Perranporth to Portreath

The plan

A tougher day? 11.6 miles\863m ascent\average grade 9%\4:19 hours, starting out moderate then becoming strenuous. We collapse into Cliff House at the end of the day.

Reality

I hesitated to do this section at all, given the rash situation from yesterday. I investigated buses (direct bus to Portreath twice a day, which would leave us either twiddling our thumbs in Perranporth or in Portreath, or more likely both.  In the end, I decided to switch to hiking sandals and shorts to hopefully keep my core temperature down and avoid any worsening of the hikers\golfers\Disney rash.

By the way, last night was (as predicted) less than restful, but for more than just the heat\blues concert reasons. For one thing, our bedroom overlooked the pub terrace, and a group stayed there talking loudly until the pub turned the lights out to evict them. Goodness knows how late that was. Then, right as we were finally falling asleep, a short but vicious thunderstorm blew over, including hail. The footpaths this morning almost looked raked by the hail, with each new footstep clearly visible.

We passed lots of evidence of tin mining, including safety-fenced mine shafts. We dropped rocks down this one and they fell a long long way, likely all the way to sea level.

We headed down toward St Agnes. The official line of the SWCP takes you down to sea level where you see the first sandy bay, then back up and over the bluff to the second sandy bay. With the tide heading out and low tide an hour or so away, we decided instead to wend our way over and through the boulder field at the base of the bluff. Slippy, challenging, but very fun.

The reward on the other side was a beach cafe, but alas no ice cream for me.

We stopped on the way out of St Agnes for some drone exploration.

Then onwards to more evidence of mining…

Down into another cove, Chapel Porth, where I had a Foxy icecream (vanilla dunked in clotted cream and rolled in flapjack) and Dave had a Hedgehog (ditto, but rolled in honey roasted hazelnuts.)

Then the inevitable climb out. Still feeling OK at this point…

Then on to the next beach along, Porthtowan, and a pause for mineral water.

And….another climb out. At least the heather is beautifully distracting!

I thought we had a fairly easy last 3 miles, skirting the edge of a military base. But I guess I didn’t read carefully enough. There was a really steep set of steps down and back up a gully:

And it was hot by now. But hey, at least it was the last hurdle of the day, right? Wrong! Good grief….

That really was the last huge hurdle, but as has happened pretty much every day so far, the last 1/2 mile felt like a trudge that stretched on and on. At least the harbor was lovely:

Checked into the Cliff House B&B. Lovely–but chatty–host. We really just wanted to shower and collapse! Didn’t take a photo on our way in, but this is when we returning from the pub, which is the building to the right of the photo.

Had an OK meal. Surprised to be served by staff dressed in pirate costumes. Once we were back in our room the reasoning became clear….it’s now 10pm, and they’ve been having a pirate sing-a-long for 30 minutes so far, with such classics as “I’m tired and I wanna go to bed, I had a little drink about an hour ago, and it’s gone right to my head…” and “Yo-ho-ho and a Bottle of Rum” etc etc etc. Oh god. Another hot night with a raucous crowd outside the window. Yawn.

Still, a pretty place!