14 miles walked today
1152 miles walked in total (10.568 average)
Sam and I were ready to start at 10.00 am this morning, but, after a leisurely stroll down to Lizard Point, the most southerly point in Britain, from the village and a mooch in some of the serpentine shops, we started properly at 10.30 am. In the late 1800s, there used to be a works on the Lizard at Poltescu which employed 100 people to make mantelpieces and shopfronts for London and Paris. Now, there are half a dozen workshops producing ornaments for tourists.
We had just over a two mile walk to Kynance Cove over open heathland - lovely and springy to walk on. We passed several Highland cattle and Dexter cattle - these are being introduced to the area to cut down on scrubland and because they're generally quite docile creatures and will tolerate people in their space. Their poo feeds beetles, spiders and ants and these, in turn, are what the Cornwall Chough Project hope will entice the birds back to Cornwall. The chough is included in the county's coat of arms alongside the miner and the fisherman, reflecting the bird's importance in Cornish culture.
Kynance was quite exciting as we had to head down into the cove through narrow channels between rocks and the tide was in! We sat for ages in a semi cave, picking up rocks which we thought were jasper (but were probably serpentine), dipping them in water to see how bright the colours were before deciding which ones to keep. I personally could have spent all day in this endeavour, but Sam was desperate for ice cream so off we trotted.
From Kynance, we were back on open heathland - past more Highland cattle. We saw sea campion, early purple flowering orchids, thrift, violets and primroses. We also identified land quillwort from Sam's book of wild flowers of the Lizard.
We had a tough climb at Gew-Graze so sat for a while and stocked up on yoghurt and biscuits before heading round Soapy Cove (which made us both laugh!) and Predannack to get us into Mullion Cove.
After lunch in the cafe at Mullion Cove (where the staff, for some reason, were singing hymns in the kitchens!), we had loads of up and down walking to Polurrian Cove, Poldhu Cove, Church Cove and Gunwalloe Cove. We had arranged to meet Mum and Dad at Porthleven at five and it was already that time so we needed to crack on.
From Gunwalloe, we had some fairly even walking down to Loe Bar. This is a long bank of fine shingle which separates the Loe, a freshwater lake more than a mile long, from the beach. It's the scene of many a shipping disaster and there is a memorial on the beach to those who died on the frigate, Anson, which was driven onto the sands in 1807 losing one hundred men.
I told Sam I felt like Lawrence of Arabia trekking across this sandbank which seemed to go on forever. I think perhaps I'd had too much sun and not enough water - although quite a lot of my water had been used to clean rocks this morning!
It was a quick up and down then from the Loe Bar into Porthleven and, as we came down to the church on the harbour, Dad was waving us in and Mum was asking very indignantly, "what time do you call this?!"
We adjourned to the Harbour Inn for a celebratory jar before fish and chips in the car. What a fab day!
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