Day 38 - Par to Polperro:  23.4 km

Day 39 - Polperro to Crafthole: 12.48 km

I am so fucking over bad food in this country.

To be fair, part of my bitchy mood can be blamed on the heat. The last two days have been an unholy alliance of high temperatures and humidity. Yesterday it was 30 celsius and humid as satan’s armpit. It was rough.

The fish and chips the night before were  awful.  Sometime around the middle of the night my stomach staged a violent uprising against what I can only assume were several litres of stale fryer grease. I woke up feeling as though I had contracted the flu from a pirate. Thankfully, it was just my digestive system sending a strongly worded letter of complaint.Then there was the weather. Thirty degrees Celsius may not sound catastrophic to people from hotter climates, but Britain approaches heat the same way it approaches spice, air conditioning and modern dentistry. Reluctantly. The humidity was thick enough to chew. Every step felt like I was hiking through a damp wool blanket.

The walking itself was not particularly brutal by South West Coast Path standards. The climbs and descents were reasonably non soul sucking and the first half offered a fair amount of shade. Then we reached Fowey.  Fowey is exactly the sort of place that seduces you into staying longer than intended. There are beaches, cafés, sweeping views across brilliant blue water and enough picturesque charm to make a travel writer reach for a thesaurus. I wanted to sit for a while. Have a cold drink. Stare at the sea. Maybe remember that walking is supposed to be enjoyable. Ken, however, had become obsessed with logistics.

There was concern about the ferry schedule. There was concern about making it to Lansallos before four o'clock. There was concern about catching the bus into Polperro. Missing that bus would have transformed the day into an eight-and-a-half-hour death march conducted under a giant flaming sky. So we rushed.

And as is often the case when two people travel together, one person's anxiety became another person's suffering. By the time we staggered into Lansallos, I was cooked, dehydrated,  nauseous and carrying the sort of simmering rage usually reserved for failed governments and airline baggage policies. I was drenched in sweat. From the heat, from being sick. and from the growing realization that I was about to spend the rest of this trip marching up and down cliffs too exhausted  and hot to properly appreciate any of them.

The irony is that all the rushing worked. We made it to the bus stop with a full hour to spare. So  we sat beside the old church, a beautiful little place whose origins stretch back centuries. 

We waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

The bus never arrived.  Not because there wasn't a bus. There absolutely was a bus. We know this because the taxi driver we eventually called informed us she'd passed it fifteen minutes earlier, merrily proceeding along its normal route.

The driver had simply decided not to stop. This was a revelation. I had naively assumed buses operated according to schedules. Foolish me. It turns out rural bus drivers operate like eighteenth-century sea captains, exercising broad personal discretion over which ports they visit and which unfortunate souls they leave stranded on the shore. In hindsight, being abandoned by public transport was probably the most authentic way possible to arrive in a town built on lawlessness.

Polperro's smuggling trade reached its peak in the late eighteenth century when Britain's wars with America and France drove import taxes through the roof. Fishermen quickly discovered there was considerably more money to be made sneaking in brandy and tobacco than catching fish. Before long the entire place was running what can only be described as a highly efficient criminal enterprise with excellent community engagement. At the centre of it all was Zephaniah Job, known as the Smugglers' Banker. This man was essentially a combination of mafia boss, accountant and local councillor. He kept rival smugglers from encroaching on each other's territory, ensured money flowed back into the community and established support for widows whose husbands had met unfortunate ends while engaged in entrepreneurial maritime activities. Naturally, there was self-interest involved. There always is. A widow with financial security is far less likely to start asking awkward questions or decide she'd quite like to take over her late husband's operation herself. The more I learn about smugglers, the more they sound like modern corporations. Better uniforms perhaps, but roughly the same business model.

Our stay last night was at Penryn House Hotel. A perfectly pleasant place.  Clean, comfortable and run by nice people. Unfortunately, it was also equipped with precisely zero air conditioning, zero fans and approximately the same level of air circulation as a Victorian crypt. Sleeping there during a Cornish heatwave felt less like renting a room and more like torture in a low-budget sauna experiment.

