Creating a circular route out of a
coastal walk can be a challenge, but here's a fine example of the
genre. It begins at Nare Head, the great National Trust-owned sentinel
of a headland that guards the western end of Veryan Bay, in South
Cornwall.
A car park is situated at the inland end of this south-facing
cape, and once you've parked you can decide whether to walk to the
end of the headland straightaway or leave it to the end of the hike.
I recommend the latter option because you are rewarded for your
labours by some of the finest coastal vistas in the Westcountry.
Basic walk: from the National Trust car park
at Nare Head, inland via lanes and footpaths to reach Portloe, returning
along the South West Coast Path.
Recommended map: Ordnance Survey Explorer 105
- Falmouth and Mevagissy. Distance and going: six miles - some arduous
ups and downs.
Getting there: the A 3078 is the main road that
leads south through the Roseland Peninsula to St Mawes. Takes signs
to Veryan, then follow sign to Portloe turning right at the crossroads
where Nare Head is signposted.
Note that all maps on this site are only indicative.
You should never set out without the correct OS map.
For some reason I prefer to begin my
circular coastal walks by doing the inland section first. On this
hike the inland-first option will take you north past the farm at
Pennare Wallas and up the lane to the place where a footpath sets
off on the right towards Caragloose Farm. Past the homestead, this
leads north across fields until you reach a place called Camels.
Just east of this, another footpath descends over the fields to
a location marked on the map as Sunny Corner - this being the inland
portion of Portloe. The fishing village was made famous a few years
ago as the location for the television series Wild West, starring
Dawn French, but its picturesque harbour and streets have a wonderfully
timeless feel about them despite the attentions of TV.
Perhaps because of the myriad tiny lanes you have to negotiate
to reach Portloe, the village has avoided the development that has
ruined so many Cornish fishing coves.
There used to be a lifeboat station at Portloe.
At first launching the boat was a ludicrously difficult operation
which required her to be hauled down the hill, then swivelled around
and let down the steep slope onto the beach. Once, during a practice
session, she ran out of control and crashed into a shop. A new lifeboat
house was then built up against the cliff on the shoreline.
But it was all much ado about nothing. In the 17 short years Portloe
had a lifeboat, it was not once called upon to make a rescue. This
probably had something to do with the fact that the harbour is horribly
difficult to get in and out of in storms that come any point of
the compass with south in it.
We leave the village as we climb south a steep hill called the
Jacka. It's quite a haul up to the higher ramparts of Manare Point,
which we round to enter a big bay, the southern end of which is
called Parc Caragloose Cove. Way up, on the clifftops, there's a
large house - a sort of late Victorian villa - which must have some
of the finest sea views in the West Country. It 's owned by the
National Trust and the tenants do Bed and Breakfast. It was also
the main location for the TV series The Camomile Lawn.
The path now does a good deal of zig-zagging down
the near-vertical heath to more or less meet the sea at a place
called The Straythe. And, before you know it, you're on your way
up again - zig-zagging up around Blouth Point.
This section of coast is remarkable for the great diversity of
habitats including species-rich unimproved grassland and open communities,
rock exposures, remnant scrub-invaded heath, water drips and flushes,
and rich foreshores. It is also an important site for coastal lichens
and several very rare invertebrates have been recorded. Farmland
birds thrive on the mixed farmland and peregrines can be seen patrolling
the cliffs.
Now we're skirting Kiberick Cove and soon we come to a curious
field. Curious because it seems to have detached itself from its
inland friends in a bid to make for the sea. It is a field that
appears to have sunk some 30 or more feet - which is exactly what
happened in a sort of gigantic, but not far-reaching, landslip that
occurred in ancient times. The field introduces us to the beginning
of Nare Head.
If you look at a map you'll see this south-pointing
promontory stretches some way out into the sea. To walk to its end
- which is the picturesque point of this hike - you must simply
follow the coast path past Lemoria Rock and Rosen Cliff, and after
a few minutes you will gain the very cape.
On the way the track passes the ventilators of an underground
Royal Observer Corps station, used during the cold war as a listening
post. The nearby grassy bump conceals a World War Two bunker that
was earthed-over after the war. The large grassy field immediately
behind the headland was a World War Two Starfish site - a decoy
for Falmouth, complete with mock buildings and streetlights designed
to attract German bombs.
Once there you can admire the guano covered cliffs of Gull Rock
- in important seabird colony - as well as the vast coastal vistas
past Portscatho to the south and watch the gannets dive hither and
thither in the bluest of blue seas. By the way, the view across
Gerrans Bay takes in Carne and Pendower beaches and Treluggan cliff
- all protected by the Trust.
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