Day 16 - Mullion Cove, Lizard, Cadgwith, Coverack

Thursday 1st August

Total: 312+m / Daily:25m / Overcast clearing to Blue Skies / Fat Apples Cafe

I need to start putting the date on these as knowing the date becomes important when you try and plan when to get somewhere to meet someone!

Today I passed mainland England's most southerly point, increasing the checklist which now stands at: 

- SWCP highest point

- World's loudest snorer

- England's most westerly point

- England's most southerly point

High point of the day has to be stumbling across Fat Apples Cafe after walking late into the evening and thereby reducing tomorrow's mileage. I had seen the signs from a mile or so back but had little hope that it would still be open at 8pm. The signs started saying 'Good Cafe' and I began walking faster! Arriving at a clearing, the first thing I noticed was the apple trees and I sign reading 'Wild Camping and WiFi'. Internet access from my tent? Surely such things are not possible! I met Alex and Ed first, who were on the balcony of a nearby building and was soon introduced to the whole family.

They have lived here for 2 years and this is their first season running the cafe business. It was obvious from the very beginning that all of their heart's are in it and even their youngest at 15 talked with enthusiasm about the place. As Jacci said, there is real potential to get creative with what they offer here; they have the space, they obviously have the passion, anything is possible. I will come back when I am next in this part of the world and will buy charcoal, stoves, whatever you have on offer! It will be fascinating to see the development.

I was invited into their home for supper, given local beer to sample (I agree it needs more 'oomph') and treated like a friend. Your hospitality has been flawless and I wish you every success with the business. Thank you.

Other things today

- Met a Prostate cancer sufferer on path

- Saw a cottage being rethatched

- Explored caves at Kynance Cove

- Potentially saved someone's life, informing an Amish family that the beach they were settled on would become cut off by the tide in an hour

- Met a couple who have walked the entire SWCP in stages over a number of weekend each year, thank you for your support.

- Wandered through a disused quarry, zombie apocalypse feel to it

- Bought chips, onion rings, lemon cake, coffee cake (this has to stop!)

- Walked 25 miles and will get to Falmouth tomorrow

Day 15 - Marazion, Praa Sands, Porthleven, Mullion Cove

Total: 294+m / Daily:21m  / Mist + Penetrating Damp / Nothing Much

One thing I forgot to mention in yesterday's entry was the area of St. Loy. An enchanting place, with a largely wooded valley full of conifer trees. The granite stoned houses were carefully hidden from the path by low arched trees turning the path into a covered walkway. Further on, the path appeared on the beach, a beach of large granite boulders with a lovely view back up the valley. This whole area was quite different from the norm of the difference between land and sea being the main feature, it was great.

This morning felt slow but it was brightened after seeing my first geocachers on the path replacing a cache under a bridge as I approached. I said what I was doing and how I'd looked up coastal caches and decided against it after seeing the number of search results. They began telling me about other ones they had found on the coast after gauging my geocaching knowledge, but I said 'no!' and walked on. (...however, I will be looking up finds on 31.07.13 for coastal caches between Marazion and Porthleven).

My £3.99 watch broke over a week ago which has been lovely. I can still  check the time on my phone if I want, but it means I'm not counting down distance based on speed all the time and it's a great conversation starter! I have been telling time based on where the sun is, but that has only given me 'day' or 'night' with today's mist and cloud cover. That also meant that the views this morning, which were suppposed to have a magical quality looking at the castle on St. Michael's Mount looked a little more ominous, impressive nontheless. I managed to get a good photo of a horse galloping along the beach with the island in the background and I waited at a railway crossing with the horse a little later, it was a little odd standing behind a barrier next to a horse!

My slightly more expensive £4.99 walking poles are also struggling. The screws which attach the handles in place have rusted and one of the screw tight adjustments has snapped. This means the end comes straight off but the adjuster is tight, nothing a little duct tape won't fix! This means when I put weight through it, the pole is working as normal, the tape only serves to hold it all together when I lift the pole up (need to be careful of mud).

Resupply in Porthleven gave me 5 more days food and meths for 2 weeks. The man in the builders merchant wanted a demo of the Pepsi stove but another customer arrived just in time. Pitched next to a memorial for the first transatlantic wireless transmission in the early 1900s between Cornwall and Newfoundland. Long grass meant I didn't bother with my sleeping mat and the super thick long grass supported me just like the Tempur Mattress adverts. It was rather windy and a family from New Mexico doubted my spot would be alright, I had faith in MSR (tent brand) but staked it down a little tighter just in case.

