So, a year after I completed my walk, I am back in Cornwall and back on parts of the coast path. And it feels like yesterday that I was last treading the path – it’s great to be back (and in the sunshine again – luckily). Infinitely preferable to sitting at a desk staring at a computer and thinking about economics. A no brainer, as they say. (Admittedly had it been hoofing it down with rain I may think differently…. but I think it’s very unlikely!). Again I find myself compelled to burble ad nauseam about how stunning the views are, how pretty the flowers… etc etc. The perspective brought by a year back at work brings the realisation of how lucky I was to experience last year’s walk – and of course of how lovely it was that so many people came along to be part of it with me.
My return to the coast path also brings the certainty that any fitness I may have gained last year has long since departed. (“A hill?! Yer wot?!”). Admittedly I already knew this (my trousers told me) – one for the homework list, methinks. Nonetheless I soon forgot about that, being happily distracted by the views and walking and just the fact of clean air. A walk down to Lundy Bay and along to Port Quin was rewarded by watching a hawk hunting just ahead of us and by a delicious chocolate biscuit from Fiona’s Cafe at Port Quin (a converted “vintage” van providing sarnies and snacks in the car park – excellent), before the return trundle.
A couple of days later we walked from Padstow to Stepper Point and back, via a field of barley audibly popping in the sun and refreshments at the Rest-a-While tea garden (an enterprising individual serving refreshments in the back garden via the kitchen window – fantastic views from said garden) to find a bullock hiding in the shade of the tower at Stepper Point – he appeared by reversing out of the doorway, surprising a number of walkers as his backside suddenly materialised. That appeared not to be satisfactory, though, as he went back in, turned around and stuck just his head out, presumably to keep an eye on goings-on while remaining in the shade (see below). After laughing at him (from a safe distance) we returned to Padstow for pasties on the harbour wall and Roskilly’s ice cream. Obvs. And last but not least on the walking front, a (genteel) scramble up the rocks at the mouth of Boscastle harbour, rewarded with a pretty much bird’s eye view (there was a gull perched next to me; that counts) back into the harbour and town. All good stuff.
And now, nearly two weeks after starting to write this, I am back in London. So it’s about time I actually finished this now-geographically-inaccurate post.
The End, etc.
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