To be fair, I arrived in a truly foul mood. I was drenched in sweat, nauseous, dangerously hungry and carrying enough rage to power a small electrical grid. There are moments on a long walk when you feel spiritually enlightened and deeply connected to the land. This was not one of them. This was one of those moments when every hill feels personal and every cheerful tourist deserves a stern talking-to. I had used the name of Jesus Christ so many times in vain that I suspect He finally lost patience and decided an intervention was necessary.

The punishment was swift. No internet. I imagine Jesus sitting somewhere above the clouds saying, "Perhaps if she cannot post about her suffering, she will stop suffering quite so theatrically." Unfortunately, He underestimated my commitment to the bit.

I did manage to secure a respectable glass of rosé at The Blue Peter, which briefly restored my faith in humanity. The seafood dish, however, was not exactly a loaves-and-fishes situation. If there had been a miracle involved, it was the chef's ability to make seafood seem so profoundly uninspiring. I suspect the universe was attempting to teach me humility. Instead, I progressed through the traditional stages of trail exhaustion. First came "Jesus Christ." Then came "For the love of God." And finally, I reached the highest level of spiritual enlightenment available to hikers: "Fuck this shit. I'm done." Overheated and in desperate need of another glass of rosé and an ice bath.

Today was insane.

It was 32 degrees Celsius, there wasn't a breath of wind, and the humidity was thick enough to grow orchids in my armpits. Tropical plants may thrive in such conditions. I do not. By morning, my enthusiasm for hiking had evaporated faster than a puddle in the Sahara. The previous evening, Ken had stood out on the roadside waving his phone around like a Victorian spiritualist attempting to contact the dead, all in search of a cell signal. We both knew the full 25 kilometres was fantasy. The plan became simple: walk as far as we could before the sun transformed Cornwall into a giant convection oven. We made it to Looe.

Looe is a handsome little fishing town. Until recently it was also home to Nelson, a local bull seal who spent twenty-five years lounging on the rocks, basking in the sun and, according to local legend, ogling women posing for seaside selfies. Frankly, Nelson understood the assignment. He passed away a few years ago after a long career of tanning, napping and minding absolutely none of his own business. We found an excellent flat white in a tiny café hidden down a back alley. A place you discover by accident and then immediately feel superior for having found. Coffee in hand, morale briefly restored, we continued to the Co-op to assemble dinner. I am officially finished with pub food and fish and chips.

Getting to our lodgings tonight meant a cab because SURPRISE! - buses are a complete shit show in Cornwall.  A 15 minuted drive by car is a 2.5 hour three bus change ride because why the fuck not.   So yeah, another tip for this route is do not rely on buses and expect to take taxis more than you think you will.  Budget for it like you did saving for your kid’s college fund.  Meaning budget for a lot and plan on it never being enough.

Today’s cab was fucking surreal.

Looe has a taxi queue, which means you take the next available car and accept whatever slice of humanity is parked next in line. Enter the Texas Chainsaw taxi driver. If Ken had not been standing beside me, I would have waited. I would have slept on the pavement. I would have befriended a seagull and named him Gerald before I climbing into that car. But exhaustion, heat and the basic human need for a shower are powerful forces. The driving began badly and ontinued downhill.

The man drove like he was fleeing a crime scene in a vehicle he had stolen from someone he owned money.  Speed limits were treated as vague suggestions. Brakes were slammed whenever another car appeared, which happened frequently because, annoyingly, other people also use roads. Every approaching vehicle was a personal insult.  He drove like the entire county had challenged him to a duel. Then came the conversation.

First, cyclists.

He hated cyclists. Then came the story about women who, according to him, accuse him of  rape for chasing them down alleys. His explanation was they were drunk and trying to avoid paying. Naturally, he insisted nobody believed him.

