The last time I stepped off the Cremyl ferry into Cornwall and taken the path through the Mount Edgecombe estate, it had been a hot and sunny day back in May. The gardens had looked brand new, the wisteria climbing vigorously up the Orangery where I lingered now for a coffee to wait for the rain to stop. The gardens were empty today. The lollipop trees were beginning to brown and Virginia Creeper over the folly ruins was already vermillion-red. A playing-pitch expanse of garden was carpeted, hedge to hedge, with begonia, pink, red and white.
Wild rose grew out of the shingle beach where Darwin wandered in 1831 as he waited to set sail on his journey of discovery aboard the HMS Beagle. You nudge up against a lot of history on the coast path. Soon, I’d passed the lake and the National Camellia collection, and was out on the coast path proper. The rain had slowed but passing beneath the avenue of tall trees, the leaves generously dripped their stored moisture onto my head.
The path was familiar, along the old estate rides, now dim tunnels beneath oak and sycamore, their fallen leaves bright against the mud at my feet. Long flags of chestnut leaves, serrated and bronzed, lay in patterns on the path and I crunched over spiky green cases of conkers. Through a stand of pine trees that had been full of bluebells back in the spring, but September warmth and humidity leaving just a tangle of over-ripe blackberries and second-flush ferns. Past curves of trunks, stunted by the prevailing south-westerlies and blackened by the rain. The rain started up again, the light beneath the trees dimming noticeably, and I took long shelter in the folly. A lone female hiker with a backpack like mine protected from the rain came along the path, talking to her phone in German. I motioned to welcome her to join me in the folly (I didn’t want to hog the shelter) but she smiled and shook her head, indicating her conversation on the phone, perhaps to her family back home. The tradition of women walking alone continued. Time was passing and I had miles to go before my bed for the night, so I carried on past Picklecombe Fort, one of several forts commissioned in Queen Victoria’s time to protect Plymouth from invasion. Long decommissioned now as a military base, it’s a strange residential centre of luxury flats with uninterrupted views, if you can bear the isolation and extreme coastal living. I walked high above its tennis courts and Keep Out signs.
One of the pleasures of the coast path is its variety of spaces that the walker passes through. After a morning of wet woodlands, I emerged onto rolling open fields that sloped down towards Cawsand. The bench, where I’d rested back in the spring after a long hot climb up from the village, had its legs submerged in water. The path’s red soil ran in rivulets down the hill and I was careful not to slip. I planned to eat in Cawsand, or its close neighbour Kingsand, before realising it was Sunday lunchtime. The village is a popular spot with locals, I hoped they could spare me a table. The narrow streets of Cawsand never fail to enchant the walker: sometimes only a few paces wide, edged with bright renders, late summer flowers, old stone walls filled with rock daisies, carved seagulls on window cills and postcards with mobile numbers pasted to the glass, tempting the passer-by with the holiday potential within. I was lucky to find a table in the seafront pub, tucked away at the back, where lamps glowed. The local apple and blackberry crumble topped with cinnamon ice-cream was a fitting tribute to the passing of late summer.
Back on the path and up onto the Rame Peninsula. The sky dimmed again and the rain resumed, softer this time but with a hot menace. Thundery showers had been forecast and I’d seen none yet, but as I climbed onto the higher cliffs before Rame Head, I heard a distant rumble of thunder and I stopped in my tracks. All confidence from the previous hours of women walking alone, hurrah for us, stumbled to a halt. What was I doing? Would the storm reach me here, in the worst possible place to be caught in a storm? What was the procedure if the hiker finds themselves in a thunderstorm in an exposed place? I couldn’t remember, but the walking poles and metal frame on my backpack were almost certainly an invitation to electricity.
I tried to check my phone but there was no signal. Another sharp nudge up the peril scale. I continued to walk, watching for any flicker on the horizon or sudden flash but there was nothing. The chapel on Rame Head was edging in and out of low cloud and the landscape felt truly wild for the first time on my journey. The path was quiet save sudden barks from two large dogs that raced out of the mist at me. The woman with them called them back and distracted them whilst I hurried past. I stopped to check my phone again and found a faint signal, enough to find the live lightning map. The distant rumble I’d heard had carried across the sea from the Channel Islands to the south-east, where a cluster of lightning strikes were happening maybe 70 miles away. I was safe. Pools of silver sunlight began to appear out to sea, the only light in the land and seascape.
It was perhaps another three miles around the Rame and along the high cliffs of the great Whitsand Bay. As the path wandered through wooden chalets on the cliff (which exchange hands for more money that their fabric warrants) the sky continued to clear, the air warm still further, and the rich browns of bracken and yellows of gorse glowed in the mist. Later, at Whitsand Bay Fort where I had booked a bed for the night, I found a bench atop the cliff and watched the sun track across the vast arc of sea. It was a still quiet evening, resplendent with colour and light. It felt like a secret and glorious reward for facing the peril.
Day One was complete.
Lovely to read the very evocative account of your lone walking adventure in autumn. I remember Cawsand so well from our SW Coastpath experiences. The sea there was so cold in May 2013 that it made my head ache. But then two well-covered teenagers entered the water without wetsuits and frolicked about as if it was the Med. Oh to be young and hardy!
Looking forward to hearing about the second day