Portscatho to St Mawes 16th September 2022
The day starts with an unforecasted rain shower and I wonder if we are in for any further weather surprises. The plan is to park at Portscatho and walk to the end of the peninsula at St Anthony’s Head. From here it is only a couple of miles further to Place ferry and the boat to our final destination – St Mawes.
After yesterday’s debacle at Nare Head, Betty is keen to park somewhere a little more predictable and we alight upon the car park at Porthcurrick Beach, a few hundred yards north of Portscatho. At only £4 for the whole day it seems like a snip, that is until we try to pay. Alas the machine does not want to take cash today and Betty is not prepared to load the required Flowbird app onto her phone, nor give her credit card details over the phone. So we decide to look for a quiet little suburban side street. This works fine and we are down at the harbour and ready to start walking by 11.30am.
Once again the location we left the previous evening is transformed by the next morning. The tide has risen (as it does every 12 hours and 20 minutes); the weather has shifted (from overcast to bright sunshine) and there are less people around (since everyone likes a morning lie-in). We don’t spend time looking around Portscatho further and return to the task in hand – walking to St Mawes.
“Friday morning brings high tide to Portscatho Harbour, giving the world a totally different ambiance.”
With the rain aberration got out of the way, we are set for views more evocative of the Aegean than the UK, but then that’s what you get on a good day in Cornwall – if perhaps a little cooler than its Southern European counterpart. The walk along the cliff tops, looking out across the shades of blue – both above us and below – is otherworldly. The one fly in the ointment is the green poo bag someone has seen fit to cast into the brambles. Perhaps we just feel a little less guilty if our unmentionables are invisible, but not this time I’m afraid!
“Mediterranean skies and seas juxtaposed with steep, bramble-clad cliffs – it must be Cornwall (the green poo bag is reassuringly 21st Century British!).”
I can almost see the guy who went to all that bother of cleaning up after his dog and then thinking: “I can’t be bothered carrying this home.”
He would have launched the bright green poo bag off the cliff, only to see it snag on a bramble in full sight. Looking round to see if anyone spotted him, he would have quickly hoofed it back to the village. Sadly for him, every time he walks his dog along the cliff from now on there will be his guilty secret. And because the poo bag probably takes years to decompose, he’s going to have that albatross around his neck until it does. Poor soul.
The sunny day does quickly bring on one unwanted side effect – a sweaty back. However, I’ll take that any day.
With every step we take we feel we are disappearing into a backwater and we love it. This is one of the few bits of British coastline that appears to be free of holiday parks. I suspect the ‘sun-sea-and-sanders’ would not be drawn to a location where getting to the beach requires abseiling down 50 metres from the top of a cliff.
The walk to Towan Beach and then on past Killigerran Head offers nothing remarkable (other than the remarkable scenery of course). We appear to have the coast path to ourselves as we gaze down into the turquoise sea of Porthbear Beach, scan the horizon for sailing ships and marvel at the precipitous cliffs.
We get our first view of Falmouth across the top of the St Anthony’s Peninsula, a town we will not get to visit this holiday, but which will mark the start point of our next expedition to Cornwall.
“Sun, sea, sand and rocks. Looking south towards Greeb Point.”
“Towan Beach and Killigerran Head.”
“Porthbear Beach and its clear, shallow waters must be a snorkellers paradise.”
“Our first view of Falmouth and Pendennis Point across Carrick Roads.”
Approaching St Anthony’s Head, small clues as to its history present themselves. The road to the headland is called Military Road, it overlooks the mouth of Garrick Roads – the entrance to Falmouth Harbour; inclined planes have been carved into the cliff side (probably the position of an ammunition hoist) and strange little lookout points hide in crevices.
“A well camouflaged lookout point overlooks the approaches to Garrick Roads.”
We have arrived at St Anthony’s Head and the St Anthony’s Battery built in 1895-97, which overlooks one of the largest natural harbours in the world – Garrick Roads. Britannia ruled the waves at the turn of the 20th Century, with a significant proportion of her fleet kept at Falmouth. As we wander round this National Trust site we get a real taster of the size of the battery here. Large concrete gun pits, hoists lifting ordnance held deep inside the cliffs. We decide this is a good place to rest legs and fill stomachs.
Beyond the battery we drop down through woodland where we can get close to St Anthony’s Lighthouse perched overlooking the entrance to Garrick Roads. Behind St Anthony’s Lighthouse the waters are sheltered from the worst of the Atlantic weather. Here boats could pull-up at the jetty and unload ammunition and stores for the battery.
“A suspiciously military lump of concrete on the St Anthony’s Head cliff top.”
“A former gun emplacement at St Anthony’s Head.”
“A serious military emplacement leaves us in no doubt as to the former strategic importance of St Anthony’s Head.”
“St Anthony’s Lighthouse ensures ships stay well clear of the cliff and rocks.”
Just when we think the end of our expedition has come, we discover a sting in its tail, as the footpath forces us to climb another steep hill before we drop down to Place House. In the 12th Century this was the site of an Augustinian Priory, which along with many similar monastic buildings fell into disrepair after The Reformation.
In the 19th Century the local MP, Samuel Spry, restored the church with the help of his cousin Rev Clement Carlyon. It is unusual, in that it still has its original Medieval cruciform plan. Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner thought it ‘the best example in the county of what a parish church was like in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’. Place House is still in the Spry family, but they very much like to keep the public away. It is worth looking around the church though, with its carved wooden pews, pulpit and vaulted wooden ceiling.
St Anthony-in-Roseland Church, Place, St Anthony’s Peninsula.”
“Inside St Anthony’s-in-Roseland Church.”
Perhaps it is because we are in a House of God, or because I am feeling grateful to have been able to complete another leg of our quest, but I put my hand in my pocket and stump-up a tenner in gratitude – payable to the church restoration fund. I have a sneaking suspicion I’m donating it to the Spry family fund. Never mind – always keen to help out anyone in real need.
The last half mile to the ferry involves yet another climb with very little indication that we are heading in the right direction. Eventually we find the jetty but have missed the ferry by 3 minutes. So we sit with half a dozen others hoping that it will eventually return to rescue us.
It is a good time for reflection, sitting listening to the distinctive ‘twirling’ pipe notes of a pair of oyster-catchers and the eponymous call of a curlew across the water. From the trees a raven croaks, whilst dabbling in the shallows a little egret daintily picks through the wracks. This last bird, a small white heron, is perhaps one of the most striking indicators of our changing climate. Fifty years ago you would not have seen one anywhere in the UK. They weren’t that common in Northern France, but by 1996 they were breeding in Dorset. Now you even see them well inland, as they hunt the shallows for fish.
The sun glistens off the rock we are sitting on and I realise that it is splashed with green and red crystals. This must be serpentinite, a metamorphic rock I have seen aplenty on the Lizard Peninsula. The leg from Falmouth to Land’s End will take us through The Lizard, so I’m certain that it will come up again when we are next down this way.
Sitting at peace with nature, Betty suddenly reveals that she has not brought her purse with her. This makes my generous donation to St Anthony appear a little foolish since if the ferry man only takes cash he might refuse us safe passage to the other side. The irony is not wasted on me that St Anthony is often turned to to help find lost items.
Thankfully, when the ferryman returns he is well rooted in 21st Century finance and my flexible friend does quite nicely thank you. The pleasant chug across St Mawes Harbour gives a quite different perspective after 2 weeks of standing on top of cliffs looking down onto water. We are thankful for the ferry’s existence and I offer-up a prayer to St Christopher for delivering us, and a small one to the patron saint of credit cards – since its a long walk back to Portscatho.
“The secretive Place House seen from the Place ferry boat as we cross to St Mawes.”
Finally we climb the harbour steps into St Mawes and decide to explore the town – after first celebrating our achievement with a local ice cream. Perhaps we are tired, or just keen to get back home, but we find St Mawes a bit of a disappointment compared to some of the other villages visited this last two weeks. A check of the bus times reveals that the next one to Portscatho is due in 3 minutes and we use what little energy remains legging-it to the bus stop.
In fact the bus is a good hour late due to a breakdown, but we are nonetheless grateful to have the bus drop us within a few hundred yards of our car. Weary of leg but full of joy at having completed yet another chunk of “Legging Round Britain” it is worth summing up thoughts on walking the coast of South Cornwall:
The Cornish Coast has lived up to expectation, as has the unpredictability of the Cornish weather. We have once again been pretty fortunate with the weather, other than on one or two notable days. We have successfully negotiated the complexities of Cornwall’s bus service, largely thanks to their app. Even the trains and boats have helped us breeze along the coast with little need to do circular, or there-and-back walks. Betty survived her knee scare and I my brush with A&E. Gannet mortality due to avian flu was something of a topical issue, as was pollution of watercourses and bathing beaches. The housing crisis in Cornwall, caused at least in-part by second home owners is a long-term concern. The most notable issue continues to be global climate change and its anticipated impact upon local sea levels. It has been easy to see how some settlements are addressing coastal flooding and how sea level rise is impacting the geomorphology of the Cornish coast and the lives of Cornish people living within this glorious county. Thank you Cornwall – we will be back before too long.
“An overgrown inclined plane – probably the location of an ammunition hoist?”
“Great Molunan, sheltered behind St Anthony’s Head gives sheltered boat access to the fort.”
“Garrick Roads – one of the world’s largest natural harbours.”
“St Mawes from the harbour – shiny white in the sun, but eclipsed by many more inspiring villages on the South Cornish coast.