Monday 24th June:  Weather: 14°C to 19°C: Overcast no rain

Camelford to Tintagel:  21.3k, Asc 488m, Desc 601m

Time:  8.00am to 3.15pm: Total time 7hrs 15mins: Walk time: 6hrs 45min Plus 2 x 15min stops: 

Accommodation: Pendrin Guest House Tintagel

Beautiful Full English Breakfast

Moors near Davidstowe Creamery

Davidstowe Airfield built WW2

No more Public Footpaths!!

Very narrow country Lanes

Boscastle - finish of Smugglers Way

Rugged Corninsh coast at Boscastle

A wonderful day with lots of highlights.  Firstly I finished the Smugglers Way at Boscastle, then joined the South West Coast Path to Tintagel on a lovely cool day for walking to begin my five day walk on the SWCP.  From moors to cliffs.

I’m awake at 5am after a good nights sleep and packed, showered and down to breakfast at 7am.  There’s a few episodes at Faulty Towerss re sitting in the wrong chair at breakfast and sitting in the private living room, but the breakfast is fantastic. The napkins, cutlery, breads and jams are laid out in perfect rows and the full English breakfast is laid out like the Hotel Hilton.  I asked for an Engliush Breakfast with no beans please, but that was too hard to change so I got the lot.  I eat the beans, then skilfully put the rest in my Jamaica Inn box.  Too hard to ask them to do it.  

I leave at 9am on a 14°C overcast morning, and walk up to Rough Tor Road, which leads back to Bodmin Moor, but soon turn off to Tyland Rd, then a farm track which leads to the Davidstowe Airfield constructed in WW2, where I join rejoin the Smugglers Way to Boscastle.  There’s wide open fields in the middle of Davidstowe Woods, and soon I'm at the Creamery where there’s a War Museum next door, with a few older men, all with no teeth, waiting for visitors to the museum.  I chat for a bit while they tell me about the airfield, then walk on up a country lane to Hendraburnich Farm.  After sighting the correct path up another Public Footpath leading to the Valency River Valley, I quickly decide to give Public Footpaths a miss, and deviate from the Smugglers Way to find my own way into Boscastle.  It's 11.30am and I’ve done 9.5k so I stop near Halwill Barton Farm for a coffee and biscuit, sitting near a concrete pipe by the side of the road for 15 minutes.

Moving on towards Tregatherall Farm, I head down a lane past Polrany Farm Cottages and then descend 2k down a steep lane to Boscastle Harbour where the Smugglers Way finishes.  I don’t stop long there, just time enough for a photo then off up the hill following the SWCP around the Cliffs for another 8k, to Tintagel and Camelot’s Hotel.  I soon find the Pendrin Guest House at 3.15pm, right next door to the Bosayne Guest House where Ian and I stayed in 2018.  The view of the Camelot Hotel from my room is exactly the same - spectacular. There’s a separate private shower up the corridor, then after a shower, and washing a few clothes, I have dinner of lettuce, mayonnaise and the left over breakfast from the Hotel Countryman.  Bed at 9pm.  

Camelot Hotel view from window