The black bell on the black buoy continues to toll. It is a small pyramid, a tiny detail in the enormity of the ocean. It rocks from side to side in the buffeting waves. The sound of it is a low moan, reaching me intermittently through the roar of the westerly I’m walking into. I could hear it long before I could see it. Like some mythical creature it calls its warning to the hapless sailor that might get too close. Later I find it is a marker for the infamous Runnel Stone where many vessels in the past have run aground and sunk.
I am at the end of the land. Gwennap Head. This is the true south west corner of the British Isles. Not Land’s End which is a few miles north west of here.
It was on a Sunday afternoon in June 2016 that I drove to Dorset with a rough idea of going for a beach walk and a swim. I strolled along Studland beach and fell into starting the South West Coast Path. Here I am five and a bit years and 368 miles later (according to the SWCP Distance calculator). I’m halfway.
A lot has happened in that time. I’ve lost a parent, changed my career and finally found my little love. Who knows what will happen in the next five to ten years that I’ll slow walk to Minehead? Everything is an adventure.
https://www.southwestcoastpath.org.uk/walk-coast-path/distance-calculator/
And now I won’t be walking west anymore. For now it’s time to head north.
Up a rise in the land are the cone like shapes of the Runnel Stone day markers. One looks like a gnome that has been buried up to his brow. People at sea need to always be able to see the black and white one to avoid coming to grief on the stone. According to the National Coastwatch Institution website:
‘When at sea the black and white one should always be in sight….. but if it is completely obliterated by the red cone, the vessel would be on top of the Runnel Stone!’
I pass the square block of the lookout station on Gwenapp Head. The female coast guard gives me a big wave and a smile. I return it. I wonder how lonely it might be being a coast guard always looking out into the grey and the blue. Or maybe not.
I’m walking due north. There are rough bumps and varying degrees of greens and browns. Then a huge rent runs along it where it has been roughly hewn by the sea.
Rock formations create the borderland between land and sea. Block on block of two types of grey granite that form the wall of this end of England. The sound of waves crashing against it is constant. There are headlands that jut out with foreign sounding names Carn Les Boel, Carn Boel then Pordenack Point.
Linking these headlands are the coves: Porth Loe, Folly Cove, Pendower Cove. In these curves where the land rises less steeply there can be a sudden wave of spray that floats like smoke up the side of the land and over me.
A few miles ahead I can see a low cluster of white buildings. When I was living in Plymouth and training to be a teacher I lived with someone called Alastair from Blackpool. He was a retail manager who adored Top Gear.
‘Land’s End is proper shite – it’s like a second rate amusement park.’
I can’t wait.
The Slow Walker 