Day 19 - Padstow to Porthcothan: 22.19 km

There is no rest for the wicked, and frankly, my soul is screaming for a vacation from this vacation. Yesterday’s reprieve was a beautiful lie, nothing more than the universe prepping us for another absolute pounding by the elements. But before we get to the impending wreckage, let’s talk about Port Isaac - last night’s sanctuary.

First recorded in 1338, Padstow was born of grit, fish scales, and coastal trading. It was one of the most remote settlements in Britain, a safe harbor carved into the treacherous north Cornish coast. Mother Ocean is a cruel, unforgiving mistress. Between 1823 and 1846, 130 ships were violently wrecked on these cliffs, and the churchyard at St Endellion is packed with the bones of drowned mariners. During World War II, the town offered a different kind of refuge when the Bide A While Hotel became a boarding house for traumatized children evacuated from the London Blitz. Today, the village has swapped historical trauma for tourist dollars, known for its cinematic scenery and decadent eating establishments. Rick Stein has two joints here: one barely affordable if you skimp on rent, and the other so wildly expensive it borders on financial humiliation for a humble walker.

For comfort food, The Cherry Trees Cafe serves award-winning Cornish pasties and homemade scones as soft and pillowy as your nan’s embrace. I foolishly attempted the Cornish method, spreading the jam first and the clotted cream second. It was a complete shitshow. Trying to smear thick clotted cream over slick jam on a piping hot scone is like trying to shampoo a feral cat. It is a venture destined for destruction and mayhem. The pastry disintegrated, the cream slid off like cheap makeup, and my dignity vanished. Thankfully, I had a backup scone. For round two, I went full Devon, cream first, jam on top. Unfriend me if that offends your delicate sensibilities.

On the sacred topic of sustenance, it is imperative that you check Google Reviews before spending a single pence here. Like any tourist trap, the culinary scene is a gamble: it’s either a magnificent orgy in your mouth or a deeply disappointing, dry hump of a meal. The fish and chip shop next to Cherry Trees rocks a horrific 1.5-star rating despite its prime real estate and aesthetic seating. Meanwhile, Harbour Ice Cream scoops decadent, locally made dairy heaven, but do not touch their espresso under any circumstances. Despite a sign boldly lying about "real Italian coffee," it was a crime against humanity. I paid five pounds for a flat white that turned out to be tepid brown water topped with sad, chemical foam. The internet reviews completely backed me up on this, a digital warning I ignored at my own peril.

Last night’s stay was Cullanan’s B&B, clinging to the edge of the harbor like a barnacle. These places are anchored by a rapidly fading generation. It’s becoming brutally common to get a text saying your host has fallen ill and can’t take you. We’ve been hit by this heartbreak twice now. Our original Port Isaac booking was with a legendary guy from a previous hike, but three weeks before we landed, he reached out. Cancer, swift and merciless, had moved him to palliative care, and he  transferred us to Cullanan’s. This is why the surviving old-school B&Bs demand multi-night stays. It’s not naked greed; it’s that these beautiful, frail humans simply don’t have the physical mojo to strip sheets and scrub toilets every single morning. It’s a tragic decline, mirroring the loss of the ancient minshuku lodgings along Japan’s Shikoku pilgrimage route.

But Cullanan’s? Absolute peak charm. The hosts are an elderly, childless couple who spent their youth sailing world oceans, scaling jagged peaks, and executing highly classified, deeply badass missions for the Royal Marines. Historically, Cornwall was the crucible for the real-world elite commando units of the 1940s, and looking at the grain-heavy photographs lining the hallways, it’s blindingly obvious this pair lived a life that would make The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare look like a corporate team-building exercise. They’re well into their eighties now. He navigates the steep stairs with a cane and stubborn determination, though I half suspect that limp is from an old injury sustained while rappelling down an Afghan cliffside to escape hostile tribesmen. The wife is a majestic Viking shield-maiden who could captain a longship better than any man  and return with more plunder  and women than Ragnar Lothbrok and hissing combinedf. The house is a living museum, dense with soul and thick with the perfume of clandestine history. Our room was tiny, featuring a shower casually positioned right next to the bed but I could have stayed there for an eternity, drinking gin and listening to their lives. 

