Friday. Walk to Lamorna

Today I set off by bus to Penzance  expecting to have 5 minutes before leaving  on another bus to Mousehole. The bus from mousehole came in, dropped his passengers, drove round to the outgoing side of the platform, looked at the motley assembled group and switched his sign to 'out of service' and drove off. There was great outrage from the locals. I thought, oh well, another is scheduled to come in half an hour.  It did.

Mousehole is much smaller than St Ives, same grey stone with some timber and white paint cottages, narrow streets, houses opening directly onto the street into traffics way, twisted alleyways, brightly coloured boats in the harbour.

I set off as planned along the SW Coastal Path towards Lamorna.  It was about 6 km of mostly easier walking  than Wednesday.  After about half an hour I realised I had not seen anyone else at much the same time as I came to a hilly down stretch of rocks to be dealt with. Not as big as boulders, but big enough not to be able to walk down like steps. Along came Rick from the USA. He was walking the whole coastal path. He was a great advocate of poles and showed me how he used them climbing up the bit I had just climbed down. More investigation needed.

I continued on and got to some most unpleasant bits . The path was very narrow and the edge of the side of the cliff very close. It was a long way down to the water. Obviously, I made it. I got to Lamorna Cove , did not like the look of the touristy cafe so went inland to the village, well, really just a pub, of Lamorna.  Most of the people in the pub were locals. I had a delicious crab sandwich.

I decided that I would return to Mousehole via the minor road rather than the coast. Another option was to walk along the  public footpath that was marked on my map. It was more direct but went through fields which may have cows in them. I was not keen on that possibility.  Just as I was thinking of leaving, a lady and her Old English sheepdog came along and started talking to this other local about the best way to Mousehole. I joined them.  It turned out she had been warned about some sections of the path that had been affected in a recent storm and may be too narrow for her and the dog. I agreed. Robert suggested to her the  route across the fields. After a fair bit of chit chat, she and I and Lucy the dog set off across the fields and through some farms.  We had to go through several fields with cows and I was very pleased I was not on my own. She was from a bit further north in Cornwall and grew up on a cow farm. She made some very funny, most peculiar  'shoo, go away' noises. She was doing about 200 miles of the SW Coastal Path as a fundraiser for a few charities. We decided that I could 'give ' her my section of her trip because she could not have safely done it with her dog. She was walking to Marazion for the night  but was stopping at Mousehole for a few hours break and was met by 2 of her support team for encouragement and company. I met them too and we chatted till my bus came.

I have just been reading the official site of the SW Coastal Path and it puts the St Ives to Zennor walk in th challenging category , as in easy, moderate or challenging.