Monday 23d April: Weather: 9°C to 12°C: Overcast, very windy, no rain, no mist, no mud
Port Isaac to Padstow: 21k walk: 6hrs: 9.30am to 3.30pm. Then 8 min ferry Rock to Padstow: 600m ascent
Accommodation: 14@padstow BnB with host Lesley
Port Isaac to Padstow
Fishy smells from Padstow Slipway
Ahead to Rumps Point
Abandoned tin mine shaft
Green fields and more
Keen fisherman
Stepping stones over mud
Morning tea at Port Quin
Morning tea after Port Quin
Blow holes
Back to Tintagel and Bude Masts
Seal spotting Rumps Point
Top of Rumps Point
Inlet to Rock and Padstow
Looking back to Pentire Point
Lunch on Padstow Beach
50kph gusts sand walking to Ferry
Ferry from Rock to Padstow
Another stunning day. It was supposed to be wet but no, it’s overcast, windy and cold - much better than misty muddy and mizzle. Not a difficult day with the ups and downs getting smaller. Highlight of the day was the peninsular out to Rumps Point and Pentire Point around Pentire Farm watching the sea birds and looking for seals - we saw one!
Breakfast at 8am in the little tea room where the walls are adorned with pamphlets advertising Doc Martin tours. Many tourists come to Port Isaac to check out the sets filmed around Port Isaac. Breakfast is on a little table designed for “tea for two” and we’re constantly shuffling food to adjacent tables to make room for our muesli, toast and English Breakfast. But having said that. it was a quaint setting and the Terrace Tea Rooms was a fabulous place to stay. Highly recommended.
A short trip up the lane to the local Co Op to get our fresh bread for the day and while packing the bread, it’s time to get out the long pants, gloves and neck warmer - it’s a cold 9°C and windy. On the way back down to the little harbour, there’s a traffic jam between two delivery vans, one of which is a Barnecutts bread van. I immediately recognise the name as the bread we had two days ago in Tintagel at Baysone for breakfast and despite already having a fresh baguette from the Co Op, I follow the van to a local bread shop and buy an extra loaf of nut bread- which I elect to carry.
Back through the smelly fish markets and up the hill to a split in the South West Coast Path either to the coast or through the farms, and we elect the farms for a change. There’s no mud in the fields and for the first time we see crops growing - potatoes and cabbages. The farm track leads us to Port Quin, a quaint little haven about 5k from Port Isaac and soon after we come across an old shaft from a tin mine roped off. There’s also a look-a-like pretend castle called Doyden Castle which in 2011was used as "Pentire Castle" in the ITV series Doc Martin. Despite being overcast, the day is clear and we can see all the way to Rumps Point on a headland jutting out from Polzeath. There’s remnants of mud around but someone had gone to the trouble of planting stepping stones in the mud to make it easy for us.
The path follows more green fields mixed with little coves cut back by the raging surf into the rocks. It’s very windy and by 11am we see a set of timber steps leading down to one of these small rocky inlets to have a morning coffee sheltered from the wind. We have two loaves of bread - quite unnecessary but really nice, so we have some of the white baguette with butter and honey to go with our jet boiled coffee. I may not have mentioned it earlier but our skimmed milk problem was solved by buying a tin of carnation evaporated milk which we keep in a water bottle for several days. It lasts longer than fresh milk and tastes heaps better than paint thinners (aka skimmed milk).
Soon after we’re on a circuit out to Rumps Point headland. There’s many walkers out today, despite being a Monday and it’s not holidays yet. Pentire Farm occupies a large chunk of the headland and it’s a fabulous walk looking back to Tintagel and the Bude Masts where we had been several days earlier. There’s a small boat carrying tourists around the headland in search of seals. We managed to see one solitary seal which disappeared before we could get a photo. Out to Rumps Point and it was such spectacular scenery that we decided to do an add on bit and walk around the small headland along the narrow cliff track and then up to Rumps Point
At some point, there’s a plaque in a field, not on the track and not marked and we didn’t know about it until we reached Padstow. The plaque is “For The Fallen” and It contains the immortal lines:
“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”
This famous poem was written here in 1914 by Laurence Binyon, as he overlooked the cliffs here in Polzeath.
Back on the northern side of the peninsular the we’re walking headlong into winds gusting to 50kph. It’s 9°C, but felt like 5°C and my ears were so cold they ached. We bumped into an Aussie couple we had met in Tintagel, Richard and Val, and they were also headed to Padstow. We’re both aiming for the ferry across the inlet from Rock to Padstow but Richard thinks the last one is at 4.30pm, though our host Lesley at our BnB called 14@Padstow emailed us to say it was 5.30pm. Not to take a chance on missing the ferry we stepped up the pace - it also made it a little warmer.
It’s 2pm when we reach the beach at Padstow, and Ian ducks into the little Spar supermarket to buy a cheese to go with our 2 kilos of bread - well it feels like that after a long walk! We find a spot on a seat out of the wind and in the “almost” sun, opposite the beach. No time to stay for long to ensure we get the last ferry if indeed it is 4.30pm, so we scurry along the very sandy path, freezing cold heading back into the wind. We’re walking really quickly and at 3.24, we arrive at Rock, a small car park from where the Padstow ferry leaves and it arrives from the other side just as we do. Richard and Val are already there, as are another 20 people going across this iconic ferry to the tourist resort of Padstow. Its a £2 trip that takes 8 minutes.
Soon we’re wandering around Padstow’s narrow streets and following Ian’s google maps up the hill for another kilometre to our BnB called 14@Padstow arriving at 4pm. We’re greeted by Lesley and shown upstairs. We knew we had a suite but didn’t realise we have the entire upper floor of 2 bedrooms, a lounge/dining room and bathroom - complete with fridge and heater.
It’s time to book a few more nights of accommodation on the second leg of our walk after Newquay and last night when we were looking, we got stuck for places around Land’s End with very little accommodation. Splitting off one day into St Ives and donating it to the Land’s End trip to divide the walk would suit accommodation better and shorten some of the distances. It took 2 hrs to book from Pendeen to Penzance around Land’s end but it worked out well. Job done!
Time to walk up to Tescos, 5 minutes up the road in the freezing cold, to buy a few beers, honey, jam and capsicums. But hey, the beers in Tescos aren’t in the fridge so Ian chooses his 3 beers, stashes them behind the icecream in Tescos freezer section to be picked up 20 minutes later when we’ve done our other shopping. And voila, cold beers. The walk back was even colder, but it was so lovely to return to a warm cosy lounge room and to have dinner of the mornings sausages and bacon, with fresh capsicums and mayonnaise, complete with a variety of beers - Cornish Tribute and a Proper Black, which turned out to be a really nice mild stout. A few hours of blogging and time for bed. It’s supposed to be raining late tomorrow so we’ll need to leave early.
Dinner at 14@Padstow BnB