It’s 8.30am when I arrive at the Holywell Beach Cafe. A tall couple from Holland are seated on the bench outside smiling, chattering and looking about – the telltale signs of those excited to explore a new place. A young woman with dark hair dressed in white is calmly getting things ready behind the counter while her son, probably 4, sits at a table eating a bowl of cereal and talking to her in that direct, inquisitive way of students with a certain way of thinking that I’ve known in schools.
Although they’re not properly open yet she says she can make me some breakfast. I enjoy the simple pleasure of a cushioned chair and a cold glass of water as I watch the comings and goings of the cafe waking up. The coffee machine being prepared, another girl with tattoos arrives to start a shift and a lorry delivering fruit and veg has pulled up outside.
The delivery driver comes in and starts speaking to the girl in white.
‘Did you see the lights?’
‘They were amazing – I saw them with my mum and dad’.
I can’t work out what they’re on about – sounds like a UFO sighting.
It’s only when I go up to pay that she shows me. Scrolling left on her phone I can tell it’s the sky but transformed into otherworldly colours. Many of them show the sky a psychedelic purple like an alt rock album cover from the 1960s. There is the distinctive wavy effect like swirling liquid or vapour that I recognise of photos I’ve seen of the Northern Lights.
But these are hundreds of miles south than where they normally appear. The following week while talking about it in Somerset – like everyone seems to be – they say ‘It’s probably global warming’ but it’s not that at all. There are just greater storms occurring on the sun than usual sending huge eruptions that then interfere with particles in the atmosphere to create these incredible displays of colour.
And I missed it.
What better place to have witnessed a once in a lifetime view of the aurora than camping out on a cliff top in a bivvy bag with a view for miles and miles and a clear, unpolluted view of the sky. And for once in my life I was asleep by 10.30 and woke up at first light. Oh dear.
As I pack up to leave the cafe, Paul, the owner, comes out wearing an apron. He asks me what I’m doing and when I tell him doing the path he nods with approval and says he keeps meaning to do it.
When we get onto ‘the lights’ as everyone is calling them he cracks a rye smile and says in a Cornish accent:
‘Bloody ‘ell, you must have been sparko!’
Above Porth Joke ewes and their lambs munch grass determinedly a few feet from the cliff top and a rope placed to guard against people getting too close to the edge has become like a reclining seat/cum massage chair where they like to rub their backs. I watch one of the older lambs rubbing its rump back and forth making the rope bounce up and down. As a result the rope has what look like woolly hand holds all the way along it like you might get in a rope to help you climb down a cliff.
Porth Joke is one of those picture perfect coves that you might only come across when walking. Sapphire sea. Yelllow flags. Little hidden coves around its edges where you can sunbathe or just sit and reflect. And nothing else. Just a camp site hidden away up the valley.
Bluebells, buttercups and campions make a beautiful range of blues, yellows and pinks amongst the grass.
I meet another wave of path walkers on this stretch, most of them women. A couple of Aussies from Perth ask me about crossing the Pen Bol Creek from Crantock to Newquay which can only be done at a crossing that appears at low tide. I apologise and say I don’t know. A Spanish girl in full Lycra walking kit. And another woman in her twenties with the laminated map and backpack that indicate she’s doing the whole path – all 630 miles – probably in one go. I’m always full of admiration for these people who want to take up the challenge. It’s a great achievement and not one I could complete without a great deal of training.
The Slow Walker 