Twenty eight kilometres

Friday 27 April – St Ives to Portreath

Lessons we learned today:

1. 28km is a long way. A LONG way. In miles, it doesn’t sound so bad but in kilometres it looks and is a long way. Even though, unlike yesterday, the route was fairly gentle much of the way, towards the end, we wondered if we’d been a tad over-optimistic scheduling so long a stretch so early in the route.
2. Lesson 2 – weight matters. We now know that 10kg is a tad heavy, so when we get to Bude we’ll be lightening our packs. Those puzzles we brought to help fill in the time? Out! That book Peter foolishly brought along? Out! It’s not as if we have the energy to read anyway – if today is anything to go by, all we want to do when we arrive is to shower, get some dinner, and blob out for an hour before it’s time for sleep.
3. The Cornish scenery is dramatic, even in driving wind and rain. From our wander down through the narrow St Ives streets, out along the coast to Hayle along a wide sandy beach, up the glorious coast to Gwithian and along the sea cliffs to Portreath, it was always dramatic. The stretch in particular to Gwithian – wide long beach, tall sand dunes to our right – reminded us of Muriwai beach on Auckland’s west coast.
4. The Cornish Wind is a living thing, not a wind but a Wind, one that is forever changing its appearance. From St Ives to Hayle it was gentle and playful, but as we walked north it became a ferocious beast of a thing, battering us with wind and rain. Then as we turned east along the coast it changed again, into an octopus, with tentacles that pulled us back, knocked us sideways, and occasionally nudged us forward.
5. No matter how bleak the weather, sun and warmth is just around the corner. We left St Ives in a cold rain; barely an hour later Peter was in shirtsleeves.
6. The redemptive and restorative power of a good Cornish cream tea. We’d had one yesterday but today’s was even better, just as we headed inland from the windswept coast. Jam and clotted cream on a scone – bliss!
7. And finally – the British have finally discovered how to make good coffee! That Cornish cream tea was accompanied by a not-half-bad flat white, and it’s not the first good coffee I’ve had. If you can get a decent flat white in the middle of nowhere, you know civilisation has finally reached the British Isles….