Day 33 - Helford Passage to Falmouth: 14.83 km

"What a difference a day makes

24 little hours

Brought the sun and the flowers

Where there used to be rain"

The sun is still something of a rumour. We had rain today, because the weather gods have signed an exclusive contract with Cornwall. But things are markedly better. We cut the stage short and headed into Falmouth, which meant no mud, no tactical river crossings and an entire afternoon devoted to the noble art of being tourists. I even bought myself a sterling silver "Fuck Off" ring. Money well spent. It felt entirely appropriate to acquire jewellery that perfectly captures the mood of anyone who has spent the last month walking through rain with damp socks.

And best of all, we found food.

Now, one final word about Hotel Meudon.

For a place selling itself as a luxury experience, it may well be the worst value for money we've encountered so far. The bathroom toiletries consisted of elegant dispensers containing absolutely nothing. Every single one was empty. It was like checking into a luxury car dealership and discovering all the vehicles were missing their wheels. Breakfast, to be fair, was good. The coffee, however, was astonishing. Not good astonishing. Scientific astonishing. It posses no flavour, body or personality. We asked for a couple of instant coffee sachets to fortify it. Judging by the waitress's expression, you would have thought we'd requested an original Monet.

"Well, if you wanted stronger coffee, you could have asked."

"Can we have stronger coffee then?"

Another eye roll. Another pot arrived. The second batch was slightly darker. Progress had been made. Somewhere, a coffee bean had been briefly introduced to the process. The botanical wonderland featured prominently on the website was looking a little weary too. At one point the gardener was loudly complaining to another guest how much guests complain. Which, while entertaining, is perhaps not the immersive luxury experience the marketing department had in mind. Still, credit where credit is due. The room had a massive heated towel rack that could be manually controlled. After weeks of battling Cornwall's damp  clutches we dried every item of clothing in about twenty minutes.  And there was a bedroom fan. If you happen to be a woman navigating menopause, a bedroom fan is a sacred object.It is the hospitality equivalent of being handed complimentary Valium and told everything is going to be okay.

Falmouth is fucking awesome.

After days of mud, rain, logistical gymnastics and meals that seemed actively hostile to human happiness, arriving in Falmouth felt like civilisation again.  The main street runs along the waterfront. Sailors, merchants and pirates have been coming and going through this harbour for centuries. During the age of sail, Falmouth was one of Britain's most important ports, a place where news from across the empire arrived before almost anywhere else. Today the cargo is mostly tourists, walkers and people carrying artisan pastries. The streets are lined with funky shops, cafés and enough beautiful things to make me deeply resent my baggage allowance. If I had another ten kilos to play with, I'd be staggering down the Coast Path draped in linen dresses and hand-knit sweaters like an eccentric maritime duchess. And then there was the coffee. I had the best flat white of my life at a place called "The Café Above the Bookshop." Which is exactly what it sounds like. A café. Above a bookshop. Sometimes humanity gets things right.

The whole place is themed around the Brontës, Austen and Potter. It's run by women, celebrates women and feels like the sort of establishment dreamed up after several glasses of wine by women who believe books can save your life. Frankly, they're not wrong. Men are absolutely welcome. But you need to be the right sort of man. A book man. A man who understands that intelligence is sexy, that women are interesting, and that discussing literature over cake is infinitely more attractive than shouting at sports on a television. Be that guy and you'll fit right in. Then you too can sit upstairs with a Wuthering Heights wine spritz, nibble on Brontë biscotti, contemplate Potter apple pie and briefly imagine a world where the matriarchy runs supreme. 

Aside from exhaustion, another reason we wanted to get into Falmouth early was to solve tomorrow's logistical puzzle. We are staying in a shepherd's hut. A proper one. The catch is that we need to provide all our own food. Dinner. Breakfast. Lunch for the following day. The owner has been wonderfully helpful, even offering to do a grocery run for us. Which sounds charming until you realise you are essentially asking a stranger to interpret your culinary desires using only a microwave and a toaster as working tools. For instance, my ideal shopping list currently consists of a bottle of French champagne, a massive Wagyu steak, an entire chocolate cake smothered in butter icing and enough proper Italian coffee to restart my nervous system. To be fair, I suspect if I sent him that list he would at least make an honest attempt. Instead, maturity prevailed. We settled on boil-in-the-bag curries, Soba noodles, olives and several tubes of Pringles. Which, after weeks on the Coast Path, feels less like convenience food and more like a banquet scene for a Roman emperor's weekend orgy. The Romans, incidentally, never conquered Cornwall. They got close, looked at the weather and the terrainl and decided life was complicated enough already.A decision I understand more with each passing day. As for alcohol, I have higher aspirations. I am hoping to acquire a bottle of mead from an elderly druid tending sheep on a cliff somewhere between here and tomorrow's destination. Whether such a man exists remains to be seen. But after spending weeks walking the South West Coast Path, it seems no less plausible than finding a reasonably priced sandwich.