At this point I was sitting in the back seat, sweating through my clothes, holding our groceries and wondering why the South West Coast Path delivered a side quest nobody asked for. Then came Plymouth. Ken assumed he was about to hear about crime. Nope. According to our driver, the real danger in Plymouth was taking your phone out because someone might see you looking at it and report you for watching child porn. “I’ve had that happen three times,” he announced.

He explained that people wanted to be heroes and makee accusations, and that he was now pursuing legal action against everyone involved. The rage level inside that tiny car was reaching industrial strength. Then he slammed on the brakes again. The groceries launched into orbit. My soul briefly left my body. Ken switched into his calm professional voice, the one designed to lower anxiety in the operating room. I was less optimistic. I was calculating whether the man’s driving style was going to get us to the Finnygook Inn or into body bags. Then we nearly took out a cyclist. “I hate cyclists,” he repeated. “The government says I need to give them three metres, but I can’t be bothered with that.” He eventually delivered us to the inn, but not before insisting that the route he had taken, was the superior route. A pre-emptive argument, just in case anyone question him later. Did we probably pay too much? Absolutely. Did I have the energy drop kick a rapist?  Absolutely not. It was brutally hot. The building are holding heat like a medieval punishment chambers. I was dehydrated, filthy,  and exhausted Wisdom is knowing when not to engage. Survival is accepting you paid a ridiculous amount of money for a cold shower and calling it a win.

 

 Day 37 - Mevagissey to Par:  22.17 km

There is no rest for the wicked, and apparently none for those foolish enough to tackle the South West Coast Path. After a day spent wandering resurrected gardens, icing rebellious knees and pretending recovery counts as an achievement, we were back on the trail.

Our two nights in Mevagissey were spent at the Ship Inn, one of the village's two original proper sailors' pubs, pouring ale since the 1600s. Back when pirates, smugglers and assorted maritime lunatics prowled the Cornish coast, this was exactly the sort of place where a man could lose a fortune, gain a tattoo and wake up engaged to someone named Margaret. Much of the pub still feels reassuringly unchanged. Low ceilings designed to humble tall people. Stone floors worn smooth by centuries of muddy boots. Walls cluttered with enough nautical paraphernalia to sink a small frigate. Ale and cider flow with the sort of confidence usually reserved for politicians making promises. It’s popular with South West Coast Path walkers because the rooms above the bar are what estate agents would call "compact" and normal people would call "cheap and cheerful." I have absolutely no complaints. It did exactly what it promised. I got a bed, a shower and, perhaps most importantly, soap. That said, they need fans in the attic rooms. Ours sat directly beneath the roof, and while it was tolerable during our stay, come July the place is going to feel less like accommodation and more like a human roasting. Future guests may emerge perfectly cooked and ready to be served with seasonal vegetables.

Today was another excellent day of walking, which in trail terms means there was very little drama. We said goodbye this morning to a couple from Vancouver who have been tackling the South West Coast Path for the last three weeks. Unlike the Camino, you don’t really form travelling families out here. There are no nightly reunions or emotional group selfies. Instead, you gradually become familiar with the faces moving along the same ribbon of coast. You nod, exchange updates, compare blisters and quietly keep an eye on one another. It feels less like a club and more like a loose association of slightly weathered eccentrics. Oddly enough, while the path is less social than a Camino, I feel less lonely here. Perhaps it’s because there is absolutely no pressure to become the best version of yourself, discover your purpose, or have a spiritual breakthrough before wine. The South West Coast Path asks only that you put one foot in front of the other and occasionally admire the view. The days rarely end with me hiding in a room. In Britain, the pub remains one of humanity's great achievements. Forget cathedrals and empires. A room full of strangers, a decent pint and a willingness to laugh at life's absurdities has done more for social cohesion than most governments. You sit on a bench, someone wanders over with a dog, and twenty minutes later you're discussing everything and nothing at once. The weather, failed diets, local gossip, maritime disasters, the state of the world. Everyone seems to have a dog, a smile, and a story. Usually in that order.

