Last Steps

As I left Penzance, I walked along a path with the railway on my left, heading away from the edge of the town, where there were various big stores, supermarkets, a coffee drive thru and so on could be seen. The sea was retreating and Gulls could be seen in the beach, sipping water from streams fed from inland even in the summer. Some of the Gulls were juveniles, bring brown in colour. Later I also saw a guy with a bucket and trowel, I bet he was looking for Lugworms, he would be scanning the sand surface for piles of sand, indicating a Lugworm might be under there somewhere. These are used for fishing.

There clouds were breaking  up and we started to see blue sky, I could see matchstick sized people walking along the revealed causeway to St Michael’s Mount. As I approached Marazion, where the causeway starts, there was a big group of children, playing in the sand, maybe an educational trip, they had left a neat line of shoes back by the edge of the beach. The Coast path ran out temporarily by Marazion and the road through it took over. It was a nice Market town.

I bought myself a Pasty from the Bakers named Philps and sat down to eat it while looking over the Mount. Various birds came along to see if I dropped any of it, but no Seagulls this time. It was the best Pasty I have had on this trip. After I finished it I carried on walking through the town until I saw a sign where the Coastal path resumed. 

The path initially cross crossed several fields before the steady path along the coast revealed itself. Initially the path was under a canopy of fir trees, not dissimilar to the ones you see in Greece. When I saw the coast, there were rocks with lots of pools of water from the receding tide.

I passed a field of potatoes on the left, half harvested, the rest waiting their turn. I then saw Boat Cove and then Perranuthnoe beach.

Up on the left was a  large building which I identified as Acton Castle. I looked it up, it was built in 1775 as a country home, it was built for a Marine Scientist, when he was not living in it, he left it in the care of a tenant farmer, and a notorious smuggler. Later on the building was extended, turned into a hotel and is now luxury apartments.

From here on, the path would be between tall bracken or hedging. I met someone with a strimmer. He worked for a nearby estate and his job for the day was to try and keep the path relatively clear for walkers. Unfortunately for the walkers, he wasn’t to continue his good work further along. One thing he did do was to enlighten me and another pair of walkers about a wooden post with hundreds of coins embedded into it.

 

He said the coins were inserted for good luck, and bad luck would fall onto those who removed any. He joked to me and said “oh your pair of pliers have fallen out of your pocket and are on the ground”! I carried on smiling at his typical Cornish humor! Overlooking a point of land was another post which on the map is shown as HMS Warspite. Another lookup on the internet revealed the ship ran aground near this place in 1947.

The path then turned into a wooden decking, as it cut through deep swathes of reeds which were rustling gently in the breeze. During this walk like yesterday there have been some pretty flowers at my feet, including summer flowering Heathers. 

Finally my destination came into view, that is Praa Beach, a huge swathe of beautiful sand. I stopped off for an ice cream and a cold drink, before trecking inland to the main road, quickly finding my bus stop to take me back to Penzance.