I had supper with a growing audience... (see the last two photos) and slept very well.

Day 14 - Sennon Cove, Land's End, Porthcurno, Lamorna Cove, Penzance

Total: 277+m / Daily:18m  / Rain Clearing to Sun / A Social Day

3 miles to Sennon Cove and I took a big break to catch up on blog entries. I'm currently a full day's walking ahead and would like to maintain this allowing me to take a day off at one of my upcoming friend meets if I can. The plan is to reach the YHA at Penzance this evening and wash clothes, clean kit shower etc. without having to take time off. We'll see whether that happens in due course...

Land's End is a tourist mecha, one which I was glad to leave. I did however have 'the photo' taken which costs £9.95 even if you are a charity. The reason given is that they have charity challenges through everyday, in my mind that means they should be doing a lot of free photos?!

In 1967 a super tanker crashed (SS Torrey Canyon) into the rocks off the point of Land's End, one of 36 ships wrecked there. The reason they are so dangerous is that there are so many rocky sections at different levels making it impossible to visually navigate at any level of the tide. This supertanker was leaking its 100,000+ gallon cargo into the sea and the Government ordered the RAF to bomb it in an attempt to burn off the oil and contain the leak as best they could. I wish I had seen that!

I met lots of different people today (cards are a big success Em): 3 teachers; remet Annie who was bursting with energy on dolphin watch with Lucy and she donated a brownie! (which are banned in 19 countries due to their addictiveness); one man from the Dominican Republic who bought a bike whilst in Manchester, then a trailer to carry his bag, is now in Cornwall and has surf board, tent etc. in there as well, brilliant!; two Germans who had only today completed their end to end cycle; a girl from Glasgow painting seascapes on driftwood and a kind lady in a shop in Mousehole (the name of a little village). Apologies for not expanding on all of these stories, I would be writing forever and there is walking to be done.

Finding out that the YHA in Penzance was a mile from the coast was frustrating, as those who follow the Twitter feed would have noticed, but I was pleasantly rewarded with an excellent hostel manager, Paul, who works hard, has a good sense of humour and was generally very amicable, a YHA that looked more like a hotel, good company in the dorm and a bar. Late night at 11pm and the beers meant this morning was a little more tardy than I had envisaged.

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Day 13 - Zennor, Pendeen

Total: 246+m / Daily :18m  / Rain clearing to Blue Skies / Tired

Tired after yesterday's huge day. Lots of mining works today and I passed Levent mines which had one of the first beam engines installed to pump water. Trevethick's (sp.?) influence spread very quickly across all of industry with steam really firing the industrial revolution into action. I had a brief look around the museum and studied the inch:foot working replica desparately trying to understand the rod operated value system which equalise pressure in the cyclinder. I finally got it, much easier to understand than the incredible beam engine on the Kennet Canal, that rod system blew my mind with its complexity.

Fell asleep behind a wall in the shade and fell asleep again whilst taking a break from the 'oh so hard' task of pitching my tent. It was windy all day today, I think that constant exposure to the elements helped to sap my energy. Not the case for Annie at Cape Cornwall car park! This national trust representative is exactly what is neded at such a bleak and exposed bit of land. We had a lovely chat about life/IoM/Cancer etc. and I was able to fill my water bottles there. Thank you so much Annie for brightening my otherwise rather dull day, expect that postcard once I return home in a month.

Camped next to a mine shaft and it rained for most of the night.

Day 12 -St. Agnes, Porthtowan, Portreath, Hayle, St. Ives

Total: 232+m / Daily:28m  / Constant Wind, Regular Showers / 1x Pod of Dolphins

Busy day today, a total of 29 miles which certainly wouldn't have happened if I didn't bump into the Coaster Crew part way through the morning, in Porthtowan I think it was. Sarge was eating chocolate, Nick, a pork pie and Nog consulting maps. (reread that last sentence as a list of things Sarge was eating, haha!). I suppose it was subconsciously because others were eating, but I got rather hungry and pulled out my bag of trail mix I had created in Aldi in Newquay. I was promptly slated for eating bird food, but to hell with 'em, it's tasty stuff. It contains peanuts, cashews, hazelnuts, almonds, raisins, dried: red & green apple, mango, pineapple & kiwi. I have 1kg of it, that's the only downside. I will attempt to take this entry chronologically:

I saw a pod of dolphins this morning, or rather, a man saw them and pointed them out to me. I saw a man running round the headland and assumed he had lost a dog or something. He said he'd been following them for a couple of days and they'd just passed us. I turned around and walked back along the path for 5 (back, I know!) minutes and sure enough, at the next outcrop we could see 10-15 of them, jumping out of the water heading east.

