Lamorna to Penzance

16 May 2024

Distance on Coast Path: 10.5km; ascent: 52m

Total distance: 12km; ascent: 101m

Walking time: 2h 53′

Total time: 5h 02′

Overnight: Hotel Penzance, Penzance

Logistics

For my last night I’d booked what I hoped would be a comfortable hotel in Penzance from where I would get the train back home the next morning. I had originally thought I would be staying overnight last night in Sennen Cove then walk past Land’s End today as far as Porthcurno. But bus timings (it was still ‘low season’ for the Coastal bus) and accommodation problems had meant a change of plan. To carry on from Land’s End on this last day would have meant a long bus ride from Paul (or rather, Sheffield) back to Land’s End, a very late start to the walk, and no useful connection to Penzance from Porthcurno. Instead I had decided to start at Lamorna and walk to Penzance, leaving the section from Land’s End to Lamorna to be completed another time.

So still reeling from my overdose of spaghetti and meatballs and now a mountain of toast for breakfast served by an astonishingly cheerful young person at the King’s Arms, I walked slowly back up the lane from Paul to Sheffield where I had 45 minutes to wait for the bus in the warm morning sunshine. I stood by the bus stop trying to look like someone who might appreciate a lift, but couldn’t bring myself to actually stick out my thumb. This tactic didn’t work so it was eventually a short bus ride that got me to the turn off the main road for the walk down to Lamorna Cove and the Coast Path.

Now I need to mention that a few conversations with other walkers over the past week had uncovered varying opinions of this section of the Path – specifically from Land’s End to Mousehole, which includes the part I was going to do today. On one side were the doom-mongers: one person had said “They’ll have to do something about that section. It’s really difficult and dangerous!”. On the other side, someone at the Land’s End bus stop said “It’s a bit rocky in places but nothing that an experienced walker need worry about.” Experienced walker – that’s me. Nothing to worry about. Until – – –

Granite coastline at Lamorna

Looking along the coast at Lamorna Cove the difference was clear. Here was granite. Big Granite. The Path kept close to the edge, sometimes working its way through granite boulders, sometimes along a narrow trod through sharp thorny bushes with granite rocks below. No problem for Experienced Walker. Why, the rocks aren’t even slippery.

There were a few other people on the path and I hadn’t gone more than half a kilometre when two women were coming the other way. At this point the path was a single track wide; a steep bank on the left, spiky bushes and a drop to the rocks below on the right. I stepped left to let them go by. I have no idea what happened then and why, but a moment later I was falling headlong across the path and into the thorns and gorse, shouting expletives as I fell.

Luckily the bushes broke my fall and stopped me going any further, but I was face down and head downhill with thorns sticking into me. There was nothing to hold on to or push against and I couldn’t get up. The two women came immediately to help, but as one of them tried to pull me up I had to stop because I thought I was going to pull her down rather than her pull me up. A minute or two later more walkers arrived and somehow, between me wriggling and them pulling on my rucksack and arm, we got me back onto the path.

I had some cuts and scratches which my rescuers and I cleaned with antiseptic wipes from my first aid kit, and after a few minutes I knew I was recovered enough to carry on. The others were concerned but I reassured them, thanked them, and we went in our opposite directions.

For the next few kilometres the Path wound a narrow and fairly level way between walls of high vegetation with occasional brief granite outcrops to negotiate. Eventually it climbed fifty metres and soon met a narrow lane leading downhill into the picture-postcard village of Mousehole.

Mousehole harbour

By this time it was warm and I needed a break. I hoped there would be a pub overlooking the harbour with a terrace with some shade but I was out of luck. Instead I walked back to a café called “The 4 T’s” I’d passed on the way into the centre. It wasn’t until I was inside that I realised the name was the theme of the place – the 1940s. I ordered a cold drink and a sandwich. There was music playing, mostly Frank Sinatra and Glen Miller, and on the walls were old advertisements for Bovril, Players cigarettes and so on. There were some WW2 posters too and I started to feel a bit uncomfortable with the wartime nostalgia V-for-Victory vibe I was getting. My discomfort increased as a middle-aged German couple came in and sat at the next table. I’d come across quite a few German tourists over the past days and I wondered why the café owners had opted for this particular theme. The couple at the next table didn’t seem troubled; I overheard them saying they had been before and had come back especially for the cream tea, but I felt embarrassed on their behalf and paid and left as quickly as I could.

From Mousehole to Penzance the Path is paved the whole way; part road, part pavement, part foot- and cycle path, part esplanade. Although it’s a bit of a trudge I didn’t find the contrast with what I’d experienced over the last two weeks unpleasant.

The town of Newlyn is the next place along the Path. I was surprised how big it was. In the large harbour were boats much bigger than any I’d seen in other places – full-size trawlers as well as smaller fishing boats. A long building along the dockside was the commercial fish market (closed by the time I reached the town); on the opposite side of the busy road was a row of premises each with a roller-shutter door. These were the wholesale fishmongers with their chalkboards listing the prices of the day’s catch. It seemed a thriving trade; I was in the home of Big Fish.

Another two kilometres or so along the esplanade and I was in Penzance. I called in at the station to reserve a seat on the morning train to Reading (“It won’t be busy”, said the young woman in the ticket office), then headed a short way further to my hotel. It was indeed a nice hotel; a welcoming glass of Prosecco, a good size room with a view along the coast towards Marazion and St Michael’s Mount, complimentary nuts and crisps as well as the usual hotel biscuits – and a bath! I lay back in the warm water and made an inventory of the cuts, scratches, thorn puncture wounds and developing bruises from the morning’s mishap. And my mind turned to how I might be back later in the year to plug the gaps in the Path which I’d missed out over the last few days.

More granite coast near Lamorna