SWCP 2016 Day 8: Tintagel to Port Isaac May 21st
OK, Maybe It Is a Race
So, Tintagel was one of the main landmarks I had been looking forward to. Pictures of the ruins draped across the stunning landscape of the island looked like the scenery at the end of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, where they finally find Luke. (That was actually Ireland, but it had much the same look.) And I’d read great things about the English Heritage interpretive exhibition, and even the village Information Center.
I ended up not even going in.
I got off to a really late start — collecting the shirt the Inn had washed for me, repacking (always more time-consuming and difficult than it should have been, with my surplus of equipment post Hilda’s return), doing my stretching exercises for back and knees, treating my blisters and applying pads. I also wanted to capture an image of the website for the B&B where I was staying the next night, as I would need to call them to pick me up; part of the deal, since they were well off the path.
Mostly my usual morning chores. I don’t know why they took longer today; maybe my aches and pains convinced me to take the stretches seriously. I was always stiff in the morning, felt better after stretching and even better after walking a couple of hours, just to get seriously sore again by the end of the day.
It was raining, too, and forecast to rain more that afternoon.
From the time-stamps on my pictures with the Sony, it was 11 when I reached the edge of the castle grounds; I have to correct for the time zones, as I didn’t think to set its time since I got it back in March, and it was still on US Central Standard Time.
There were runners, coming down the trail from Port Isaac.
They had started out at Tintagel that morning, run all the way to Port Isaac and back, and were now headed to Crackington Haven. And back.
This was what the Mud Crew signs and tape had been about: a trail run, covering a distance that for me was 4 days hike (well, 2 days, but covering it twice). 40 plus miles, about 12,000 feet of steep ascent and descent, on a muddy trail, next to a cliff much of the way.
Bloody hell. I was impressed.
I don’t know that my sudden attack of inadequacy influenced my decision not to go into the grounds and museum. The main consideration was my late start and the forecast for worse rain. How much could I see in half an hour, even 45 minutes? OK, the £8 was irrelevant after the cost of getting here, but was it worth the anxiety cost that would mount with every minute?
I settled for pictures from the edge of the grounds, and a firm commitment to come back someday. After the climb up to the cliff top, I swung by the 15th century church, noted also for a Roman “milestone”. Met and talked to a German photographer as I approached the church, and we were both disappointed to find a wedding party at the front of the church. How inconsiderate! Not sure whether they were just “rehearsing”, or at an informal stage, standing around, but neither of us was willing to barge in looking for the Roman stone.
The day was overcast verging on foggy, but the rain was light, and let up before long. The pictures of the castle ruins turned out OK — the weather matches the mood — but the landscape images weren’t great. On the plus side, the rain never got worse, and even let up entirely, later.
On the minus, I was hiking a steep, muddy trail that 100+ people had already run across twice that morning. Seven valley descents and ascents, from around 300 feet down to sea level and back up; one that the guide book bothered to describe as “very steep and slippery” even when it hadn’t just rained and been used as a racetrack. Definitely the worst day of the hike on my feet. My boots were soon soaked through, and it was pointless to change socks. I had blisters on my blisters by the end of the day.
I stopped for lunch not long after starting out, at Port William, now not much more than a large pub. That kept me out of much of the last of the rain, and avoided having to continuously step off the trail to let runners by. After lunch I saw no more of them.
The afternoon was a long succession of climbs and descents. After Port William (AKA Trebarwith Strand), there is Backways Cove, Tregardock Beach (descending behind an isolated block of cliff known as The Mountain) and back up Tregardock Cliff, down to Jacket’s Point, Barrett’s Zawn, and St. Illugswell Gug. Plus at least a couple more whose names aren’t yet known to Harvard. Even this is from looking them up afterward; I was far too busy trying — and failing — to keep my footing to be able to track where I was on the guidebook map. There was no problem telling where the trail was, with the herds of elephants that had trod it that morning. No, the difficulty was in keeping forward momentum on the muddy slopes. And the steep, wet rocky ones were even worse.
The view continued to be spectacular, including the dramatic cliff-face slate quarries, burbling brooks, more waves pounding on more cliffs, a kestrel hovering on a cliff updraft (did I mention cliffs?), sea caves, wildflowers, and abandoned mine shafts. Oh, and a bizarre low stone fence at the edge of a small meadow atop a sea stack. Why? How? Did the gulls build them? Was there a bridge once connecting this with the mainland cliff? It was close enough for that to have been conceivable, but again: why? (See photo at top of this post.)
Sometimes I stood for a good while staring at the crashing waves, and taking video. At least the sky finally cleared enough to get some good views along the coastline.
By the time I reached Port Isaac, my phone battery was getting low; I was running a GPS tracker app, which was a big part of the problem. I was concerned that if I called the B&B to let them know I had arrived, but then stopped to have supper, I might not have power for a final call for a ride. So I had supper first — after walking an extra mile to find a pub. By the time I called for a ride, about 7, I think they were beginning to get a little worried. My host remarked on the search effort that would get launched if he actually pulled the panic cord, and reported a hiker who hadn’t shown up after his luggage had…