Log No 264. Wed 5th Mar 2014 - Hayle to Pendeen, 20 miles (4032 miles walked)

I woke up to bright skies and having parked near to where I finished yesterday I was able to start walking by 07.40.

It was road walking from Hayle round the River Hayle estuary to Lelant where I watched a grey squirrel taking nuts from a feeder.

Going through the golf course and under the railway line the footpath went through the sand dunes, following the railway into Carbis Bay.


It had been a cold start to the day with a touch of frost but now I needed to take my fleece off.

From Carbis Bay the path was through narrow residential lanes into St Ives.

I've only ever seen St Ives in the sunshine and it looks very picturesque with the blue sky and yellow sand.

As I passed a lady dog walker she greeted me with a word I couldn't understand, when I said "Hello" in reply she told me it was St Piran's Day, the patron saint of Cornwall, so she was speaking Cornish today.
I hadn't known there was a Cornish language and as I left her she said "Mitten Da".

Going round St Ives Head, which also had a Huer's Hut for watching out for the pilchards, then by some beach huts I was back on the footpath.

I spoke for a while with a chap out with his dog, he was Kelvin Bowers and in 1974 he ran from Stoke on Trent to Australia, 10,000 miles, in about the same length of time it will take me to do my paltry 5,600 miles. He did have a support team and he said running was his life.

This section of the SWCP between St Ives and Pendeen is very rough with outcropping rocks everywhere, definitely not the easy footpath I have become used to.

The early sunshine didn't last unfortunately and it clouded over but it did stay dry.

I was finishing off my lunch on Zennor Head and met another man reporting on the state of the footpath. They do it every 6 months and effect repairs etc where required.

Some of the repairs are not very good, all they have done is drop granite rocks along the path, it would be okay if they had tried to set them with a flat surface to walk on but a lot are edges uppermost making it very difficult.

They did make a good job of replacing the footbridge over the stream running into Porthmeor Cove.

The footpath may be rough, I had to scramble over rocks at one bit before Zennor, but the coastline is still dramatic.

The stream crossings weren't strenuous and my last one of the day was down to Portheras Cove and up to the lighthouse on the headland Pendeen Watch.

I hadn't written down the bus times but knew they were every hour so I wasn't too bothered if I just missed one.

From Pendeen Watch I stayed on the road to go into Pendeen, arriving there at 16.00 and luckily only having to wait 7 minutes for the bus to Penzance. Penzance to Hayle buses were every 30 minutes and I got back to the camper at 17.45.

It was quite a long day for the 20 rough miles.