So yeah, I hit bottom yesterday. It was the slow accumulation of small discomforts, disappointments and exhaustion until there was simply nothing left in the tank. I was still carrying it this morning. The sections after the Lizard have been hard in a way that's difficult to explain. Not because they're the most challenging kilometres on the South West Coast Path.  It's because they have become a daily grind of mud, wet rock, endless climbs and grey skies. Day after day of putting on damp clothes and stepping back into the rain. There comes a point where the landscape, no matter how beautiful, can no longer compete with discomfort. That's the part nobody puts in the brochures. The Cornish coast is magnificent. It has swallowed ships, fortunes and entire generations of fishermen.  Yet lately, my battle has not been with the ocean. It's been with morale. The lack of food has taken a bigger toll than I realised. I was waking up in the middle of the night ravenous.  I'd sit  in the dark shovelling handfuls of chocolate Minstrels into my mouth. When the Minstrels ran out, I started eating packets of Cup-a-Soup powder. Not because it tasted good. Because it was calories. Ken was doing much the same. Living off complimentary biscuits, tea tray sugar packets and whatever else could be scavenged from accommodations along the route. Two supposedly sensible adults reduced to foraging like raccoons. There’s humour in it but beneath the humour was something else. I underestimated how much constant discomfort wears away at you. The rain. The uncertainty. The logistics. The endless calculations about food, accommodation and transport. The feeling that every day requires just a little more  than you have available. Yesterday, for the first time, I genuinely wondered whether I was enjoying any of this. That felt awful to admit. I chose to be here. And I am aware walking this path is a privilege. There are moments when the clouds break and the whole world seems impossibly beautiful. But there are also moments when you're wet, hungry and exhausted, and beauty feels very far away. It's still hard going. We’re hoping the weather improves because another 600 kilometres of this feels daunting. Physically, we'll probably manage. It's the emotional side that worries me. I need a day where my feet stay dry and a meal that feels generous. I need to stop smelling like damp laundry left too long in a washing machine. Mostly, I need a reminder of why I wanted to walk this path in the first place.  Even after all of that, we got up this morning and kept walking. Maybe that's the lesson. Not courage or toughness. Just the quiet, unremarkable act of putting one foot in front of the other when enthusiasm has packed its bags and gone home.

 Day 32 - Coverack to Helford Passage:  23.99 km

Oh we’re half way there

Whoa oh living on a prayer

Today was a milestone: the halfway point of the SWCP. There’s a big-ass marker and everything. You’d think we’d arrive like conquering heroes, crack open a bottle of bubbly, and bask in the glow of our own magnificence. Instead, we sort of stood there looking at it. The truth is, it felt oddly anticlimactic. We have thoughts about that….

Part of it is the weather has spent the last several weeks methodically beating any trace of joy out of us. We’ve not had a single day without rain. Maybe three days of actual sunshine. The rest have been varying combinations of fog, wind, drizzle and cold. It’s the middle of June and we're still layering up every morning like pensioners preparing for an Arctic expedition. Every day starts with rain. Around noon it eases off. By four o’clock it's back again, laughing at your optimism.

At this point we are less walkers and more ambulatory sponges. The constant damp changes everything. One of the great pleasures of a long-distance trail is finding a glorious spot, unpacking lunch and sitting for twenty minutes doing absolutely nothing except admiring the view. We've had precious few opportunities for that. Most lunches involve standing awkwardly in the shelter of a hedge while trying to stop a sandwich from becoming a marine habitat. Cafés become objects of near-religious devotion. The problem is they're as unpredictable as Cornish weather. A café with glowing reviews  Monday can be closed on Wednesday indefinitely because someone couldn't get staff. You learn quickly not to make plans. 

Then there’s the daily blood sport known as finding lunch.

You cannot count on a café. You definitely cannot count on a pub. Since leaving Penzance, we have not passed a single shop. Not one.  Lunch, therefore, becomes less a meal and more a scavenger hunt designed by a sadist. Packed lunches? Forget it. Places you stay don't do them. Cafés, when they miraculously appear charge ten to twelve pounds for a sandwich. Just a sandwich. Served on bread pale and uninspiring. The price alone raises your blood pressure. The calorie count does nothing to lower it. An hour later you're running primarily on low blood sugar, resentment and the vague fantasy of murdering a family-sized trifle.

Then there’s accommodation.

Five months ago, when I was booking, finding somewhere near the route felt like trying to secure front-row tickets to a reunion tour of a band that broke up in 1987. Anything remotely convenient has been swallowed whole by walking companies. Independent walkers are left picking through the scraps. What follows is a daily logistical ballet of mild despair. Your bed is rarely on the route. More often it's five or six kilometres away. So after walking all day, you arrange transport to your accommodation. The next morning, you arrange transport back to where you left off. Repeat until financially or emotionally exhausted.Expect to take taxis. A lot.