It was a total bastard of a walk today. Thank God the universe threw us a bone with only a few three-hundred-meter inclines instead of the usual twenty soul-crushing peaks, because I was already running on fumes.  It was freezing, and I  did not pack enough layers for this bullshit. What began as a dreary overcast drizzle rapidly degenerated into gale-force headwinds and weaponized sleet that felt like shards of broken glass hitting your face. We fought that for four hours, and I mean a visceral, full-body bar fight with the sky. At times, the sheer atmospheric pressure made forward motion impossible, and getting violently body-checked sideways onto the wet turf was just the baseline vibe.This stretch of the coast has been killing people for centuries. It’s littered with the carcasses of  Spanish and French trading vessels that miscalculated the savage Cornish reefs. Today, the sea was proudly demonstrating that lethal pedigree.

Every single beach was under strict "red flag" lockdown. The lifeguards were out in full force, acting as highly stressed bouncers to ensure some influencer didn't try to chase TikTok clout by filming an aesthetic death-drop in the surf. Monstrous thirty-foot waves slammed into the ancient cliffs, exploding into a thick, soapy sea foam that carpeted the cliffs, making the landscape look beautifully, poetically alien. I am so profoundly exhausted from fighting those sixty-five-kilometer gales. My face feels like it has been sandblasted down to the skull, and my eyes need a  gallon of Visine just to stop the burn.  We crossed paths with those overconfident Americans, but they’ve vanished into the mist, presumably crying into a damp fleece. Meanwhile, the hardcore German ladies are sheltering at the same farm glamping grounds we are, and like us, look completely beaten into submission by the elements.

The campground features a small, grease-trap of a cafe, and we all converged there to inhale burgers and fries like wolves that hadn't seen meat in a month. Outside our yurt, the resident alpacas are tightly folded into the grass, desperately praying for the storm to end, while Wilbur the pot-bellied pig has wisely sought asylum inside the chicken coop. Only two unhinged billy goats and a group of local  children on a trampoline remain outside, actively giving the weather the proverbial middle finger while doing things no living being should ever do to test the laws of physics. Time will tell who wins this  battle against Mother Nature, and who goes home with a broken radius or a fractured hind leg.

 Day 18 - Port Issac to Padstow:  forced rest day

Today promised twenty-one kilometers of brutal undulation and coastal wonderland, but we woke up to a torrential downpour and fifty-kilometer winds. Suffice to say, neither of us was down with the idea of getting absolutely pounded by the elements while grinding on nature’s stairmaster for six hours. So, today’s dispatch won’t feature majestic cliffs or me fighting for my life on another peak. Instead, it is a lazy summary  laced with whatever random musings hit the brain.

If you want to splurge on a decadent sanctuary along this rugged route, the Port Gaverne Hotel is worth every single penny. It was pure, unadulterated luxury. Beyond a gorgeous room equipped with a Dyson fan, they provided a Nespresso machine with enough pods to fuel my caffeinated heart for eternity. Getting a decent cup of coffee in the UK is a notorious struggle, so scoring these Italian pods felt like tasting caviar. And the cookies? Top tier. Not those depressing little Biscoff wafers that budget airlines use to gaslight you into thinking they care.

Historically, this tiny cove was a bustling 19th-century port exporting slate and landing tons of pilchards, which were salted on-site in dark, gritty cellars. Today, the only thing being cured was my hangover, thanks to the greatest "Hugs" ever mixed. I call it a Hugs because when I eyed the magnificent calligraphic menu at the bar, I spotted the Aperol Spritz right next to what looked like "Hugs." I sent Ken to fetch me one. He returned looking beautifully bemused and slightly traumatized. When I asked what happened, he whispered, "Well, I ordered the Hugs, which is actually a Hugo cocktail, and I’m pretty sure the bartender and I are legally married now."

Dinner was an absolute triumph of the senses. It wasn’t cheap, but true pleasure rarely is. Skip the surf and turf, mostly because if your palate is accustomed to the marbling of North American or Japanese wagyu, this lean British beef will leave you feeling catfished. The accompanying shrimp, however, were sweet, plump, and utterly redeeming, sitting alongside hand-cut fries clearly made with love and a heavy hand of salt. Breakfast was another culinary feast, boasting thick, artisanal sourdough.  Sadly, the coffee returned to its baseline of hot garbage. They desperately needed to bring those room pods down to the dining floor.

I wish I could regale you with cinematic photos of quaint Port Isaac, the iconic backdrop for Doc Martin and countless other pieces of cozy television. But the  truth is that this town is dying a slow, agonizing death. The legendary Crab Shack Cafe, once the undisputed champion of the English crab sandwich, is now a hollow shell of its former glory. The reviews are an absolute trainwreck. Tourists complain bitterly of watery meat filled with broken shells, and brine-soaked bread. The owner reportedly yells at dissatisfied customers and has been known to just flip the sign and shut the whole place down out of spite. You almost have to 

But perspective matters. This is where we confront the gritty, sobering reality of the coastal path, a cautionary tale of how bad decisions can reap horrendous, irreversible consequences.

