Pendeen to St Ives
The day dawns bright and sunny, and after another hearty breakfast we pack (a process that doesn’t take long), farewell our hosts and walk down a lane and through some fields to regain the South West Coast Path.
Today’s walk starts off similarly to yesterday, the narrow path winding around the rugged coastline. It’s a bit more scrambly and boggy in places, always the risk of an inadvertent footstep into the mud. Wild yellow primroses line the track and in places lots of other flowering plants in inks and purples, their names unknown to us. Further along the track we see two seals (well, in the water, not on the track!) and once on drier ground we see a sizeable adder – Britain’s only poisonous snake – sunning itself by the track.
There are a number of other walkers on the track today. We chat briefly to some and find a few are doing the Path in one-week stages. They all tell us the last 6km stretch into St Ives is quite a scramble with loose boulders after severe winter weather, so we decide to cut inland and follow footpaths through farmland.
Fortuitously, just up the hill we find the charming little village of Zennor. Not only does it have what every self-respecting English village should have – a church, a pub, a historical figure and a pay-and-display carpark – but it has a café serving delicious Cornish cream teas and even serving flat whites! Exactly what the weary, hungry traveller wants by 3pm. Suitably refreshed, we walk the final few kilometres to our next B&B on the outskirts of St Ives, The Old Vicarage.
It’s a very different place to previous ones, a large imposing house complete with lounge and even a room set up as a bar, but just like the first two our host is warm and welcoming. Time for a shower and change, and then down to St Ives for dinner with Angie and Paul in a café overlooking the tiny but exquisite cove of Porthgwiddon, oven-roasted hake for us both rounding off a great second day.
Day 2 – 22km (no kits, cats, sacks or wives)
Scrumpy to Scotch 