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.

 

 Day 34 - Falmouth to Portloe : 21.57 km

Day35  - Portloe to Mevagissey: 25.32 km

I didn't get around to posting yesterday. By the time we finished walking, my brain had clocked out. All I could manage was editing photos, taking a shower and demolishing a couple of boil-in-the-bag meals before falling face first into bed.

It sounds grim. Actually, it was one of the better days we've had. The weather finally loosened its grip on our throats. The rain stayed away and for the first time in weeks, walking did not resemble an elaborate punishment devised by a disappointed deity.

Our accomodations in Falmouth was the Star and Garter, a tiny pub with three  in enormous rooms tucked behind it. The views were spectacular.  Even better, the room came with bath products. At this stage of the trip, that alone earns a standing ovation. But the true miracle was sitting on the counter.A Nespresso machine. There were pods too. Plenty of them. Enough to get me caffeinated to a level normally associated with hostage negotiators and hedge fund managers.

The machine itself, however, had the temperament of a French film director.

Sometimes it made coffee. Sometimes it made alarming noises. Sometimes it simply sat there refusing to cooperate, as if offended by my presence.

Eventually I coaxed one glorious shot from it. That was all it took. Suddenly colours were brighter. Birds sounded more musical. I regained the ability to care about other human beings. Meanwhile, Ken embarked on a late-night expedition to Tesco Express in search of Millionaire's Bars. A mission that quickly deteriorated. Entering the shop, he discovered what can only be described as a full-contact disagreement unfolding in the cereal aisle.  There was shouting, posturing and enough aggression to suggest somebody had deeply insulted another man's relationship with Weetabix. Recognising that no confectionery item is worth being  stabbed over, Ken abandoned the hunt. Instead, he executed a tactical withdrawal with two chocolate croissants and exited the premises shortly before the police arrived. So that was our evening in Falmouth. A room with a harbour view, one hard-earned espresso, two chocolate croissants and a near-death encounter in a Tesco Express.

The weather yesterday improved. It spent the day dithering, unable to choose between fog, drizzle, or a brief flash of sunshine. Naturally, the drizzle and wind arrived during the boat crossings. The sea and I remain sworn enemies. If I had a past life, it certainly wasn't as a fisherman, pirate, or daring naval explorer. 

The walk itself was pleasantly uneventful. The scenery was lovely and, most importantly, the trail refrained from destroying our knees. At this stage my demands are simple: no rain and no endless rock-hopping ascents and descents. Lunch was at a farm café selling artisanal gin, cashews, and crab rolls. The sort of provisions one requires when wandering Cornwall.  The stage ended in Portloe, but our accommodation was a few kilometres inland in a Shepherd's Hut. Reaching it involved a "shortcut”.  Things began well enough until a woman pulled over and asked if we were lost as we prepared to march through a farm gate into what appeared to be another dimension. Ken confidently said no. Which translates directly to yes.

The first field was fine. Then an owl appeared - a feathered harbinger of poor decisions -  and the path promptly vanished. What followed was an overgrown hedge, a scramble over a large stone, a mud pit, and finally a trek through a wheat field. We arrived at the Shepherd's Hut coated in mud, seeds, and regret. Our feet were soaked from the wet grass. We looked like contestants eliminated from a particularly ruthless rural survival show.

If you walk this section of the SWCP, do yourself a favour. Stay in the shepherd’s hut.

It is easily in the top three places we have had so far, which is saying something after weeks of being dragged through Cornwall by a combination of rain, mud and our own questionable optimism. The funny thing is, I expected almost nothing.

The Airbnb listing had me imagining a rustic little box in a field. A bed. Maybe a kettle. Perhaps a blanket if the sheep were feeling generous. The message from the host reinforced the idea. He was very clear that it was basic. Please understand what you are booking. If you think you won’t like it, he would rather refund you than receive a bad review. Naturally, my brain translated that as:

“Welcome to an old farmer’s shed where you may or may not encounter a family of mice with tenancy rights.” I pictured a man renting out a trailer in a field to fund his evening pint. I was spectacularly wrong.

THIS PLACE IS FUCKING AWESOME.

Ian, the host, is exactly the kind of person you want to find after weeks of dealing with the logistical nonsense of long-distance walking. He’s warm, funny and genuinely interested in making sure you’re comfortable. Remember my ridiculous fantasy shopping list of champagne, Wagyu steak and an entire chocolate cake?

Ian is absolutely the guy who would say, “Right, give me an hour,” and somehow return from the countryside with a bottle, a cow and a suspiciously perfect dessert. The hut itself is a masterpiece of thoughtful simplicity. It has everything you need and nothing you don’t. A proper shower. One of the best we’ve had on the whole trip. Bath products. Real ones. Not empty bottles  pretending to have a purpose.Tea. Coffee. A heated towel rack. At this point, a heated towel rack is a miracle machine. After weeks of Cornwall’s relentless moisture trying to turn us into seaweed, being able to dry clothes feels like receiving a royal gift. My only complaint? This place needs a cat. A proper hut cat. A  judgmental countryside creature who appears at dusk, demands affection, curls up beside you and silently judge you. Every good rural retreat should come with a furry little landlord.

Ian himself was fantastic company. Easy to chat with, passionate about plants and the sort of person who still believes kindness and curiosity are worthwhile hobbies. A rare and beautiful species. After weeks of expensive disappointments, damp rooms and meals that seemed offended by the concept of calories, this little shepherd’s hut delivered something unexpectedly powerful. A place made with love. A reminder that the best stays are not always the ones with the biggest promises. Sometimes it’s just a warm hut, a good shower, a decent cup of coffee and a human being who gives a damn. On the SWCP, that’s five-star royalty.

Today was a long day.

Good news is the weather gods actually gave a shit, swapping torrential rain for moody, cinematic fog. A few dolphins breached, looking beautiful and indifferent to our suffering. We passed a grim, concrete nuclear bunker, though frankly, it could’ve been yesterday; exhaustion has turned my brain into mush. This brutalist monolith was a wartime decoy, a bit of pure, theatrical deception to trick German bombers into thinking they were blowing Churchill to hell at Nare Head. It was an elaborate stage set, complete with fake explosions and simulated screaming. If a real atomic blast ever dropped, this damp tomb was supposed to keep four soldiers alive for four weeks. After that? Step outside and see if the world is still there, or if it’s just a radioactive wasteland. You can tour the place but that feels like tempting fate. I have zero desire to be trapped forty feet underground with random tourists from Berlin and a tour guide named Angus, drawing straws after a month of breathing each other's farts to see whose skin peels off first.