It’s almost three and a half months since I was last here. It’s not that I don’t like walking in winter. I love it, unless it’s heavy rain but other things have been happening and hey, as always, what’s the rush? At my girlfriend’s house I have a favourite mug with a picture of a sloth on it saying ‘Live slowly’. This mug and its advice has more benefit and wisdom in it than several sessions with a life coach or psychoanalyst but if only I could implement it. Walking the coast path seems to be the one area of my life where I do seem to have some success at being slower and thereby calmer.
My weather app is saying the daytime temperature in Cornwall is struggling to climb above freezing and the sky is the featureless blanket of grey that can often be the default setting of English weather, especially so at this time of year when a whole week can pass with the same unchanging dullness in the outside world.
At Porthcothan beach there are only a handful of people on the beach, all wearing bobble hats and two excited spaniels with lolling tongues and tails that are wagging so fast they could be motorised. There is no sound apart from the gentle repetitive lapping of the waves on the sand. I expect most people are watching the rugby. It’s in stark contrast to the busyness and holiday vibes of October half term last time I was here. This is low season at its lowest.
The thought sends tingles through my arms and neck, an inner warmth at being utterly alone in the landscape that is hard to describe. It is an emotion I’ve always associated with adventure, or more accurately being alone with nature in its rawest form. It’s I guess what the Irish philosopher Edmund Burke referred to as the sublime. A strange and powerful thrill derived from awe and fear of nature.
In “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” Burke wrote:
“The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully is Astonishment, and astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror..”
Even after all these miles walking around Cornwall the sea here still has the power to stop me in my tracks. There is no sunlight but the water colour is breathtaking, a luminous pale green like the jade ornaments that I remember seeing a few years ago in the National Museum of Taiwan. Foam in the sea meanders mysteriously along the coast in parallel lines like a track or pathway across the water until I lose sight of it.
It’s so quiet that all reminders of human activity seem incongruous and redundant like one of those post-apocalyptic films that inevitably feature zombies or the city scenes devoid of humans we can remember when we were first forced to ‘stay at home’ during the Covid lockdowns. At the water’s edge above Fox Cove a lonely bench and life buoy look out to sea at the perfect straight line of horizon and a bank of cloud that rests above it. I sit on the bench and stare at the lines – of foam and horizon and cloud. And think of nothing.
At Treyarnon Point, the light is starting to fade and I start imagining my hotel room at Mawgan Porth and a cup of tea. The road can lead me straight back to Pothcothan Beach.
The Bedruthan Hotel and Spa is a huge white modern block built on top of the cliff overlooking the beach at Mawgan Porth. The room was reduced and the spa might bave sold it to me (I do love a good spa). It’s only later that I read some of the hotel spiel which surely is designed to entice the likes of me. When describing the spa: “Slow down and stare over the gentle blue.” It sounds great although I seem to do an awful lot of that already (or try to). They also have something called a ‘Wanderlust’ package: “When you’re feeling exploration’s call experience our wanderlust escape”.
When I arrive at hotel it is pandemonium. There must be almost a hundred cars spread out in four separate car parks. It feels a bit like arriving at an airport. I manage to squeeze my car in a corner next to a hedge. At reception there are queues of people with dogs. Both restaurants are fully booked. A staffie with a frowning big bearded owner holding on tight to its leash unleashes a volley of rapid barking at me in the corridor on the way to my room. Both owners look at their dog incredulously as if to indicate to me this never normally happens. I smile at them. After a whole day of being alone next to the sea, Bedruthan is something of a wakeup call.
Outside below the hotel I find a terrace with an incredible view over Mawgan Porth. The only other people is a lady in an overcoat in her seventies and I guess her granddaughter, probably about 8.
As I walk past the grandmother she turns to me and says ‘Have you seen it?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The whale.’
‘No, no I haven’t’.
I imagine there’s some wooden whale that the hotel have for kids to play on.
‘There’s been sightings of a humpback whale all week between here and St Ives. Apparently you can see it clearly from here.’
‘No way. Thank you for telling me. I’ll keep looking out there for it’.
And so I will.
The Slow Walker 