We spent at least half an hour walking out of Newquay, but then the coastal path began to improve, and from Watergate Bay, where we stopped for coffee, the scenery became more and more breathtaking: I run out of superlatives as picturesque, amazing, spectacular don’t do it justice! I was able to forget the sore shoulders and achy back as I drank in the views!

We had planned to break for lunch but the pub in Porthcothan, which I had found on the OS map, no longer exists and the nearby cafe was closed! We decided to just head for our destination – a golf and country club – convinced that a good meal awaited us. It was not to be: a golf tournament is in progress and lesser mortals cannot be served! We booked into our apartment and discovered that cooking facilities are available, so we made our way to a local convenience store and bought food for our meal and tomorrow’s breakfast. Time to relax!

A Backward Glance

Parks at Newquay’s shore line made the walk out of the city unexpectedly enjoyable, especially as a young lad warned us of a land slip destroying the coast path we were on about a mile along the coast with no diversion around, saving us an hour’s extension to the day’s trek. Early on the walk we met a young woman on her own following the South West Coast Path in the opposite direction to us and mainly wild camping. People who quietly do these long walks, wild camping on their own, mark them out as separate from the crowd for all the right reasons, and we quickly sense this attractive quality at every brief chat we get with them.

Between Whitestone Cove and Mackerel Cove the views were extraordinary with natural sculptures of rock towering out of the wide sandy beaches. Frogs croaked at us, Skylarks sang to us and a grey Goshawk spiralled above us as we tried to drink it all in. In my mind I was hearing Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake as the waves crashed and the hawk soared in perfect unison. Later the promise of a cold beer at a Pub located at the top of a very long tarmac hill didn’t materialise – somebody had nicked it. Spent about twenty minutes looking, but it definitely had gone, so we pushed on to Trevose Golf Club in hope of food and shelter. Shelter – yes and very good. Food – no, reserved only for competitors in a tournament they were hosting, so for us ‘out of bounds’!