This has, all things considered, been a Very Good Week. Naughty but Nice was great fun – not so good on the first night, spectacular on the second, the Boy came for the show and liked it, we had an amazing weekend trekking from St Ives to Penzance (more about that in a bit), and an issue which has been bugging me for a while has been pretty satisfactorily (and slightly unexpectedly) resolved.
The St Ives to Penzance trip was Sam’s Valentine’s day present to me. It involved exploding envelopes filled with confetti hearts, and a detailed plan made up of OS grid references (all very cryptic, particularly for the failure at map reading that is yours truly), and we’ve both been looking forward to it for a while. When the 19th finally arrived, we awoke after 2 weeks of pretty reasonable sunshine to a morning that could optimistically best be described as ‘grey’. The mist lay low in the sky, and by the time we got out at St Ives station it was ‘lightly spitting’, in Samuel’s words. We wandered around the town for a couple of hours – it being just after 9.30am, not much was open, but we managed to walk past at least six cafes/pubs/tea rooms advertising cream teas before even getting to the coast. The overcast skies gave weight to Sam’s open mockery of my longing looks at the ice cream shops, and we made it to the end of the pier without succumbing to tourist-bait. The sea was, as ever, compellingly attractive, and there were some irresistible rocks Sam just had to clamber over, so it was a while before we decided we should start on the actual walk. It was, however, cold, dreary, and I was hinting less-than-subtly about a mid-morning snack, so the Boy decided a cream tea might be in order first. Now, remember how many advertisements for cream tea we walked past earlier? After 15 minutes of back-tracking we couldn’t find a single one! Sam sniggers that it’s the world telling me I can’t have cream tea*, I spot an open tea-shop, we’re seated with me grinning behind a huge mug of hot chocolate within 30 seconds. Win.
*Cornish cream tea is amazing. Why I’d never discovered it before is beyond me, and a small tragedy. However. Henceforth, I plan to Make Up For It. Goodbye, bikini plan.
The Walk (Part 1)
Starting at OS grid ref 5193 4012, more easily identified as the train station (yes, the Boy’s a nerd), we took the coast path heading East. The gradient of said coast path is rapidly discovered, to Sam’s glee at my misery. It heads sharply (that is, almost vertically) upwards, before levelling for about 200m, then downward, then up again…for at least an hour. By this point, it is pouring cats, dogs, and lizards, and we both agree that we are at least a little damp. The rain leaves off as we reach a high point on a sand dune, and we briefly consider settling for lunch. The cream tea had only just begun to digest, however, and so we decided we weren’t that hungry, and stopped only to swig some ribena*. 10 minutes later we were made fully aware of how wise that decision was as the heavens opened, and the temperature leaped out of an aeroplane without a parachute. Walking at a slightly brisker pace we arrive at Porth Kidney Sands (a sandy bit of bay that looks quite a lot like…a kidney), where Sam had planned for lunch. Though the rain had abated, we weren’t confident of a dry stop, so decided to keep going. Another wise decision, as it soon got, to our amazement, even wetter. Stopping again for more ribena (for the astuteness of that particular drink-buying decision, see below), we agreed that our best bet was to plow on to St. Erth station (covered, with seats) and hunker down to lunch there. By the time we got to St. Erth, around a golf course, through a cemetery, past Lelant, we were dripping, and slightly blue. The shelter and stop that was lunch, combined with the fact that Lunch was sandwiches filled with mushrooms, rocket leaves, and goat’s cheese – Sam’s first attempt at a vegetarian meal (he’s not best pleased with my choice of Lenten resolutions) – was, therefore, amazing. That, and the fact that I had had, by that point, almost half of a 1 litre carton of ribena (which translates to roughly 50g of sugar). Maybe.
Anyway, I at least was bouncy and raring to get on with the next half of the walk. Fortunately, Sam has enough sense for the both of us, and he proposed an alteration to our route. He’d initially planned for us to walk along the river, hoping for a sunny, clear day, and pretty pictures. The rain it rain-eth without mercy, though, and it wasn’t quite the sudden bursts of showers that could be tolerated for the intermittent dryness – more like a steady, incessant onslaught of patter. We decided to make straight for Marazion, where we would be staying the night, cutting across several fields and 2 hours off walking time in the process.
*Sam bought food and drink rations on Thursday before the show, getting lost on his way to ASDA in the process. They were: a HUGE carton of Ribena, apple and blackberry snack bars, sweet chilli flavoured crisps, jelly snakes, marshmallows, a small bottle of white wine, and 2 pots of yoghurt. The Boy has learnt to manipulate my susceptibility to sugar highs/rushes in order to keep me on the march to a cynically high degree. I would be worried, but I’m still reeling from the Rocky Road tray bake he bought for me before he left for London and so am not wholly capable of coherent thought.
I don’t remember exactly where this was, but at some point we had a choice between walking along a massive A road, and a small one that seemed a lot less intimidating. I voted for the small one, and up we went. Within about 5 minutes of walking through the small stream that had sprung up along the side of the road to avoid traffic, my right foot had opened individual swimming pools for my toes. After 10 minutes, my left foot followed suit. Sam tried to be sympathetic. Crossing onto a bridleway we headed with some optimism towards the first (or maybe second?) of the few fields we’d have to cut through – and discovered that not only had it been freshly ploughed, but the farmer, bless his socks, had ploughed straight across the footpath, rendering it…invisible.
…to be continued.
