Thursday 27th June:  Weather: 14°C to 17°C: Overcast and blowing a gale from the North West, showers

Padstow to Treyarnon:  23.4k walk to Treyarnon:  Ascent 574m, Descent 580m

Time:  9am to 4.45pm: Total time 7hrs 40 mins: Walk time: 6hrs 40mins Plus 2 x 30m stops: 

Accommodation: Treyarnon YHA

Leaving Padstow Harbour

Peaceful Cows

Timid cow hiding from me

Coffee near Trevone Beach

Trevone beach

Yeh! I found my red cap

Bogged icecream Harlyn Beach

Highlights today apart from more spectacular SWCP scenery, was finding my red cap that I had dropped on the path, adding an extra 5k to my 18k day, then watching the icecream van get bogged and pulled out at Harlyn Beach. Another highlight was getting to Treyarnon YHA where we had stayed when cycling around the UK in 1980, and again in 2018 when we hiked the first half of the SWCP.

It’s a cool misty 14°C morning when I awake at 5.45am, pack, shower then go upstairs for breakfast where Peter and Pam are waiting.  They’re a lovely English couple who have been doing bed n breakfast for 25 years. Breakfast this morning is cereal, toast, Marmalade and coffee.  A full English breakfast arrives but I had already kindly asked for a sheet of alfoil please to wrap up what I don’t eat - I mean all of it - to take with me for brunch later in the morning.  

I’m out the door at 9am and wander the 60 metres to the harbour, now in full tide and looking beautiful.  Slowly I climb Memorial Hill, and stop, as I always do, to see the names of those who died in WW1 and WW2, and ponder the grief suffered by so many families, specially when the same name appears multiple times, indicating brother/fathers from the same family.  Past the little beach at Harbour Cove to Stepper Point where the wind becomes a gale and I carry my cap for fear of it blowing off.  It’s easy walking along the cliff top and after 8.3k and 2hrs 30mins of walking, I stop at 11.30am and shelter from the wind behind a stone wall for a coffee with a hunk of bread and jam.  

Day walkers are coming and going today, and a group of young cows have moved teeteringly close to the cliff edge to avoid streams of walkers. I descend past the 80 foot deep Trevone Round Hole formed when the lashing sea undermines the cliff and causes a cave in.  There’s several of these holes formed along the SWCP but this is the deepest and most dangerous - and - unfenced! Below in Trevone Bay are swimmers and surfers so I stop to take a photo.  Down and over the beach, up the other side and around the cliff, where I momentarily stop to “think” about another photo before moving on.  Unknown to me, this is where I dropped my precious red cap that I had taken off to hold as I was afraid the wind would blow it over the cliff edge into the sea.   

I walk for a further 40 minutes towards Harlyn Bay where’s there’s more surfers, and I stop to take another photo.  Then I realised - NO CAP.  Somewhere while juggling phone, phone pouch, walking poles and cap, I’d dropped my cap.  I turn around to retrace my steps for 40 minutes back to lunch where I knew I had it just before the Trevone Round Hole, but it’s not there.  Damn! I turn to go back, walking along Trevone Beach again and up the other side, and while walking up, and looking up, I spy my cap on a post with a roick on it.  I had missed it on the way back the first time while looking for it as my eyes were looking down to the ground where I thought I’d dropped it while ’thinking’ about a photo.  My faith had been restored! It was Bonnie’s present to me and I really wanted to find that cap.  Joyously I walk back to the point of "lost cap realisation", then down to Harlyn Beach wheer I sit on the steps out of the wind to have a cup of tea with more bread and jam out of the wind.    The extra 5k was really worth it.  Highlight of my day! 

It’s 2.30pm when I leave to follow the signs for the SWCP down on to the beach trying not to get sand in my shoes and socks - that’s a good recipe for blistered feet.  At least it’s low tide as I trudge 500 metres to the other side and up the steps to the cliff track.  Turning back to look at the beach, I see there’s an icecream van that has just become bogged in a small water trench - up to it’s axles!  Another couple are there and we watch the drama unfold.  An hour later a 4wd from Sea Rescue appears, and after digging sand away from the wheels, the 4wd in reverse pulls the van free.  

There’s a shower of rain as I continue walking to the lighthouse at Trevose Head and more beach walking across Constantin Bay, which we avoided in 2018 as it was blowing a howling gale, 9°C cold and raining at that time, so we walked inland across the golf course.  A bit further on at 4.45pm, I reach the YHA at Treyarnon.  it was a long 23.4k day.

I’m in room 7 with a private shower and nice clean sheets on a double bunk plus single bed - room for 3 people and would have been cheap for 3 at £80. I go downstairs to the guests kitchen, make a cup of tea, and find a spot in the sun with a view to have by breakfast for dinner - sausage, bacon, mushrooms, lettuce and tomato - with a splash of mayonnaise I’ve been carrying all week.  Bed at 9pm, I’m hoping for an early start in the morning for the long walk back to John and Suzie in Newquay.  

Bogged icecream van up to axles

Bogged icecream van free

Treyarnon YHA