in Austin, but to come upon it after a steep 16 miles was magic. Thank you, Mr. Conventry — gone but not forgotten.
Day The Fifth
Today we walked from Coverack to Helford. The names here are as charming as the villages. The villages are remarkably small; there are only 536,000 residents of all of Cornwall, which is smaller than Austin, though it takes a while to walk around it, I can assure you. There is only one pub in Helford, I am typing this from there. We are staying in the oldest building in Helford which has slates so covered with lichen it is hard to tell there is stone beneath them. I’m told it was once a Quaker meeting house, and being myself very sympathetic to the Friends I hope to enjoy sleeping there.
Today’s walk took us through some new adventures. The best was a Coastal Watch station with a sign saying “Visitors Welcome”. Although shy by nature, John and I agreed to say “Yes!” to every adventure which offers itself, so we steeled ourselves and actually went through the gate.
The Coastal Watch is a volunteer organization, staffed mostly by retirees, one suspects, that simply watches the ship and shore traffic with binoculars and telescopes and reports dangerous incidents. As the beautiful retiree explained to us, this ranges from a canoeist losing their paddle to a ship actually foundering. It was created when the official Coast Guard ceased actually staffing watch stations (relying on telecommunications instead.) I need to investigate — but I am unaware of any volunteer organization similar in the States. We looked through a telescope and saw the “Celtic Kitten”, with divers aboard, diving a sunken ammo ship. No incidents occurred in the 20 minutes these generous people answered our questions, though each station handles 10–15 actual incidents per year, some of which save lives. We donated 5 quid; a bargain.
Later we walked up the Helford river and saw our first true forest in this part of the walk. I could not identify the trees, but I’d guess holly, holly oak, some sort of maple…you get the idea. But I can now identify nettle. In fact I developed a rather intimate acquaintance with nettle when part of the path was poorly marked. It has heart shaped, strongly serrated and corrugated leaves, and the stems are covered with hairs, which have the startling property of stinging the beejesus out of one even through one’s hiking pants. Jellyfish have got nothing on nettle.
Tomorrow we take the ferry to across the Helford to Falmouth.
Day The Sixth
Today we walked from Coverack to Falmouth, by far the largest town on this part of the hike and this part of Cornwall. Consequently, there were more people, and we walked by a larger number of commercial establishments. I got my first kale smoothie. Food here has been excellent, in a sort of richly high-fat seafoody way. I have been able to eat vegan snacks and vegetarian meals most of the time, but in pubs have had to compromise. For breakfast you can usually get a vegetarian option, which is good and filling even if it looks pretty lame compared to John’s full Cornish breakfast of eggs, ham, stewed tomato and sausage with unlimited toast.
From Coverack we walked through true forests for the first time. Trees I would guess at 60 feet high, two feet in diameter. The first pines I have seen as well. I bit less walking along the cliffs and more wooded experience.
In Falmouth the trail takes you along Castle Pendennis. When I was a boy, seeing a castle was the most thrilling thing I could imagine. After a few dozen they are still interesting, but the charm wears off. I now think a lot about what a waste people killing and invading each other is, although I suppose piling up a bunch of rocks to dissuade an invasion is a reasonably peaceful and economic approach, and has the advantage of leaving a bunch of things to talk about. Castle Pendennis has a tea shop, and at 4:00 after a sunny day of walking past beach bathers and up and down cliffs and through cow fields, tea is very refreshing. John prefers a Cornish cream tea, which is a pot of tea (that’s about 2 and half cups), served with a scone and clotted cream and jam. I settle for the a plain scone and green tea — though I backslide a bit and use the butter they give you, which is delicious.
Before reaching Falmouth there were numerous beaches. There were charming school groups of 8-year old learning to kayak. A few bold swimmers in wetsuits were out. It was hot enough that some people were sunbathing. As we walked into Falmouth we passed fewer cow fields and more private estates. One of the cows followed me seeming to beg to have her head scratched, which I did. One of the beauties of Britain and this path in particular is how communal it is. It literally goes right through both private property and businesses in a way that would be a bit hard to imagine in the US — perhaps part of the Appalachian trail is on private property, I don’t know.
In the smaller villages there are many fishing boats. Although there are pleasure fishing boats, there are an extraordinary number of small fishing boats with commercial fishers who use nets, or set crab or lobster pots. A typical Cornish boat is remarkably small for an Atlantic-going vessel, perhaps 18 feet, no bigger than the boats my family used for lake fishing. It will often have an inboard motor, and semi-enclosed cabin. The Coastal Watch told me they do carry radios, and of course weather predicting is better than ever, but I’ve been caught in sqalls in bigger boats than those and am as ever impressed with the toughness of the Brits. Just like when I was in London on the tube bombings of 7/7, they keep a stiff upper lip.
Day The Seventh
Today is our last day in Cornwall. Due to the fact that we could not walk past Falmouth and get a bus back because it would require two ferry crossings, we did not continue on the Southwest Coast path today. We enjoyed the Maritime History Museum in Falmouth, and did a little shopping for our loved ones, and of course worked on math; John and I are studying Quantum Computing and Theoretical Computing.
John will eventually finish the whole path, all 630 miles of it. I probably won’t, but I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in that sort of thing based on my experience. In fact, it would be possible to run the path, if you wanted to average 30 miles a day rather than 15. We met some trail runners, who were doing 45 miles a day. I suspect my wife and I could sustain 30 miles a day. She can run a lot more than that on a flat road but this would be very different than road running, and much rougher with a lot of sections where you would have to walk/climb.
Day the Eighth
If I were to do this again, I would have 1) studied a book on the geology of the region before I came, and 2) brought a nice camera, 3) have studied a birding and botanical guide. I personally find the more I know about the landscape the richer the experience of viewing it; though I know not everyone feels that way about it.
A note on prices: The pound is weak now ($1.30). At that exchange rate this is pretty close to prices in Austin for beer and food. The luggage transfer is about 100 pounds for the whole trip, and you get a deep discount if you have more than one sharing it. The rooms we stayed in ranged from 45 pounds to 120 pounds. We shared rooms when it was over 70 (generally), so it was a relatively economical vacation. In fact the night in London before the flight out will be by far the most expensive lodging at 130 pounds for just me.
Thanks to the gracious people of Cornwall and John for sharing this experience with me.
