June 20, 1994: Gorran Haven to Par
Climbing up from Gorran Haven – I am wearing my Schnauzer t-shirt.
Each of us found the breakfast room of the Llawnroc Inn at 8:00 and we tucked into our eggs and toast. It was overcast outside but there didn’t seem to be any moisture when we emerged at precisely 9:00 to begin our third day of walking. We were in a somewhat somber mood, still tired from the exertions of the previous day, and I promised my troops that I would look out for any additional shortcuts.
We actually got lost trying to leave Gorran Haven, having descended too far towards the harbor, but it didn’t take us too long to rejoin Cliff Road and to begin a steep climb above the village. Red, white, and pink valerian seemed to be the flower of the month on the coast path; the long spiky blooms burst from every wall and crevice. The lovely route led us out to Pabyer, Turbot and Chapel Points, without too many ups and downs. At Chapel Point a deep inlet had created a peninsula on which three houses, all designed by the architect John A. Campbell, conjured up a little white-washed colony of great charm. We reentered civilization, after only two miles or so, at the village of Portmellon. Tosh and Margie got into a conversation with a homeowner who was eager to show off his garden and the result was that Harold and I spent a good deal of time sitting on the wall of a pub at the beach, waiting for the girls to rejoin us.
Mevagissey
We now had half a mile of road walking past hotels and cottages before rounding a corner and looking down on the bustling harbor of Mevagissey. I had promised the others that they could shop for snacks, drinks, and newspapers here, but Tosh naturally wanted to stop for coffee and we ended up in a pub, the Harbour Tavern, where I had a coke. Harold was sent to ask the local car park attendant for directions to Cliff Road but when we started up again, about 11:45, the route so nominated lead us up to a cliff, and the coast path, but failed to connect with the road I had considered using as our first shortcut of the day.
Things seemed quite pleasant on the coast path, however, so we continued on to Penare Point and descended steeply to a stream – with views of Pentewan’s huge caravan colony ahead of us. On the track up to the road I encountered a young boy with fishing equipment; he had misplaced the caravan park and wanted to know if I knew where it was. I had to tell him twice that he had only to climb to the road and turn right and he would soon be home. “Then your job will be trying to remember which caravan is yours,” I told him. The track ended in a barbed wire fence but I found a stile onto a roadside path a few yards away. Margie was close behind me but the Lees were nowhere to be seen. As we sat in the grass, having a rest, I asked, “Are they all right?” – but Margie assured me they were.
When we were reassembled I led us on the roadside path down to Pentewan, past the entrance to the caravan park, and along the highway until we arrived at a turnoff to Pentewan village. Here, in the shadows of the Thai restaurant, Margie asked for directions to the pub from a man who was washing his car. But before we continued we had to wait for the Lees, who were again lagging. The Ship Inn was a welcoming sight and we were soon having our liquid refreshment (I stuck to cokes since my tummy was not quite right) and ordering our food. The latter took a long time to come – in part because they discovered near the end of the process that my tuna and mayo sandwich had been toasted inadvertently and they needed to start all over again. (I would have been quite happy to have eaten it toasted.) “Do you suppose they make that waitress eat every mistake?” Tosh asked. I glanced at the portly figure retreating to the kitchen. “Yes,” I said mischievously, “and I’d say mistakes are pretty common.” Harold tried several times to phone our next landlady with news of our arrival time – but he failed to master the local phone system.
After lunch I decided to attempt a shortcut. The coast path had been extended to Black Head since the completion of the Letts Guide, adding several more miles and black arrows to the original inland route described by Ward and Mason. I decided to follow their old instructions and improve on them by taking the road most of the way to Porthpean. This involved a very steep climb out of Pentewan along a road that was narrow in parts and hemmed in by hedgerows that were once again burgeoning after chemical sprays had been banned. Still there were a number of wonderful viewpoints and this permitted an entirely different view of the countryside with its farms, fields, woodlands and one cement alp in the distance. The others were charmed by the diversion and the gradients soon eased off to permit a pleasant enough walk – with little traffic to disconcert pedestrians. The sun also came out in full force but it was not unpleasantly hot. Once a woman stopped us to ask if we had seen anyone on bicycle recently; we were able to assure her that we had seen her husband heading downhill only five minutes earlier.
