Wednesday 18th April: Weather: 13°C to 19°C: Sunny all day, windy and still muddy
Clovelly to Elmscott: 21k walk: 7hrs 30m nins: 9.30am to 5.00pm: Ascent Descent 1100 metres
Accommodation: Elmscott BnB Farm at the YHA
Clovelly to Elmscott
Clovelly harbour on a sunny morning
First sun in 8 days
Blue skies, farms, gorse bushes
Blue skies and headlands
More blue skies and headlands
A pheasant crosses the path
Just to see the blue skies again
Mud and more mud
Morning tea with a blue sky view
How good is this
Cliffs, pebbles, surf and blue skies
Now that’s unavoidable mud!
Blue skies
Lunch with a view at Hartland Point
Surf on the rocks
Checking the cracks
Surf on the rocks
Trip down memory lane, the YHA at Elm
scott where we stayed in 1980
Beer o’clock at the Elmscott farm
An absolutely beautiful sunny day. High cliff top walking then arriving at Elmscott BnB Farm house adjacent to the Youth Hostel where we stayed 38 years ago in 1980.
Awake in Clovelly at 6am to the sounds of nothing. There’s no cars, no people, just pure quiet. Breakfast isn’t until 9am so time to catch up with phone calls and emails before packing and wandering down the pebble stone path to the tiny Clovelly harbour with three boats moored. It’s already a warm sunny 13°C (compared to previous days of 8°C and mist) and not much is happening in the village except for a few tradesmen starting work. The village has switched from fishing to tourism and most of the cottages sell craft or are Devonshire tea rooms.
Breakfast is a magnificent spread of stewed prunes, the most delicious grapefruit slices, yoghurt and toast followed by a huge English breakfast which we again stash in a container after checking with our host that it’s ok to take what we don’t eat.
It’s a steep climb out of the village to the car park and at 9.30am we’re heading off to Elmscott, a 21k day. The weather is just beautiful, getting warmer by the minute. The track mostly follows a 2 metre wide narrow grassy strip between farm fences and the cliff top, sometimes precariously close to the edge with a 200 metre drop below. The views both forward, back and across to the Isle of Lundy about 20 miles off the coast are spectacular. This is the best we’ve seen the coastal path in 8 days.
At 11.30 am, after walking for 2hrs, we’re looking for somewhere to sit for morning tea, but it’s so windy and open, it's another 30 minutes before we find a grassy knoll behind some gorse bushes with views out to the Isle of Lundy. More farmland and cliff top walking, and soon the mud reappears. We’ve had a mud free morning but now there’s sections of the track that’s two metres wide and six inches deep in mud - and unavoidable. Other sections have avoidable mud where we can hop over a fence, walk through a green grassy field, then hop back over to rejoin the track after the mud. But not now!!
By 2pm we’ve reached Hartland Point, a turning point on the South West Coast Path where there’s a sudden change in direction and a remarkable change in scenery from wooded slopes and valleys to barren cliffs and headlands with green farms. It’s windy. Really windy with 70kph gusts and I’m hanging onto my orange Nike cap as there’s no chance of getting it back from the bottom of a 200 metre cliff. We’re famished by the time we come across another grassy patch for lunch out of the wind with views across to the Isle of Lundy and surf on the rocks below. Eggs and bacon on bread for the 7th day in a row, but it tastes delicious.
Another hour and we’re at Hartland Quay, with it’s only building, the Hartland Quay Hotel providing an option for accommadation for walkers on the path. But we have decided to go on a further 4.5k to Elmscott for two reasons. Firstly we stayed at the YHA there in 1980 on a 5 month cycling trip in Europe, so it was a sentimental place to stay, and secondly, the walk tomorrow to Bude is 24.5k and is noted as the hardest day on the entire South West Coast Path, so taking a few k off would make tomorrow’s walk easier. BUT, we did buy a bottle of wine and beer at the Hartland Hotel, transferring the wine to plastic water bottles to carry to Elmscott.
It’s a hard slog along the narrow cliff top edge with a strong southerly wind gusting dangerously across us at 60kph. An hour out from Hartland Quay, there’s a sign to the Elmscott YHA and 10 minutes later we’re walking into the YHA where we had stayed 38 years ago. Jenny is the YHA volunteer warden and points us to the Elmscott BnB just 50 metres up the road. Both the BnB and the YHA are owned by Thirza and John Gorman and we chose to stay in the BnB for only a few pound extra, with less food to carry.
We’re warmly welcomed by Thirza and shown to our bedroom. Thirza puts our beer and wine in the fridge while we have a hot shower and do some washing. Thirty minutes later, with washing on the line outside, we’re sipping a cold wine and beer in the sunny lounge room.
We take the rest of the wine up to the YHA kitchen to have with our microwaved sausages bacon and eggs while chatting to Jenny, the volunteer warden from Bristol, who loves walking - and chatting. An hour later, we’re back at the farm to have an early night.