There is a sheen on the road leading down Tregurrian Hill from my car towards Watergate Bay. It’s nearing 4 O’Clock but instinctively I can feel the day is nearing its end. It’s the mental adjustment we all make in the days after the clocks have gone back each year (it was last weekend). We are settling into winter awareness. Setting out on a coastal walk at this time of day I have that sense of doing something slightly subversive, going against the grain, doing something which others are not. I get tingles just thinking about it.
I round a corner and the land falls away to the gun metal grey of the sea. I suddenly realise that for the whole three hour drive I’ve been anticipating this moment. Like arriving at the sea when we were children. Can you see it yet? There. There it is.
There was steady drizzle most of the way on the A30 but now a patch of blue sky has appeared above the sea while a group of beginner surfers in yellow rash vests stand in the surf in front of the Watergate Bay Hotel. As I climb the path from the road through the cabins that are part of the hotel there is the welcoming roar of the Atlantic, a sound that I have got to know well especially along this cliff-edged section of North Cornwall.
I think back, as always, to when I was last here. What I did. What has happened since. May 11th was the last proper stint I did from St Agnes Head to Crantock, that crazy bank holiday with the summer weather, the wonderful church with the man in the stocks and the epic aurora that everyone was talking about that I miraculously managed to miss!
However, I did come back on October 1st to do a small section from Crantock to Newquay. I stayed at a hotel overlooking Fistral Beach and arrived in Newquay via the golf course at Towan Head.
Overlooking the three town beaches that face north west from the town, I passed a whitewashed huer’s hut that stares out to sea. Its basic stone structure against the blue of the sky immediately reminded me of the white stone chapels that are dotted all over the Greek Islands. A plaque at its base revealed it is 14th century and was probably a hermitage before it was a huer’s hut, the person being ‘entrusted with the lighting of the beacon fire for the guidance of shipping.’
As for its later use the plaque tells how the building was ‘used as a lookout by a huer at the time of year when shoals of pilchards were expected in the bay. A call on his horn raised the hue and cry alerting the townsfolk to the arrival of the fish. By means of hand signals the huer enabled the fishermen to position their boats and encircle the shoals with their nets.’
There was something lovely about the simplicity of the building but also how it seemed visually – as well as historically – connected to the land and sea scapes around it. I walked around it several times looking at the sunlight creating shadows on the spartan interior, imagining the sounds of the huer’s horn and the vast dark shadows that would regularly appear in the blue waters of Cornwall and provided many Cornish folk with their livelihoods for most of the 18th and 19th century.
The centre of Newquay felt like what it was: out of season. A blue and yellow road train came steaming up the high street with four carriages, all of them empty apart from one man sitting in the last one staring blankly out of the window with a microphone in his hand. Starlings on the shop roofs were making an incredibly loud whistling, the sound bending up at the end of the phrase like a wolf whistle but with a greater range. It seemed to be amplified by the narrowness of the high street. A man with a sheepskin jacket and beanie read his paper outside Cafe Nero. A bit further up the street another man sat cross legged asking passers by for money.
It seemed far removed from the hardcore tourism and partying that Newquay is known for throughout the summer months.
I’m shaken out of my memories by a sharp movement out of the corner of my eye. And I’m back on the clifftop above the Watergate Bay Hotel. A wren is flitting about in thorns on top of the cliff looking at me. They seem so busy, wrens, forever restless, like there is forever something they need to be getting on with. And it’s a reminder for me to busy myself on the path before the dying of the light.
Curtains of spray drift slowly up a cleft in one of the the cliffs like enormous ghosts. There are silvery patches on the sea where light has found a way through the cloud cover onto the sea’s surface.
The palest blush of pink has appeared a long way out there – who knows where – above the line of the horizon. Apart from the little wren I haven’t seen a living thing. There is only the wind and the roaring constant of the sea below me.
Griffin’s point is a mile north of the Watergate Bay Hotel between Stem Cove and Beacon Cove. I pass over a small wooden footbridge with a stream passing below it heading east to west, right to left. It winds its way through long grasses and then suddenly empties over the rocks into the sea.
The light is quickly fading. It’s not even 5 yet. It’s taken me by surprise and I decide to head back via Trevarrian passing a caravan site and a football pitch shrouded in mist.
Tonight I’ve booked a stay on a farm in Newlyn East. It’s glamping, something I’ve never done before unless I count my own trips using an old bell tent. It sounds fun. I arrive bumping down a long, pot holed track in darkness and pouring rain. The track finally ends in a farmyard with a big farmhouse beyond and off to the right down a path is a clearing amongst some trees with two painted, wooden huts – the owners call them pods – and a chicken coop next door.
My pod, known as Fistral after the famous surfing beach which I walked past a few weeks ago, is cosy and warm with just enough room for a double bed, a desk and a fridge. It is decorated with the sort of things I suppose people expect from glamping sites: striped bunting hanging from the roof that wafts spookily as a result of the heater, white enamel mugs hanging on a rail and many cushions in floral patterns. On a wet night in October it’s a perfect cheap option in an area which is normally expensive at the best of times.
Back in the farmyard there is a low building of whitewashed stone with an old stable door.Inside it has been made into a breakfast room where I – and any other guests if there are any – can help ourselves to tea, toast and cereal.
I have that lovely sense of coming into a little building after a long time in the dark, the feeling of having to get used to the light and the warmth, everything a bit blurry.
Feeling curious about my night in my shed I tramp through wet grass and dripping tree trunks ready for bed and my thoughts looking ahead to the path tomorrow.
The Slow Walker 