We were down West Penwith way filming the WNM/ITV’s Icons of the Westcountry series recently and I managed somewhere in the busy shooting schedule to make inroads on one of my favourite walks in the region.
This my own preference to walking around Land's End – lonelier and altogether more maritime...
One of the Icons we were filming was the excellent Minack Theatre where the
excellent visitor centre sits happily, if not dizzily, on top of the cliffs.
The buildings in no way detract from the superb coastal scenery and the
walker setting off on this hike can look forward to enjoying well-deserved
refreshments in Britain's most sensationally situated cafe once they've
slogged their way around this seven mile route.
View the Minack Theatre slideshow
It is a perambulation based on Porthcurno, where you can park in the valley
below the famous cliff-theatre and pick up the trail that will take you out
past Gwennap Head and back again via an inland path. Gwennap itself is a
quiet, untouristy sort of Land's End - every bit as dramatic as the real
thing and every bit as far flung, but somehow with an altogether more
authentic air. |
Distance & Going: 7 miles fairly easy going with one or two steep sections.
Parking: Large car park at Porthcurno (Coast Path 100 yards from bottom exit)
Recommended Map: Ordnance Survey Explorer 7
Food & Drink: Cafeteria at Minack Theatre, other venues in Porthcurno in summer season.
Minack Theatre: Open all year except Christmas and Boxing Day. Tel: 01736 810694 or 01736 810098. Website
Porthcurno Telegraph Museum: seasonal opening variations. Tel: 01736 810478. Website |
| The coast path takes you out past Porthcurno's golden sands and up a
more-or-less vertical crag to the Minack where you can stand and admire the
coastline which presents itself to the east.
You can also admire the extraordinary concept that telegram cables once shot
all over the world from here, the first being laid back in 1870. It crossed
the bottom of the sea to Lisbon and from there went on to eventually
terminate in Bombay.
At one point Porthcurno was the biggest telegraph station in the world with
no fewer than 14 cables shooting off under the sea in various directions.
The place is still at the hub of things with modern fibre-optic cables
coming in from places such as Newfoundland.
Pay to visit the Minack Theatre and its visitor centre at the end of the
walk when you'll be in need of the excellent refreshments on offer there.
Instead go west along the clifftops to Gwennap Head and, once you've reached
this truly windswept headland, watch the man watch the shipping entering and
leaving one of the world's busiest seaways from his cosy viewpoint up in the
coastguard look-out. Sensational shipping it is too on a stormy day. |
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| I’ve seen trawlers disappearing from view altogether as they were hidden in
some gigantic trough.
Talking of fishing, the path drops down to the sea at one point to reveal
one of the best kept secrets in Cornwall - the tiny fishing harbour of
Porthgwarra. To call it a harbour is an exaggeration - more a hidden beach
where a winch hauls a few boats up and down. Nevertheless, Porthgwarra
represents quintessential Cornwall and it is one of my favourite places in
the far flung county.
The path meanders down past the odd garden or two and here you'll see
strange fern-like bushes and smell exotic herbaceous smells the likes of
which you'll not experience anywhere else in mainland Britain.
A tunnel has been hewn through the cliffs down by the shore, and I defy
anyone to wander down it onto the beach without thinking at least once of
smuggling and swashbuckle. Other tunnels and what look like store-houses
have been hollowed-out nearby in a type of rock which I can only describe as
the fossilised equivalent of sterling board. |
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| But the weirdest thing along here is a sound which seems to drift in and out
of one's consciousness with the buffeting of the wind. It is in fact the
bell which – on a stormy day - clangs eerily and eternally out on the Runnel
Stone buoy. The gale bends and warps its clamour until it sounds more like
the wailing of The Sirens.
Past Gwennap Head the coast turns north-west and along it you must go until
you reach the wild and extraordinary bay at Nanjizal. The downs along here
make for pleasant, springy walking and are the only bits of the mainland
that in any way looks like a portion of the neighbouring Scillies.
A bit higher and more vertical maybe, but if you can't afford the fare or
the time to visit the islands, then this section of path will give you some
idea of what it's like on St Agnes's Wingletang Down.
I’ve been here when globules of spume were spinning and flying upwards on
vortices of such breathtaking violence that you think they must be white
feathers ripped from some unfortunate bird dashed by the gale onto the rocks
– on a day when we were glad to turn our backs on the maelstrom and head
inland to the comparative sanity of the cauliflower fields. |
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But one day last week the scene was just the opposite – looking out towards
Scilly, so balmy and quiet were conditions that you could have been in the
Carribean.
Make your way up to Higher Bosistow and then on to Arden-Sawah Farm. From
here, or at least from the style some 400 yards down the lane to the right,
an obliging right-of-way crosses over the fields to St Levan Church, behind
which another path disembarks for the final leg back to Porthcurno.
At last you can sit with a cup of something hot in the big view-window of
the Minack's cafeteria, and admire the work of Rowena Cade, the woman who
almost single handedly planned, built and financed what must be one of
Europe's most unique theatres.
And you can muse upon the fact that you are not the only one lured to the
wilds of the West - this very theatre has been relying on a common love of
sea-borne wilderness to successfully pack in the audiences since 1932. |
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