Porthleven to Lizard Point

Monday 23rd July 2001 

With no new walks until Christmas I am going to look back at some of my older walks. The last time I did this I went back to September 2000, but the following spring I was unable to do any walks due to the Foot & Mouth outbreak so it wasn’t until the summer when I was finally able to get some walking done. However, since vast stretches of the countryside were still off-bounds I picked an area that was open: South Devon and Cornwall. Looking back at this holiday my one abiding memory is that it was badly planned, mainly through leaving booking the hostels until it was too late. The first week of the two week holiday was spent in South Devon, but even though I did a fair bit of walking around the stunning coastal scenery I didn’t do a full day’s walk at any point during the week. It wasn’t until I moved to Cornwall the following week that I did my first all-day walk and, as I wrote in my diary, I was “looking forward to finally getting some solid walking in. I’m disappointed that it’s taken until now.” 

The walk was along the South West Coast Path between Porthleven and Lizard Point, the most southerly point in Britain. My memory of this walk is unfortunately poor and I didn’t say much about it in my diary, which might be interpreted as saying that it wasn’t a particularly great walk, but I did say it was “a good day, a nice walk.” I caught a bus from the town of Penzance to the small, quiet port of Porthleven. At this point in the day it was overcast with no sign of the sun coming out so I didn’t bother putting on any sun cream. This would have disastrous consequences. Looking at a map of the walk now brings back some memories as it began with a stroll along Porthleven Sands for several miles all the way to Gunwalloe Fishing Cove. From this point the walk started to get interesting as I passed some spectacular coves including Poldhu Cove above which Marconi sent the first radio transmissions across the Atlantic. It is a pity that it would be many years before I started taking pictures of my walks. The one above is from the excellent website of the tragically departed John Butler, and judging by his other pictures this was a fabulous walk. The scenery gets better and better with stunning cliffs combined with gorgeous beaches. I am gutted that my memory of this walk is not any better as it must have been a stunner. Maybe it was the later events that spoilt my memory. After the cloudy start to the day the clouds cleared to reveal a wonderfully sunny day for this great walk. However I failed to put any sun cream on, so by the time I reached the lighthouse at Lizard Point I was red raw and I suffered for the rest of the week as a result. Ever since I have been particularly careful to not only pack plenty of sun cream but to also apply it, at least once during the day. 

My problems on this walk continued after I got to Lizard Point. I had anticipated being able to catch a mid-afternoon bus but after waiting ages for it I realised that, unlike the rest of the country, the schools in this area were still open so the bus was not running at that time and I had to wait an hour for another one. This ruined all my other connections so I had an hour’s wait for another bus in the town of Helston and half an hour in Redruth for a train back to Penzance. I said at the start of this post that I felt this holiday was badly planned, but I think a large component of that was a poorly kept public transport network. Looking back through my diary of this holiday it is littered with missed connections for various reasons. In today’s world of extensive websites of timetables it is easy to ensure you have the right timetable for your holiday but ten years ago Councils and bus companies were too slow to put their public transport information on the internet. This holiday proves to me the value of spending countless hours poring over maps and timetables planning holidays. So I'd better get started on next year’s holidays!