Hayle to St Ives

The plan

The easiest non-rest-day of the entire walk! 5.95 miles\171m ascent\average grade 4%\1:49 hours. I think the destination may be in sight a lot of the way. We arrive no doubt far too early to check into the Tregony, but I imagine there’s a pub or two, and hopefully we’ll still have company tagging along.

Reality

6+ miles, extended out to 9 by rambling around St Ives. But first, the departure from Hayle. Poor Dave. He’s barely surviving in the land of the little people. Second day in a row he’s brained himself leaving a B&B. This one was the worst–he stood up in the door frame having bent down to pick up his bag. Staying in the Mad Hatter B&B, fully Alice-in-Wonderland themed, was probably asking for trouble.

We headed out into the rain–what a change! It was actually quite nice to feel a few raindrops, though the route out of Hayle didn’t add any joy: along a very busy road with cars whizzing by constantly.

Started out with my yellow rain hat and blue rain jacket on. Fairly quickly shed the rain jacket–it stopped raining after at most an hour.

Now off the main road, we meandered through very pretty side roads, eventually coming across Lelant Station overlooking the estuary. Amazed this railway line wasn’t closed by Beacham!

Despite it looking like Dave is waiting for a train, in fact, we continued on foot, Dave shedding his rain jacket too.

Pretty yellow flowers, spritzed with rain, on the way down to the beach.

Luckily it was low tide again, so instead of being stuck up on the dunes, we could walk the beach to precarious set of rocks\steps up off the beach.

Me, as usual, going quite a bit more slowly. I’m always slower, but added to that this time is some nervousness about slipping and re-injuring my back. So I take things like this very cautiously.

The brownish-reddish stream running down the side of the steps came from this cave. Not sure if that’s the natural color of the water or whether  it runs through a rusty iron pipe somewhere.

Stopped at Carbis Bay for refreshment. It was stewingly hot in the cafe at first, because the sun had come out again. Eventually they opened the sliding doors to let the sea breeze in, and then it was very nice.

We, as usual, went slower than expected, and I realized that we were going to miss our pre-arranged 1pm check in. So I peeled off the route to head straight for the lodgings–up a very steep, very hot, and very narrow maze of streets. By the time I arranged I was dripping and our room at the top of the building was very very hot. As usual, the ever-so-nice hosts were very chatty and friendly, but I was dying and just needed to rinse my face and get back to sea level. Eventually, I headed back down having traded my rain hat for my sun hat.

Having located Dave again (yay, Google Location Sharing!) we looked back to yesterday’s beach–the lighthouse we past yesterday on the left and the inlet to Hayle on the right. That’s one looooooong beach!

Dave droned on for a while…

We headed off to a hardware store that promised to have fans so we’d be able to cool our room down (and future rooms too–heat has been a continuous challenge). We bought two little ones, and they are making all the difference as I type this!

On the way back down, we stopped for coffee and a cake. They once again had pasteis de natas, so this time I tried one. Delicious!!

Then back to our B&B–still up a long hot hill! Lovely place though–a perfect room for our rest day, with two comfortable chairs looking out over the sea.