Case in point: for the last four days we have been crossing paths with a young woman and her ten-year-old fox terrier. She lives in Cornwall and, whenever the weather is kind and the world becomes a little too loud, she simply disappears onto the coast path for a few days with her dog. There is something achingly timeless about her.

You see people like this from time to time and they stay with you. Women who seem to belong not to any particular century but to all of them. Women who have walked lonely roads, carried private sorrows, buried old dreams and somehow emerged softer rather than hard. The kind of person who sits quietly on a cliff edge and makes the landscape feel complete. She walks alone, but not in the way loneliness is usually understood. There is a stillness about her. A tenderness. As though she has made peace with the fact that life rarely unfolds according to plan. The fox terrier trots faithfully beside her, grey around the muzzle now, but still looking at her as if she hung the moon. I suspect that little dog has witnessed every chapter of her life. Every heartbreak. Every disappointment. Every small victory. Dogs are remarkable that way. They watch us fall apart and somehow love us even more for the cracks.

I found myself wondering how many people pass through our lives without ever truly being seen. Then along comes someone like her and, in the space of a few brief conversations on a windswept path, you catch a glimpse of an entire universe. Not because of what they tell you, but because of what they carry. Her words are simple. Her presence is gentle. Almost sacred. Pilgrims and poets have followed these cliffs for centuries, searching for fortune, redemption or simply a place where their hearts could rest for a while. She feels like one of them. And I suspect that one day she will simply keep walking. No destination. No grand declaration. Just a woman and a little dog following a path that curves beyond the horizon. The dog will be happy because she is there. She will be happy because he is. Sometimes, after all the noise and striving and nonsense of modern life, that kind of love feels like the closest thing we have to grace.

We are in Par tonight. Par is not the sort of place that appears on postcards. There are no quaint fishermen mending nets while seagulls pose artistically for tourists. It is a proper working-class town. The kind of place built on hard labour, long shifts and people getting on with life because nobody else is going to do it for them. There is grit here. Angry young men. Exhausted women. Faces that suggest life has been a heavyweight championship and they have gone twelve rounds with it. The last five kilometres into town felt oddly Camino-like. Road walking. Cars screaming past. Scrap yards full of rusting machinery. A few trailers. A few dogs that appeared to have opinions on strangers.

The upside is that accommodation is refreshingly cheap. Tonight we are staying in a row house converted into five guest rooms, populated by a cast that could have wandered off the set of EastEnders. There is a truck driver from Manchester enjoying a well-earned holiday. A black woman determined to escape something, though wisely keeps the details to herself. A young man whose mysterious comings and goings have inspired several entirely unverified theories around drug smuggling. And another woman whom we have barely glimpsed, except during regular expeditions involving remarkable quantities of cake. Dinner came from the fish and chip shop on the corner, which opens for only two hours each evening, like some greasy, vinegar-scented celestial event. The portions were colossal. There was so much food that we ended up sharing it with the truck driver from Manchester. Mostly because there was no earthly way I was letting Ken eat the whole lot and then expire dramatically in bed from cholesterol overload. I love Ken very much, but after all this walking I simply do not have the energy for midnight CPR.

Day 36 - Mevagissey: rest day

Happy Sunday to you all.

Seeing as it was the biblical day of rest, we figured it might be wise to stop pretending we were indestructible. My right knee has spent the last few nights filing increasingly aggressive complaints with management, while Ken’s knee brace has absorbed enough sweat and grime to qualify as a biohazard. One of the great lessons of the South West Coast Path is that you need far more rest days than you think. Honestly, a one-day-on, one-day-off schedule sounds less like weakness and more like advanced strategic planning. 

