Monday 14th March

By: Mike

 


This day’s walk will get us back to St Ives. We book a 10.00 taxi to Gwithian. It’s a fine day, but we have a long walk ahead. We soon leave the towans aka dunes and are back on the beach.  Soon we can see Lelant church ahead of us, and it looks as if we can just climb off the beach and reach it.  But there is a problem.  Hidden in a dip in the sands is the Hayle River.  It is uncrossable.  You have to go all the way round through the busy town of Hayle and tediously along the main road.  We stop for a coffee in a funky little café in Hayle – timely loo stop – and I forget to pay.  The funky waitress chases us down the street.  The Hayle River mud flats are supposed to be a great place for bird watching, and I have brought my lovely new light weight binoculars.  We stop by the side of the road for me to have a dekko.  Disappointing.  I can only make out gulls.

Once off the main St Ives road, we pause at Lelant station on the St Ives branch.  A man is using a drone to photograph a newly built extension to the platform in anticipation of longer trains.  We are tempted to join passengers waiting for the next one, but we resist and climb the gentle hill to Lelant Church where we camp in the churchyard for lunch and look across at Gwithian sands.  It’s four hours since we first saw the church from the other side.  The church is dedicated to St Uny, one of the many endemic Cornish saints.  It is an interesting medieval church with Norman bits, and it is the starting point for the St Michael’s way, a path leading to Marazion and St Michael’s Mount on the south coast.  Another temptation we have to resist. Obscurely it qualifies as part of the Camino, the pilgrim route to Santiago.  Anyone starting at Lelant would find it tricky to get any further than St Michael’s Mount.  Best take the train to Plymouth and talk to Brittany Ferries.

It's a beautiful afternoon, but the path now has some hazards in store for us.  Steep steps and deep mud, and we are getting tired.  This day we will have covered 12 miles.  No big climbs, but it’s at the limit of our daily quota.  We pause to get our photos taken at the G7 hotel in Carbis Bay.  A footbridge takes us across the railway, and a train approaches.  Instinctively I wave – and the driver waves back.  Doesn’t happen on Southwestern Railway at Hampton.

We creep into St Ives very tired.  Supper at Queens again.

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