I passed a DoE bronze group a little later slogging their way up a hillside of a valley. They are all part of the Air Cadets and I saw a couple of other groups throughout the morning, it must be DoE weekend. One of the lads, Christian, said they had learned about prostate cancer in school and what a great charity it is. Christian then began routing around for a donation. His fellow cadets also donated and I am very thankful for their support. Christian donated mostly in coppers which added a fair weight to my bag for the day and I'll spare you the embarrassment of the story regarding why it was all coppers in case you read this Christian! I'm glad I bumped into their assessor further up the path and was able to share what a credit to their organisation that group are. (One bit of advice: get cracking with the service/skill/sport, that's the one that will hold up your progression through the award scheme.)

Approaching lunchtime, I arrived at the everlasting sands near Hayle. It was spitting with rain and progressively getting harder. I took shelter in a lovely sandy cave and had lunch. Peanut butter wrap x2 and some bird food, delicious.

The showers continued into Hayle, 'The birthplace of the industrial revolution and it doesn't seem to have moved on a great deal since. I hid in the co-op as the first downpour came, the shop owner saying it was the heaviest rain she'd seen since moving there 8 years ago. I will try and upload the video I took at some point.

From this point it was about 6 miles to St. Ives along roads, tracks, concrete paths and other urban environment. I took shelter from the next heavy downpour in a pub but the third got me. I was perfectly happy in full raingear and remained dry and in high spirits. The rain was incredibly heavy and the steep steps up into St. Ives were literally a waterfall. It was amusing to see stones the size of a tennis ball being washing down the path, it makes erosion much easier to appreciate!

Met CC Crew in the pub and was able to take up the offer made 18miles ago of a shower. Nog gave me his dessert, an unexpected surprise of icecream, biscuit, coffee and amaretto (sp.?) and I bought a pizza to eat as I wandered out of town looking for a place to pitch. 2miles onto a 'severe' section I found the perfect flat grassy patch on an outcrop sheltered by the wall of an old mining structure.

What a day.

Day 11 - Newquay, Holywell Bay, Perranporth

Total: 202+m  / Daily:20m  / Sun, Overcast, Rain / 1x Naked Photoshoot

I had nice spot to camp last night: a headland some way away from Newquay but with a view looking at it across the bay. In Newquay by mid morning I decided not to stay for long, only visiting Aldi (which I did not know doesn't accept credit cards!) before heading on past the famous Fistral Beach. I walked a narrow path between the sand dunes and the golf course, sand was slowly but surely getting into my boots.

Sand dunes, or beaches were in sight for the vast majority of today and I saw 100s if not 1000s of surfers across the various spots today. Sand makes for progress slow, especially when it's soft sand but I was happy enough, dragging my poles and making patterned trails as I went.

The ferry service at Fern Pit had turned into a wooden bridge, one which they use when the tide is fully out and it has floating supports so that it is at the right height. There was no mention of this in the guide book so it made a pleasant surprise. I had my photo taken by a lady who sympathises with my cause and I wish her the best with next week. It'll be interesting to see whether that photo makes it here.

WARNING, the following paragraph contains references to scenes of a sexual nature and is not suitable for younger audiences. Well, perhaps that is a little strong, but now that you are paying attention: I rounded a corner of a rocky headland to yet another sandy cove and there were 3 people all looking down. I assumed a seal or some sort of animal. Once I got close enough to see down there were 7 or 8 people looking down into a secluded part of the beach. A lady with long back hair was posing naked against the rocks whilst a photographer captured the moment. This continued as she held various poses, completely oblivious to her audience who were chatting and giggling above.

I camped on a flat grassy spot at some disused mines. Wasn't sure whether I was going to disappear down the cliff in the night! There are a number of blow holes, caged with iron which look a little odd sticking up out of the ground.

I managed to withdraw some cash without paying the charge for taking cash on a credit card thanks to the prompt machine at the card company's call centre after I phoned to try and pay it off. However I can't do that again and will have to pay some interest next time... Any bright ideas for how to do the next 400m on £100 cash (and card)?