Mevagissey is an excellent place to surrender to idleness. Big enough to provide everything you need, small enough not to feel like you've been dropped back into civilisation with no warning. At weekends it fills with day-trippers hunting artisans coffee, harbour views and seafood that won't require a second mortgage. The village is blessed with a collection of junk shops that feel like the contents of several centuries emptied into a blender. One minute you're admiring a First World War helmet, the next you're staring at a tattooed portrait of an 1880s prostitute, some deeply questionable blackface memorabilia, and a cardboard box full of 1950s bras. That box has  seen  things. Entire romances, scandals and possibly a murder or two. The founder of Pears' Soap, Andrew Pears, was born here, proving that even a village famed for fishing could produce a man obsessed with cleanliness.

Local folklore claims that during the Napoleonic a warship was wrecked offshore. The sole survivor was a monkey clinging to a spar. Having never encountered such a beast, suspicious villagers concluded it must be a French spy and promptly hanged it on the beach. This story says far more about rural paranoia than international espionage. Still, dogs are welcome everywhere in Mevagissey, but I would strongly advise leaving your monkey at home. As everyone knows, monkeys work for the French Directorate-General for External Security. Then there is Hitler's Walk, a local park whose name has survived decades of debate. Some say it was named after a councillor whose enthusiasm for petty rules bordered on dictatorship. Others claim it came from Home Guard patrols scanning the coastline for German invasion forces during the Second World War. Either way, only in Britain could a pleasant seaside stroll carry the lingering aroma of wartime fascism, bureaucratic grumbling and rather decent coffee.

We were not here for the fascism or the racism. We were here for the Lost Gardens of Heligan. Heligan was once one of Cornwall's great country estates, owned by the Tremayne family since 1569. Before the First World War, twenty-two gardeners tended its formal gardens with almost monastic devotion. Then history arrived with muddy boots and a rifle. The young men marched off to war, and the gardens slowly slipped beneath a tangle of neglect, becoming one of Britain's most haunting lost landscapes. The numbers are enough to stop you in your tracks. Of the original twenty-two gardeners, only four returned. Two of those came home carrying wounds that would claim them within a few short years. Before leaving for the trenches, the men scratched their names into the wall of a lavatory known as the Thunderbox Room. It is perhaps the most British war memorial imaginable. Not a marble statue on horseback, but a collection of hopeful graffiti beside a toilet. Those names still survive, a reminder that the hands which once pruned roses and trained fruit trees were asked to hold rifles instead. Walking through Heligan, it is impossible not to think how fragile beauty really is. Gardens, like civilizations and pub romances, require constant attention or nature starts taking its deposit back. The estate lingered in obscurity for decades. There was a brief revival during the Second World War when the house became an officers' base. Sadly, the officers displayed considerably more enthusiasm for drinking and  slagging off the Germans than for weeding flowerbeds. The roses were abandoned, the ale was not. Some traditions, it seems, are eternal.

The gardens are a magnificent place to slow down, unclench your jaw and remember that nature generally does a better job of interior decorating than humans. There is a suspension bridge that locals cheerfully compare to the Bridge over the River Kwai, a pleasant café, sculptures tucked among the greenery and enough bees to remind you who really runs the planet. It is also dog friendly. Monkeys, however, remain under suspicion. Before Heligan's resurrection in the 1990s, Ian of the Shepherd's Hut  spent his spare time wandering the overgrown estate in search of mushrooms and the occasional wayward druid. These days he has asked guests to keep druidic activity to a sensible minimum. One wicker man reenactment a month was perfectly acceptable, but things apparently spiralled after Covid. The nightly human sacrifices have become something of a sticking point with the parish council. Complicating matters further, another shepherd's hut down the road has been aggressively pursuing the lucrative naked forest dancing under the full moon market. Ian has no desire to start a turf war with neighbouring pagans and risk having his strawberry patch cursed with aphids. Rural diplomacy is a delicate business. So if you plan on staying with Ian before or during your visit to Mevagissey, kindly leave the blood rites at home. Save them for the Wales Coast Path, where such things are handled with a little more professionalism.