If I can distill the staggering contrast of walking this coastal path a decade ago versus navigating it now, it is the sharp, bruising shock of what the twin horsemen of Brexit and Covid did to this coast. As a North American, you’d be forgiven for assuming any rugged oceanfront property wrapped in a quaint village would be a heavily gentrified, hyper-expensive haven by now, mirroring the fate of our mountain towns back home. Instead, economic isolationism absolutely decimated the soul of this country. If separatist factions anywhere want a raw, unvarnished look at what their political fantasies actually cost, they need to spend two weeks walking village to village. You need that long to shake off the basic tourist mindset and settle into the heavy, heartbreaking reality of how desperate things have become. The erosion is violently abrupt. A cafe boasting glowing reviews online is suddenly shuttered when you arrive, its windows dark and filled with ghosts. The eccentric little shops that once gave these hamlets their magic are either gone or displaying signs reading "Out of business by summer. Everything must go." Historically, Cornwall has always survived on boom-and-bust cycles, from the ancient Romans mining its tin to the 19th-century copper rush. But this current collapse feels deeply poignant, a modern tragedy written in real-time. Which brings us to a crucial, unglamorous truth for anyone planning this route: finding a bed is becoming a high-stakes survival game, as legitimate accommodations grow increasingly rare and elusive along the path.

When I started booking this in January, the lack of options shook me. I chalked it up to hikers flooding the market, assuming digital nomads had snatched up homes to raise their aesthetic toddlers by the sea. The reality is far less glamorous. The sheer volume of permanent "For Sale" signs is both heartbreaking and eerie. Where rows of buzzing B&Bs once lined the cliffs, you might find a single survivor. The rest are abandoned or cannibalized as holiday rentals. The remaining spots have zero interest in catering to walkers. They want the high-spending tourists staying three nights minimum. Sure, campgrounds exist if you want to humble-brag about roughing it, but even pitching a nylon tent will drain forty quid from your Monzo card. Food is another beast entirely. Everything is expensive. Everything. If a Camino de Santiago requires a budget, keeping costs down on this trail is a statistical impossibility. Historically, these coastal paths weren't meant for romantic self-discovery; they were carved out by rough-handed coastguards hunting for smugglers. There was a raw, transactional grit to it. Today, the demographic has shifted. A decade ago, meeting fellow thru-hikers was standard. Now? The path is choked with people on catered, self-guided walking holidays. As the weeks wear on, we encounter chippy tourists who think one day of damp windy weather  is a quirky story for FaceTime and beers. Meanwhile, we are out here looking like battle-hardened soldiers on our sixth tour of duty, deeply fatigued and completely out of patience for the amateur hour.

Today was one of those days.  

As we stood huddled in the deluge, waiting for our rides, we met with a pack of four American women. One of them barked a question in that loud toxic-positivity cadence only Americans can truly weaponize, asking if we were hiking or hiding. I flatly told her we were tapping out, catching a ride to Padstow to dodge the worst of the apocalyptic weather. "Oh, but you are going to miss out!" she proclaimed, her voice dripping not with concern, but with the subtle, competitive gaslighting of a corporate wellness seminar. Ken, completely unfazed, shot back: "We got absolutely raw-dogged by the elements yesterday. Today is supposed to be worse." With peak American exceptionalism, she scoffed, "You can’t come all this way and let a little wind get to you. What were you expecting on a coastal path?"

You could feel the shift instantly. I was being schooled by a woman who clearly spends her summers drinking Pinot Grigio on Cape Cod, probably hit Everest Base Camp for her sixtieth birthday, and returned home to tell her book club that the altitude wasn't even that bad but everyone else seemed to have "such a difficult time." For a fleeting second, I asked myself What would Jesus do? and I was reasonably certain he would have told her to fuck right off. Instead, I channeled papal diplomacy, flashed my most enigmatic Mona Lisa smile, and muttered, "I am perfectly at peace with missing sixty-five-kilometer winds today." Turning to pure retail therapy as a coping mechanism, I marched up the hill to a gorgeous little boutique selling thick fisherman-knit sweaters and high-end English outerwear, and bought myself a blindingly bright yellow raincoat. It was a decadent victory over the elements, the trail, and the haters alike.