Expect to pay  a lot for taxis. The South West Coast Path is becoming a surprisingly expensive hobby involving weatherproof clothing, logistical gymnastics and a growing familiarity with every taxi driver in Cornwall and Devon.

If you are lucky enough to find a pub on route, or better yet stay somewhere attached to one, reserve a table the night before. This is survival advice.

Fail to do so and you may find yourself eating dinner standing at the bar. Assuming you eat at all. Evening food service  runs for a two-hour window, usually from six to eight. You want to be there at six. By seven, half the menu has  vanished. Securing a plate of food can feel like a competitive blood sport.

And the prices. Sweet Jesus, the prices. I am not a fussy eater. Give me something simple, hearty and made with love and I'll be happy. But there is no elegant way to describe paying  forty Canadian dollars for a handful of chips and a meat pie scarcely larger than a respectable tart. If you've spent the day climbing cliffs in horizontal rain and require enough calories to feed an elephant, expect to part with fifty or sixty dollars. The  heartbreaking part is that most of the people serving it are trying their best. You can see it in their faces. Someone in the kitchen is sweating bullets and panicking while doing the work of three people because finding staff in Cornwall has become about as easy as finding a unicorn.

It leaves you with a strange mix of sympathy and frustration. Everything is expensive. Nothing feels worth what it costs.  Some nights I just cry. Out of frustration and sadness of what the UK has become since Brexit and Covid. Sadness because I see it happening to the US and I know now what’s coming. Sadder still that my province could also be heading this way.  Perhaps that's what keeps me awake.Not the cost of the pie. The uneasy feeling that so many of us, in so many places, are trying to hold together communities, livelihoods and futures that suddenly seem far more fragile than we ever imagined.

Today’s stage is one I would politely describe as “character building.” I do not recommend it. Much of the route is inland, and what does hug the coast is a landscape scarred by old quarry mines.  The trails are not well travelled, which means they are less “charming rural path” and more “nature has reclaimed this place and is now charging admission.” Add several weeks of relentless rain and you get mud. Ankle-hungry, boot-swallowing mud.

Then come the river crossings. Two crossings that require perfect tidal timing. One needs the tide out so you can walk across. The other needs the tide in so the boat can operate. Unless you bus and cab, you cannot realistically make both.

When the weather is kind, you can wade the first crossing. We did it the first time we walked it. But when it’s cold, windy and miserable, the idea of standing thigh deep in freezing water while holding your backpack above your head feels less like adventure and more like a low-budget survival documentary. Of course, if you want the full SWCP Vietnam experience, grab your pack, channel your inner Hegseth and march in. I will not judge.

Much.

It was a long day.

The final ferry only carries six people at a time, and if someone arrives with a bike, that bike becomes the equivalent of two human passengers with wheels and entitlement. There are also three hours each day when the ferry cannot run because the tide is too low. The later ferry,  the one every tired walker wants, becomes a floating rush hour.  So yes, you may be waiting in the rain for a while.

The consolation prize? The ferryman looks suspiciously like Michael Fanone.

 

Tonight we about 5 km off route at Hotel Meudon. Go ahead, look it up. The website is a seductive siren song of sweeping gardens, spa treatments, fine dining and the sort of refined elegance where everyone appears to own a blazer that has never encountered mud. It is not where I would have chosen to land, but it’s all there is.  The staff are lovely. Genuinely. The problem is the place is severely understaffed, which seems to be the unofficial theme of the coastal hospitality industry right now. The food, exists in a realm of its own. A realm where prices are ambitious and portions are working as minimalist art installations. We did not have the proper attire for the dining room, so we ate at the bar. Ken ordered a burger and fries. A sensible, beautiful, honest meal.  I ordered sticky BBQ Char Siu ribs and a rocket salad with parmesan. The burger arrived. It was good.

The ribs arrived. Four bones. Four tiny, tragic monuments to what might have been. They had plenty of sauce, because the barbecue had to carry the emotional burden of the entire dish. The salad was a coffee cup of rocket with a gentle dusting of parmesan. That was it.  After a full day of walking, my body was not asking for a Michelin experience. It was asking for calories. It wanted fuel. It wanted something that said, “Congratulations, human, you survived!” Instead, it received lawn clippings with cheese confetti.

I cried. The quiet, exhausted tears of someone who has spent weeks being battered by weather and hills and has finally been defeated by a salad.

I sent it back. Could I please have the burger? The burgers were sold out.

Of course they were. The bar menu had now achieved a Zen-like simplicity:  rib bones or chicken Caesar salad.  Thankfully, we had four emergency packets of instant oatmeal in our bags.  And because the evening needed one final punchline, the hotel had also run out of tea supplies for our room. Tea. In England. At a fancy hotel.

Welcome to the SWCP in the post Brexit, post Covid era and whatever fresh hell the world has decided to throw into the pot. In other words, we are walking it like your grandparents might have in 1943.  Complete with no heat and food rationing. Boris Johnson and TACO can fuck right off.