Sat 17th April - Day 1, Lands End to Botallack (7 miles)

After breaking my journey at Poole to spend a couple of days with some friends I took the train to Penzance, where I was met by exiled Orcadian, Mike Clouston.
Mike had seen a report of my walk in the Orkney Family History Society’s magazine and offered to meet me off the train and take me to Lands End.

The last few days had been sunny and warm but the weather was deteriorating the further west I went, by the time I arrived at Lands End at 4:00pm the sun had disappeared and it was cold and windy.

With it being the weekend I had imagined it would be quite busy here, but it was more or less deserted.

My planned start date was tomorrow but I was keen to get going so I registered my start in the hotel, got my photo taken at the signpost and was waved off by Mike at 16:30.

The rain started almost straight away but the weather was behind me so I didn’t bother with any waterproofs.

It was a nice easy path and the coastline was just like Orkney’s.

I had only been going an hour when I was surprised to see a slow worm on the path, it looked in shock with the winter like conditions.

There were a few campsites to choose from around here and I decided to cut inland a bit to St Just and go on to the site at Botallack, 7 miles into the walk.

I arrived, cold and wet, at Trevaylor Camp Site at 7:00pm, after pitching the tent I didn’t feel like cooking for myself so I went to the pub for a meal.

I woke up at 3:00am with a headache and after deciding I had been sleeping ‘down hill’ turned round in the tent.

This wasn’t quite the start to my walk that I had been expecting.

7 miles completed.