Falmouth to Plymouth
17th-26th May 2011
This stretch of the South West Coast Path completed our walk around the coast of Cornwall - at around 290 miles, quite a feat in its own right and a thoroughly enjoyable walk. The Falmouth to Plymouth stretch starts with two ferry crossings (from Falmouth to St Mawes and then from St Mawes to Place) and ends with another one (from Cremyll to Plymouth - the photograph was taken as the boat pulled away from Cremyll). These ferry crossings (you also cross the River Fowey between Fowey and Polruan) highlight one characteristic feature of this section of the path - amazing estuaries. The estuaries are extremely attractive (it's real Daphne du Maurier country) and the natural harbours that they form are of major historical, political and economic importance, but they are also major obstacles: if we'd arrived to find a ferry not running, we'd have had some very long walks or taxi rides around the estuaries.
Partly for this reason, we decided to walk at a slightly slower rate than usual. For example, we didn't particularly want to leap straight from one ferry to another at St Mawes in order to be able to fit in the 'standard' 14 miles to Portloe on top of the two ferry crossings, so we broke the journey at Portscatho as well as Portloe. For us, this was definitely the right decision - we weren't in a rush and on our first day of walking, we were able to spend some time exploring Falmouth and St Mawes, looking around the little church at Place, and drinking tea in the tea gardens at St Anthony Battery (OK, those of you who know us well will know that it was only me drinking the tea...). On some long distance paths, shorter walking legs leave you in the middle of the day and the middle of nowhere with nothing to do, but on the south coast of Cornwall there is always something to see, usually an attractive little harbour (Portloe, Portscatho, Polkerris, Portwrinkle) or a rather larger and better known place such as Mevagissey, Fowey, Polperro or Looe.
In between the fishing villages and towns there are numerous pretty coves, longer beaches, gorse-covered granite headlands and wooded valleys. The countryside looks gentler than on the north coast of Cornwall, but don't be fooled - there are still plenty of what the guidebook we were using (the Aurum Press official National Trail guide 'South West Coast Path: Falmouth to Exeter' by Brian Le Messurier) delightfully describes as 'undulations'.
You pass close to the heart of Cornwall's china clay industry at St Austell, but it's not unattractive. The spoil heaps appear like distant snow-covered mountains and Charlestown, with its artificial harbour constructed partly to enable the export of the china clay, is a fascinating place (even though the tall ships for which the harbour has become well known weren't there when we were). Even Par, where you pass close to both disused and active china clay drying works, is interesting. If you don't like industry, just concentrate on the windswept Par Sands.
We walked the path in May, following a hot and dry April, so the wildflowers were just slightly (but only slightly) past their best and we also enjoyed the trees, birds, butterflies and dragonflies etc. The weather, with occasional showers, but mostly dry, windy and not too hot, was perfect for walking and there were not too many other tourists about. In addition to Le Messurier we used Ordnance Survey l: 25000 Explorer Maps 105, 107 and 108. The signposting wasn't quite as good as on previous stretches of the South West Coast Path, but this didn't cause any serious problems.
We booked our accommodation through Contours Walking Holidays and our luggage was transferred by Luggage Transfers, now a much larger company than when we first came across the owner's mother collecting bags two years ago, and extremely efficient. Contours appeared to have been unable to book accommodation for us in Portscatho or Portwrinkle, so we spent two nights each in Portloe and Looe and were transferred by taxi. This (especially the second transfer) was just slightly annoying, because the accomodation in Looe was the least good of the lot and we discovered that Contours had booked another group of four walkers into a B&B in Portwrinkle. The transfers worked OK though and accomodation was all fine; we particularly appreciated Kervernel in Mevagissey. One of the real joys was the quality of our evening meals - without exception we ate locally caught fish, superbly cooked.
We travelled from home by train via London Paddington and Truro to Falmouth Docks, from where we walked to the Grove Hotel, close to the National Maritime Museum. As last year (when we also stayed at the Grove Hotel) we had a pleasant meal at Clarks Restaurant (also the same as last year, and we weren't disappointed). At the end of the walk, after a night at the Camelot Hotel close to Plymouth Hoe (shown left), we walked up Armada Way to Plymouth Station, from where we caught a direct train back to London and so home.
