St Just to Land's End and Porthcurno

19th May 2007

11.5 miles on Coast Path; total of 13 miles walking

Click here for all our photos from this walk.

We had a room on the front of the house, so were slightly disturbed (by local youths and traffic) in the night - that's the disadvantage of staying in a town! However we had a lovely breakfast and the owners of the B&B were very friendly - and admitted to a tendency to collect 'everything' (jugs, rocks, weighing hooks and lighthouse bulbs were in evidence in the dining room!).

After shopping, we retraced our steps to Cape Cornwall. Neither of our guidebooks makes anything of Priest's Cove (just beneath Cape Cornwall) but it was lovely, with pretty fishing boats, spectacular seas and views to Cape Cornwall and the Brisons. The area around Priest's Cove and Cape Cornwall were very memorable - and then, a few weeks later, we arrived at Bayview House close to Wilson's Prom in Victoria (Australia) to discover that the owner, Paul, had emigrated from Cape Corwall in the 1960s! The Cot Valley, although 'lush' as promised, was less memorable.

The spectacular seas and good views back to Cape Cornwall and the Brisons and ahead to Land's End and the Longships stayed with us all morning, and we ate lunch watching the sea at Aire Point.

We walked behind the first part of the beach at Whitesand Bay, because the tide was too high to get around the rocky outcrop in the middle of the beach, but we were able to walk across the second part of the beach, watching people kitesurfing. We had an ice cream at Sennen Cove, eaten sitting by the small harbour next to the lifeboat station.

We followed the path to Land's End, which was actually not as busy or spoilt as I'd feared it might be - though this might have been because most people we watching the FA Cup Final. I did however object to the £1-30 for a mug of tea with 'plastic' milk, and find it difficult to understand why someone gave permission for a theme park with lots of 'attractions' having no obvious connection with Land's End. And we had some difficulty finding the path to the south of Land's End.

Path found, there was some very enjoyable walking with slower, more attractive sections closer to the cliff edge (with views of arches and caves) interspersed witrh faster sections across the moorland. We managed to take the wrong route up from Mill Bay - we had to turn off the main path and looked out carefully for a signpost - to no avail. GPS rescued us and we were able to prevent an American walker behind us from making the same mistake.

We powered on past the fort at Carn Les Boel and (eventually) past the lookout station at Gwennep Head. Here the path appears to 'turn the corner' (so you're now heading east not south) and it feels like a far more significant transitional point than either Cape Cornwall or Land's End. The rocks after this point seem lighter and the undergrowth is more lush. We past the red and black 'daymarks' which, with a bleeting buoy, are to help seaman round the Rummel Stone. We past the pretty beach at Porthywarra and , after a climb up towards St Lewen, another pretty beach at Porth Chapel.

We passed the Minack Theatre and descended some steep steps Porthcurno Beach. We left the South West Coast Path here and walked up the road past the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, once the terminus of the undersea telephone cables going under the beach to distinations around the world (the cables are still there, including new fibre optic ones). We walked past the Porthcurno Hotel to Sea View House, where we were warmly welcomed by Chris and Deb Bishop - and given a cream tea! We were in Room 2, with views of the distant sea, and since performances at the Minack Theatre didn't start until the following week, it was lovely and quiet. We had fish and chips at the Cable Station Inn (once the social club for Eastern Telegraph Company staff and trainees) and met up again with the American we had met earlier in the day. He was walking the whole path (with a break for his daughter's graduation) - he had been 'on the path' for 30 days and expected that it would take him a similar length of time to complete it. After our meal we went down to the beach and watched the surfers.

Following day