Porthmeor Cove to Pendeen Watch

24 September 2024

Distance on Coast Path: 7.1km; ascent: 136m

Total distance: 9.3km; ascent: 201m

Walking time: 2h 31′

Total time: 3h 26”

Overnight: Self-catering, Trewellard

This was the section I missed out when I baled out earlier this year after starting from St Ives.

On this three-day trip I had a car so I could park in Pendeen village just a short mile up the road from my rented cottage. From there I took the Coaster bus which dropped me off at the cattle grid where I had previously reached the road after leaving the Coast Path at Porthmeor Cove.

It was a fine, dry day but although I only had seven kilometres to walk on the Path I was glad I hadn’t tried to do it last time when I’d had enough by this point. The path was clear, mostly rocky underfoot with an occasional marshy section. I saw for the first time a few seals which had hauled themselves onto the sand of a small inaccessible cove below the cliffs.

The lighthouse of Pendeen Watch was in sight most of the way but this being the Coast Path, even when I came over a small rise and the lighthouse was just 2 kilometres away along a straight section of coast, there was a hidden drop and rise and a few twists and turns to prolong the walk.

Portheras Cove

The first drop was to the sands of Portheras Cove where there were a few people who had presumably walked along the Coast Path from the car park at Pendeen Watch. From that direction the Path is a bridleway, starting off as a driveable track serving a house above the Cove. But beyond that, and so the first part I came to, it was a narrow path starting with irregular and steep steps heading up from the Cove, then becoming alternately stony and muddy. It was on this section that I met coming towards me first a decidedly grumpy young man pushing a smart, shiny small-wheeled city commuter bike followed by two or three older family members on foot: he’d obviously been fooled by the ‘bridleway’ sign into thinking that meant it was rideable.

He glowered and pushed on as his shiny bike picked up more mud from the path. The others gave me a polite ‘Good Morning’. They were probably as fed up with him as he was with the Coast Path.

Pendeen Watch lighthouse

Reaching the lighthouse I stopped on a convenient bench for a mid-day snack from my rucksack before heading up the road to Pendeen and my car, and a visit that afternoon to the Geevor Tin Mining Museum.