Bude to Crackington Haven

We woke to sunshine, though we realised as we were leaving the guest house that we were in for a windy day. We also had rain and hail showers, but there was plenty of sunshine too. We had omelettes for breakfast which made a very pleasant change, and we had a chat with the walkers from Yorkshire who we'd met in Clovelly and who were also staying at Fairway Guest House. We left just after 9am and walked back down to Crooklets Beach to rejoin the coast path. We passed the large open air swimming pool (where someone was swimming, though in a wetsuit!) then went into Bude town centre to buy (huge and very reasonably priced) rolls for lunch. We crossed the River Neet and walked across to the old Bude canal - I hadn't realised that the canal would still have water in it and it was very attractive. The canal was apparently built to take calcium-rich beach sand to inland farms and it ends with a sea loch, which appears to have been restored recently. Past the sea loch there's Bude Haven, an attractive little harbour. All in all, Bude is a pretty place.

We climbed up to 'Compass Point', named after the tower there with the points of the compass indicated. Then we followed the cliff top along towards Widemouth. The National Trail Guide doesn't say any more about this section which is a pity; it was attractive scenery, especially in the area around Phillip's Point Nature Reserve, and it was good walking - not as easy as I'd expected, perhaps because we were battling against the wind. However we quickly realised that an advantage of the strong wind was that the showers passed quickly.

There were surfers on the first part of the beach at Widemouth and the carpark was quite busy (there was an event organised by a Christian surfing organisation), but the second part of the beach was almost entirely empty and much more attractive. We left Widemouth by way of a grassy verge that took us slightly inland (to avoid crumbling cliffs), with views ahead to an activity centre. We descended to Wanson Mouth, joined a road and climbed quite steeply then, just past a little carpark, we left the road and crossed Bridwell Point. There was a conveniently placed bench here so we stopped for lunch. There was a very steep descent to Millock and the walkers from Yorkshire, who were heading all the way to Boscastle today, overtook us as we climbed up the hill on another brief section of road walking. The views back to the folding in the cliff at Millock were spectacular.

It's only four and three quarter miles from Millock to Crackington Haven and at first the descents and ascents were reasonably gentle. We passed the direct route to 'Bears & Boxes' (the guest house we were staying at tonight) and went through the top end of Dizzard Wood (apparently famous for its dwarf oaks and nationally important lichens) and past a rather wonky trig. point. We negotiated the 75-metre descent and ascent just south of Chipman Point relatively easily and managed to convince ourselves that this was the end of the serious ups and downs for today - and also that we'd had the worst of the weather.

However there was another valley to cross and, after admiring the village of St. Gennys in the distance, we climbed right up onto the ridge at Castle Point - at exactly the same time as the heavens opened with a storm of horizontal hail! We couldn't walk into it and there was no shelter, so we had no option but to sit down facing the other way and to wait for it to pass. There was then a steep descent down to the stream at Aller Shoot and an ascent to the headland at Pencannow.

Once we'd interpreted the footpath signs correctly, all that remained to be done was to walk down the hill to Crackington Haven. As instructed, we went into 'The Cabin' for a cup of tea and asked Andrea to ring Fran Holmes at 'Bears & Boxes'. It was actually Robert who came to pick us up, and we passed the other guests (who had cut their walk short because of the weather) just as we were arriving at Bear & Boxes. Fran was there to greet us.