Once again the Lees lagged far behind, but they caught up at last at the crossroads containing Lobb’s Shop – which now seemed to be offering honey as its only product. We began to get views of the coast again as we started our descent but I decided not to take the road all the way to Porthpean but to use a farm track, marked as a public right of way, in the direction of Castle Gotha farm. This route actually asked us to turned south briefly and Tosh squawked at this direction, which seemed to be taking her away from the promised loos at Porthpean. I assured her somewhat impatiently that all would be revealed soon and within the next few steps we discovered a finger post pointing downhill toward the desired village. There wasn’t much evidence of a path under foot since we were still some distance from the coast path itself but I continued steeply downhill, using the occasional stile and farm track and getting ever closer to the beach at the bottom. In the latter stages I swallowed a gnat, which caused me to splutter for the next half hour.
Porthpean beach had a deck chair salesman and loos but not much else; in particular there was no shade, so I proposed that we climb the steps at the other end of the beach and look for a resting place in the woods at the top. This we did, finding a nice grassy spot in parkland while troops of foreign students crashed about in the bushes nearby. I ate a candy bar and drank lots of water in an attempt to drown my gnat.
Charlestown harbor
The route forward is usually described as dull – if not ugly – because it is certainly not remote countryside. But a path behind back fences is just what the gardeners in our group most enjoy, so there were no objections as we made our way forward through woodland to reach Charlestown harbor. I was happy to see that the lock gate was in place, permitting easy access to the other side of the water. The harbor itself had a number of old ships in it, including two three-masted schooners of considerable size. We ascended the cliff opposite and made our way through more suburban settings, past hotels and into parkland. We reached the grassy environs of the swish Carylon Hotel, where a giant black Newfoundland was scratching himself in a field. I was wearing my Schnauzer t-shirt today but I failed to spot a single member of the breed on the entire trip. Opposite the local entertainment center (No Dogs!) we paused for a rest on two benches – but Tosh got disturbed by all the litter and had to gather up every scrap in a trash bag.
For the next mile or so we were accompanied on our left by the attractive greens of the Carylon Bay Golf Club. There were a few golfers about having their swings in the hazy late afternoon sunshine as we reached the end of the greenery at Spit Point and, with views of Par below us, we descended to traverse the extensive grounds of the English China Clay factory. The fenced-in paths did not make for the most interesting walking but neither were they the purgatorial alleyways suggested by some of the guidebooks. Eventually, after dodging plenty of dog poo, we reached the A3082 and followed it to the western end of Par. Here a greengrocer gave us directions and we turned right to complete the length of Par’s uninviting main street. The girls stopped at both ends to buy snacks.
A chap who was digging his garden pointed us in the right direction for Polmeor Road but we ended up in an alleyway behind the houses of this street and thus at 6:30, after another thirteen mile day, we entered our b&b from the back garden. Our host, ex-Marine commando, seemed surprised to find us here, but he let us into the kitchen where we were intercepted by the large blowsy form of our hostess, who insisted we remove our quite dry boots before proceeding upstairs to our postage stamp-sized rooms. I had a chest of drawers in mine but it was filled with personal effects. Our landlady now remembered that we all needed baths and she had forgotten to turn on the right water heater so there was a long delay while the water boiled and the four of us took turns in the seedy bathroom – the Lees ended us sharing one tubful of water. In the meantime we had to hear something of the history of each of the house’s animals, including a red Persian cat in the back yard. “She would have been in the Book of Guinesses,” our landlady assured us, save for a few minor faults.
It was 8:00 before we were all cleaned up and able to escape the chatter. We continued toward Polmeor itself, only a few yards away, passed under a railway bridge and located the Ship Inn – right next to the resumption of the coast path that we would use the next day. Here we had a leisurely evening; I drank two gin and tonics and we had a bottle of wine too. I phoned Dorothy from the kiosk out front and slipped into my blue UCLA sweatshirt against the chill of the evening and the draft of the pub. We left the Ship shortly before ten, just as the last of the light was fading, and headed back into Par. I was up several times in the night to offload liquid – unhappy indeed that I didn’t have my own toilet.
To continue with the next stage of our walk you need: