South Cornwall Coast-3rd September 2022
Travel by road from East Sussex to Rame Head
After cycling the coast of Cumbria during May 2022, we are returning to ‘Shank’s Pony’, with two weeks spent travelling on-foot for our next leg of ‘Legging Round Britain’. Our chosen location is the coast of South Cornwall, continuing our 2019 walk from Torquay to Plymouth. This time we pick-up the baton at Plymouth, intent upon walking the 100 or so miles to St Mawes – just across the estuary from Falmouth.
In many ways, the easiest approach would be to book a different hotel for each night, as we move along the coast. This is however, an expensive option at perhaps £100/night. Our preferred option, on cost grounds alone, is to take our touring caravan and use it as our base. Stopping at one of the Caravan and Motorhome Club’s Certificated Locations only costs us about £20/night, including the electricity to cook evening meals and breakfast.
We have considered the hotel option before, especially during the colder winter months, but always settled for a winter holiday-let as a more cost-effective option. Cost is king. Our caravan also gives us flexibility, enabling us to cancel walking on a really wet day – in favour of a visit to an all-weather venue, or even just sitting in the caravan reading books.
Back in May this year, Betty acquired the new love of her life – her big red motor-car. I had already been pushed to second place (at least) by her new grandson, so I was getting used to the loss of status! Our Cornish venture was set to be a relative ‘piece of cake’ since by now she should have mastered all the new buttons on her dashboard. The same cannot be said for me, since the only time I have driven it is on a motorway, under her watchful eye.
We set-off by 9am, with the novice at the wheel. By lunchtime we have made it to Wiltshire, with only Salisbury offering us any traffic issues. The joy of towing a touring caravan is that you can stop at any lay-by and make use of the toilet facilities we are towing behind us. Well Betty does, whilst I settle for a pee in the bushes. I have to tread carefully, since it is evident that most people taking a comfort break here don’t have their own facilities in-tow.
With Betty at the helm, we make it to the Tamar Bridge by rush-hour. It is just as well I drove first, since true to form, I nod-off in the passenger seat. Despite the temporary loss of her navigator, Betty manages not to get lost (A303/A38).
My next challenge is to navigate us to Rame and our CL. We soon discover the major challenge of towing a caravan in Cornwall – the narrow roads. Mr Google always thinks road-users want to get from A to B by the quickest possible route for a car. Alas he does not have a ‘caravan’ button. I therefore have to constantly over-ride his instructions, keeping us on A or B roads at all times – using the OS map balanced upon my knee. This works fine until we are within a few miles of our destination, at which point I also have to balance the CL guide-book on my knee at the same time.
We have one minor contretemps at Craftown, where we force an elderly lady to reverse 30 yards and enjoy watching her make a total Horlicks of the whole thing. By this time half-a-dozen other vehicles are backed-up behind her, but they all appear to be quite accepting of the delay. I suppose if you live in Cornwall you must get used to such things.
As we get to Rame, I have to admit that I cannot understand the CL directions and elect to ring the site owner for help. This is where I am glad of 2 mobile phones, since it is impossible to navigate with Mr Google at the same time as talking to someone on the phone. Eventually, she despatches her husband to lead us to the caravan site in his car.
Following our host, we are fortunate not to meet any other vehicles, since the road is barely 6-foot wide. However, the view from the caravan site makes the Cornish driving challenge worthwhile. We and just two other visitors have exclusive use of a 5-acre field perched high on Rame Head, overlooking the gentle sweep of Whitesand Bay and its Mediterranean blue waters. The light is fading and we have just enough time to get settled-in before everything goes pitch black. That is except for the distant twinkling of the house lights along the bay.
For anyone who asks why we ‘put-up’ with the cramped confinement of a caravan, whose internal space is approximately 16 cubic metres, this is why. We always take our caravan to Caravan and Motorhome Club certificated locations (CLs) where there is no ambient noise (but choose your site carefully – I always check using satellite ‘spy photos’ provided by Google), virtually no neighbours and if you are lucky, amazing views across twinkling-light-studded-blackness. Magic!
We chose this particular site at Rame Head, largely because it is ideally placed for our first two days of walking. Certificated Locations (CLs) are not particularly numerous, not even in Cornwall, whilst many of them we would not deem to be suitable for a variety of reasons which I won’t go into. When planning this leg of our ‘Legging-round-Britain’ expedition, I realised that the site at Rame Head fitted the bill nicely, especially since we could build our first two days of walking around being based here.
Tomorrow, my plan is for us to drive to St Germans (marked ‘A’ on the ‘Rame Area Walking’ map). Here we intend to leave the car and catch a train to Plymouth (B), before walking to the Cremyll Ferry jetty (C). The ferry will take us across to Cremyll (D), from whence we will walk the coast as far as Rame Head (E), where we will spend the night in our perfectly proportioned and perfectly located touring caravan. Next morning we anticipate walking the coast path to the charmingly named town of Portwrinkle (F), before cutting inland and back to our car at St Germans.