It’s 9am and I’m at the car park in Treyarnon. There is only one other person here – a young surfer with a red sweat shirt and green jeans checking out the surf while humming a tune to himself. It’s still icy cold on the hands and face but the clouds have now disappeared and unlike the uniform grey of yesterday, the land and ocean are lit up.
As the coast path leaves Treyarnon grass covered ground stretches to the edge of low cliffs. Between the line of the path and the land’s edge there are several benches in a row staring straight out to sea waiting expectantly. Coming towards them from the south west, tightly packed lines of surf rise and then crash onto the rocks at the base of the low cliffs. I pause and listen. A gentle roar. And the low hum of the wind. And my heart beating.
Beyond Treyarnon Point, Constantine Bay unfurls itself, a great sweep of golden sand which rises gradually from the sea up to the sea dunes that wall it in like a Roman amphitheatre. Where is the tidal pool mentioned in Roger Deakin’s wild swimming classic ‘Waterlog’? I seem to remember Deakin swimming in it with someone who lives locally and their black labrador. I furiously try to search for it on my phone but there is no signal. This is a good thing. Although I’d love to know where it is.
When I cross to the other side of the beach there is a great tangle of fishing netting. It’s at least 6 feet long with 3 or 4 ropes and a mass of nylon fishing line. I remember sailing around the Hebrides last summer on board the Dutch ketch, Steady and her Dutch skipper, Willem, saying how the majority of the plastic pollution he sees when sailing around the UK seems to come from the fishing industry.
Constantine Bay leads into Booby’s Bay from where I start the climb up to Trevose Head. I am stopped by the unmistakable cadences of a skylark peeping away in the cold air above me. Wow, he’s keen. And surely way too early? But let’s hope he finds the one. It’s a little taster of spring and I sense that I’m starting to feel that sense of expectation.
At Trevose Head I look back to Towan Head and Kelsey Head, only just visible now while thinking about the passing of time. When was it I passed there? The memories can blur, especially with so many mental images of the coastline. Here – Trevose Head – is an exposed bit of land that reaches out into the Atlantic like a small growth on the knee of the Cornish peninsula that tapers away from the rest of Britain and ends at Land’s End. The land turns east after here and I’ll turn my back on all the headlands I’ve done since going back to St Agnes Head that I went round in May of last year.
On the point is the gleaming white tower of Trevose Head lighthouse which was built in 1847 as a guide for vessels in the Bristol Channel. It became automated in 1995 with the last keepers to oversee the lighthouse being withdrawn just before Christmas of that year. This was not long before the very last lighthouse keeper left a UK lighthouse at the North Foreland Lighthouse in Margate in 1998.
Above Merope Rocks is a seat that looks like it’s floating in the air. It is perched on a point that seems to disappear beyond the seat. With its back to me and the great expanse ahead of it, it has something of the drama of a Caspar Friedrich painting. It also reminds me of the recurring dream I used to have when I was young of me standing on a platform the size of a foot mat hundred of metres above the sea.
I sit on this bench wrapped up against the cold easterly that is blowing straight into me. The bench is dedicated to Pat and Alan Hayward ‘who loved this place’. I can see why. The land falls away on all sides so I do feel like I’m hovering in the wind above the sea;I could be sitting on the edge of the earth.
Ahead of me I have a grand vista of the Cornish coast stretching for miles to the north east. It is also a view of a journey – one of many – that will engage me for months and probably years to come. More headlands protrude into the blue green of the sea with names that will haunt and excite me as I carry on: Padstow Bay, Pentire Point, Start Point and Tintagel Head. It’s so clear today I can see these places lining up, each protruding bit of land a bit fainter than the one that lies before it.
I am now turning south down the eastern edge of Trevose Head and soon curving round to Harlyn Bay. It’s a stunning beach and one I remember well from my twenties when I used to come and surf at Polzeath with a great friend who had a caravan up at Trebetherick. We used to come to Harlyn Bay just as a place to unwind in between surf sessions.
I remember finding a faded Polaroid photo someone had taken of the beach which for years I kept in one of my first journals when I was living in London. I still have the notebook but not the photo. One person’s memory lost and left on the beach to be taken by another person who held onto it for a while before also losing that same memory.
Standing on the beach I know I’ve reached the end for today. I suddenly have one of those unthinking moments of suddenly feeling a place. It’s probably only 10 seconds but I feel like it is much longer when I come round from it and try to write it down:
A stream emptying onto the beach. Riffling over slate. Sun glitter on moving water. Hushing of waves drifting in and out of earshot. A dog barks. The brief distant scream of a child. A plane briefly overhead. Then the wind. Then the stream. And again the waves.
Then I turn and start the walk back to Treyarnon.
The Slow Walker 