Portloe – Mevagissey

26 September 2025

Distance on Coast Path: 18.1km; ascent: 529m

Total distance: 19.0km; ascent: 535m

Walking time: 5h 12′

Total time: 7h 23′

Overnight: Tremarne Hotel

How is it, I wondered, that I’ve known a verse and chorus from the sea shanty “Spanish Ladies” since I was a child? Was it reading all the Arthur Ransome books? But then how would I know the tune? Was it a theme or a signature tune in a radio programme I listened to? I just don’t know. But the verse I know lists the landmarks a sailor would see sailing up the English Channel: “The first land we sighted was called The Dodman | Next Rame Head off Plymouth, Start, Portland and Wight” (it goes on from there). And today — today I would finally visit The Dodman, a name I’ve known all those years!

With the song in my head I left Jen’s B&B and walked back down the hill into Portloe, picking up the Coast Path and climbing steeply onto the cliffs. The SWCP Guide Book isn’t exaggerating when it classes this section as “strenuous”: I certainly found it tough as far as The Dodman. But that was still some way off.

Caerhays Castle

Following the Path as it went in and out, up and down along the cliffs the theme for the day became evident: butterflies, particularly white butterflies. For most of the day one or more would be fluttering along or across the path keeping me company.

The first inhabited place I came to was West Portholland, separated from its sibling East Portholland by half a kilometre’s road walking along a low cliff. Another couple of kilometres brought me to Porthlune Cove, where there’s a car park and a café. The car park is at the entrance to Caerhays Castle, an incongruous battlemented country house built in 1808 on the site of a much earlier manor house. Wikipedia has more about it. The house and gardens were closed for the season but the café was open and doing a fair amount of business with people in cars, one other walker and me. The sun was shining and I sat lazily sipping my coffee.

But Dodman Point was still the best part of an hour away so I eventually got myself going again – through the estate fields away from the castle, a small wood, then more ups and downs along the cliffs before finally approaching the headland on a path across windswept gorse-covered heath.

The cross at Dodman Point

I hadn’t expected anything particularly different about this headland; I didn’t even know at the time that it is the highest headland on the south coast of Cornwall. So the giant granite cross took me by surprise as it came into view. Several people were sitting on the steps of the plinth but they didn’t seem particularly chatty.

Earlier maps show the headland as ‘The Deadman’ or ‘Deadman Point’, and it has been the site of many shipwrecks over the centuries. The cross was erected by the vicar of Caerhays parish and serves both as a Christian monument (there are pious words on a plaque at the base) and a landmark for shipping. This article has what seems to be a fairly authoritative discussion about the name and the cross.

I set off again a little tentatively, but the bleeding didn’t return and I soon forgot about it. Chapel Point came and went, and then there were dog-walkers on the Path as it crossed the final fields towards Portmellon and Mevagissey. The late afternoon drinkers outside The Rising Sun at Portmellon Cove stared in silence as I walked by.

My hotel was on the high ground before Mevagissey so I didn’t see the village this day. The hotel did supply me with a comfortable room, a whole box of complimentary Toffifee, a not complimentary G&T in a comfortable lounge and a good evening meal. I was relieved the next morning to see I hadn’t left any blood on the pillow.