Bude to Land's End Coastalpath-arooing - Day 6

Cambrose to St Ives

Viewed on the map we didn't seem to have that far to go for this leg of the journey to St Ives but it did include a big inland stretch to circumnavigate the estuary at Hayle. It also included the crossing of the Sahara Hayle Sands (about 4.5 miles end to end) under what turned out to be a very warm sun. In fact the weather was now lovely and the cold winds and gales that had harried us all week had finally gone away. This made for hot and crusty going though!

Cambrose to St Ives

Once we actually reached St Ives we were really knackered and left the little coast path bit that went around St Ives Head until after we'd had a beer and dinner in one of the St Ives pubs. We almost fell asleep into our dinners though with the lovely (but strong) Otter Ale not particularly helping matters. With St Ives being a busy and yet tooeyly trendy little place, we soon called it a night, wandered around the headland and then retired to our campsite, handily right on the coast path just west of St Ives. A 22.5 mile day under the blazing sun.

Cambrose camp site

The sea looking much calmer than we'd been used to

Yellow and blue

The full ship's compliment

Harry cooling off before our trek across the Sahara

Important sea weeding

Sanderlings a-scuttling

Harry without panniers at our lunch stop at Gwithian

Looking back across the desert

After a 3 mile inland trek around Hayle itself we finally arrive just across from where we'd been 3 miles earlier!

St Ives ahoy!

St Ives harbour

View from St Ives Head

Final Day - St Ives to Land's End

Bude to Land's End Coastalpath-arooing - Day 5

Holywell to Portreath

And blimey was the wind blowing a hoolie! Things were very overcast and stupidly windy for most of the day and it was a struggle to battle through it all in places, especially on the north side of some of the headlands where the wind absolutely pulverised us. At one point we were on top of a 250 ft cliff and being showered by sea spray from the waves crashing into the rocks below! Hester video'd Harry coastalpath-arooing (albeit later in the day when the sun had broken through) and you can get a fair impression of the wind from that. And just how beautiful Harry is of course ☺

Anyway 17.5 miles later and we finally made it to Portreath. Unfortunately our nearest campsite was another 2.5 miles inland at Cambrose.... but what a lovely campsite it was; the best on all of our stretch of coast path probably.

Coast path left, beach to the right...

Beware of adder attack!!!!!

Perran Beach with buckets of yellow Horseshoe Vetch in the foreground 

The boys looking suitably cool

Curlews Whimbrel ahoy!

Wind up the jacksy

Wild seas

Approaching St agnes

A gannet

Forging on map in hand

Ye olde tin mines

Leaving Porthtowan having had delicious nachos followed by lemon drizzle cake in the beach side Blue Bar

Downy and uppying as usual

Day 6 - Cambrose to St Ives

Bude to Land's End Coastalpath-arooing - Day 4

Treyarnon to Holywell

After the short day 3 we needed to play catch up and day 4 leg of the yomp was set to be 20 and a bit miles. Before the off we tried the YHA for breakfast (which they advertised as available from 8 am) but the guy there was so ridiculously and over-the-toply appalled by us bringing Harry into the hostel that, rather than grab a snack there and eat outside, we took our business to the local snack van instead. A big thumbs down then for the Treyarnon youth hostel!

The weather was bright and sunny but there was a humdinger of a chilly breeze blowing. All the same once we got moving it wasn't too bad and Hester even wore her running shorts! Many superb beaches were visited yet again, all of them with crashing surf and with a fair few surfers out and about. The weather got really cold and cloudy by the time we reached Newquay, with one bitterly cold rain shower thrown in, but that didn't seem to stop the surfers on the beaches there at all. They were all wimps though, wearing wet suits ☺.

It brightened up again after that and we managed to catch the Fern Pit Ferry over the River Gannel before he shut up shop for the day - a fantastically tooey little set up it was too. We then crossed the dunes to Crantock Beach, whizzed round a couple of headlands and we reached Holywell... and our weirdest campsite yet, the Holywell Bay Holiday Park; this was massive, seemed full of empty electric camper van/caravan hook ups, had a golf course and attaching theme park, seemed spookily spick and span, was chocker with amenities but nobody else seemed to be there. The local pub though the St Pirans Inn was lovely as was the St Austell Tribute beer

Treyarnon Snack Van

More boring old wild flowers as far as the eye can see and sea views

The yellow flowers, which pretty much grew everywhere on the coast path, are called Horseshoe Vetch (I'm reliably informed)

The huge beach near Bedruthen

Dropping down to the beach

Not a half bad beach then

There's tons of gorse too

Fistral Beach in Newquay

Looking back at Fistral Beach

The ferry crossing

The Ferry Pit

Dunes

Hester took this picture as you might expect

Day 5 - Holywell to Portreath

Bude to Land's End Coastalpath-arooing - Day 3

Polzeath to Treyarnon

For day 3 we decided to have a chill out day and, having crossed the sands at Rock and caught the ferry over to Padstow, we had a nice amble around Padstow Harbour along with a very civilised coffee break sitting in the sun and looking like perfect, albeit slightly scratty, tourists. 

We then set off across the beautiful sands north from Padstow. The weather was warm and sunny and, with the tide far out in the morning, the sea from Padstow looked a gorgeous tropical blue. In fact this was true of most of our route on the day with the fabulous beaches of Harbour Cove, Trevone Bay, Harlyn Bay, Mother Ivy's Bay, Booby's Bay (insert booby joke here) and finally Treyarnon Beach at our final destination all to come. 

All the same. despite it only being getting on for a 14 odd mile yomp for the team that day, we were glad to see Treyarnon when we eventually got there. It had been a warm, sunny and still windy day and we were definitely feeling the burn. Luckily we immediately found a great camp site and, although there was no local pub, the Treyarnon Youth Hostel helpfully advertised evening meals and a bar - hooray! Less helpfully when we went down to the flipping youth hostel at 7:30 it was locked to non-hostellers with a small sign on the window mentioning that they close early on Wednesdays and Thursdays - boo!

So we were starving with no pub, no shops and no much publicised youth hostel cafe bar. We had also run out of Harry food too. I randomly (and slightly desperately) stopped a lady tourist from Brum and asked where the nearest pub was and she gave us directions to a pub "ooh it must be a mile away"....... Well it was at least 3 miles the way she told us to go but only half that coming back and it was also Harry's lucky day - the pub, the Farmer's Arms in St Merryn, had had a carvery that day and they kindly gave Harry a plastic container of carvery scraps, mainly huge chunks of chicken breast! Never-the-less our chill out day of 14 miles of coast pathateering had been supplemented by an additional 4.5 miles of pub getting toing and back froming!!

Heading for Rock and the Padstow Ferry

The Padstow Ferry

The tropic of Padstow

At least my fell shoes aren't looking embarrassingly new

Ship's Mate Hester and the Ship's Dog Harry on Padstow Sands

Harry mistaking a buoy for a ball

Padstow Bay

Proof that I was running some of the time

Looking hot ;)

A much needed swimming break

For me and Haz too

Harry admiring my Round Hole exploring

Dinas Head I think, just north of booby Bay

A health and safety nightmare

Booby Bay

Another view of Booby Bay (have I said booby enough yet?)

Day 4 - Treyarnon to Holywell