I am at Godrevy staring back along St Ives Bay enjoying the feeling of late summer sunlight on my face. On the rocks a group of 30 oystercatchers are also all facing west like a military parade, their black and white uniforms pristine and the bright orange of the beaks pointing downwards in diagonal lines like shouldered guns.
At Godrevy Point there is a Bronze Age barrow directly opposite Godrevy Island with a view of the great sweep of St Ives Bay: the dunes, the beaches and St Ives Head. You can see why the ancients would want to bury their dead here. If ever there was an inspiring spot to imagine your loved ones being transported to a life beyond this one this would be it.
The island at Godrevy is not much more than a large rock with a little covering of grass in its middle on top of which sits the lighthouse. The 26 metre high octagonal tower of the Godrevy Lighthouse is there to warn vessels of the Stones reef which stretches from the island in the direction of St Ives.
Unfortunately, like many other rocks off the coast of Cornwall, this island has claimed the lives of various ships and their crews before the lighthouse was built in 1858. According to the Cornwall Guide “Given the number of casualties over the years, and no obligation to give the shipwrecked dead a proper burial until the 1800s, many an unfortunate sailor’s final resting place was simply in the dunes of the nearby beaches.”
It creates a sense of pathos when I think back to me struggling through the Towans two weeks ago.
The lighthouse also features in the Virginia Woolf’s novel ‘To the Lighthouse’.
It’s one of those moments. The morning sun is gaining strength and glimmers off the sea and the surf is brilliant white and the black shapes of surfers shine like unknown sea creatures and nothing seems wrong in the world although news stories coming from Israel this morning are a stark reminder that that is never true.
The wind is coming out of the west and seems to enter my being. It’s like plunging into cool water after being stuck for hours on end in a hot car. Why hasn’t someone written a good book about winds and their impact on people and places? Perhaps they have but I just haven’t heard of it.
Having gone round Godrevy Point, I am no longer accompanied by beaches but once again by cliffs that descend over a hundred feet to the rocks and froth of the churning sea. At Mutton Cove there is a short sand beach at the base of the cliffs.
Twenty brown seals are prostrate and unmoving on the beach. For a moment I think they might be dead until I see one of them doing that funny flopping up the beach like a person trying to crawl along the floor in a sleeping bag. There are signs with a woman’s face and a finger by her mouth saying ‘don’t disturb the sleeping seals’ and pictures of sleeping seals.
After this I pass a headland and stop to say hello to a chap sitting with pink trousers and a baseball cap with the letters RCYC on it. He is from Cornwall but spent 30 years in Sierra Leone.
We both agree what a beautiful day it is and get onto wildlife. Had I seen the choughs on the point he asked. Damn. No, I’d missed them. It must have been close to where I was sitting on the barrow. I had seen skylarks flitting about showing off that flash of white under the wings.
‘Choughs are Cornwall’s national bird’, he tells me and I say I know having been fascinated by them doing their funny up and down flight when I saw them near Zennor Head in February.
He says there were several of them flying about. After 10 minutes I say farewell and leave him to carry on enjoying the sun on his seat.
‘Nice to meet you’
‘Yes, and you’
And when I’m about 20 years away. ‘Look out for the choughs!’
‘Yes, I will!’
It’s getting warm and I put my bag down off the path and get changed into my shorts I bought from Asda for a tenner yesterday. What a relief.
Above the wonderfully named Castle Giver Cove I’m lost in thought. When I hear a whirring and a startling ding from a bicycle bell. A middle aged man is on a mountain bike coming purposefully along the path. He is in blue cycling Lycra but with the front open revealing a shining sweaty red chest around which is slung a solar panel. About 20 feet above him is a drone whirring away like an oversized insect.
‘Morning!’ he yells and I am already waiting off the path to let him through. Is he filming himself cycling? I assume so. An old couple are waiting at a gate also to let him pass. As we pass each other they both give me a half smile and half frown. It’s one expression short of rolling their eyes. Or maybe I’m just imagining it.
A little bit further on I hear the whirring of tyres and another man comes flying past with lots of mud spattered kit on. Behind him comes a blonde woman who thanks me and says “I’m not as fast as him”. I laugh and think to myself with a smile and I’m the slowest of the lot.
A bit further on I notice a fly landing on a mud stain on my hand and think nothing of it until I get off the path and onto the road. There’s that unmistakable stink. It’s not mud but dog shit. On the bottom of the rucksack and the strap and my hand and T shirt when I put my bag down in long grassto get changed. I restrain myself from not getting into a rage. It’s the new me apparently.
Thankfully I have a bit of tissue and water to get most of it off my bag. It makes me think about the amount of poo you see on the path or even more amazingly that which has been bagged in a dog poo bag and then left.
At the road near Hell’s Mouth I leave the path and turn back so that I’m heading west again. My mind is full of images of path and cliffs and sea that I’ve covered since I went pass Land’s End last year and thinking of all that is yet to come on my snail’s pace solo mission when I get back here in 2024.
The Slow Walker 