Day: 066
Date: Friday, 05 August 2022
Start: Newquay
Finish: St Agnes (then bus to Truro)
Daily Kilometres: 24
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 1873
Weather: Warm and mostly sunny, with a cool breeze.
Accommodation: AirBnB
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Egg mayonnaise sandwich/Breakfast bar.
Lunch: Chicken salad sandwich/Egg mayonnaise sandwich
Dinner: Burger & chips, caramel trifle
Aches: Dave - the usual niggles. Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: It was nice to have an easy day after a very solid week’s hiking, and to know we have tomorrow off. We were finished hiking by 2:00pm at St Agnes on a beautiful sunny day, easily in time to catch a bus to Truro (30 minutes away) at 2:30pm and, after a quick stop at a supermarket to buy some afternoon tea, were comfortably ensconced in our AirBnB before 4:00pm.
Lowlight: None really.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We chose a slightly later departure time today, 7:15am, for two reasons. Firstly, we knew we had a relatively short-distance day and, secondly, the guidebook suggested that we needed to cross the River Gannel footbridge on the western edge of Newquay within two hours either side of low tide (~11:00am), or we would have to take a 4 kilometre detour. After walking through the waking centre of Newquay and buying supplies for the day at a supermarket, we descended to the River Gannel and were pleased to see the tidal bridge well-exposed on the wide sandflats. In fact, the tide was far enough out for us to also ford Penpol Creek, saving us further distance.
We then followed the Coast Path downstream to Crantock Beach at the river mouth where we were surprised to see a lot of holiday-makers already setting up on the beach (it was only 8:00am!) and the nearby carpark rapidly filling with vehicles. With a sunny warm day forecast, people were clearly keen to get their spot on the sand. It did look like a good beach, especially for young children.
The Coast Path then followed the coast around some low headlands, though still involving some climbing, and dropped down to several more attractive beaches, each seemingly busier than the last with people staking out their bit of sand. Approaching Holywell Bay, we made the mistake of sticking to the marked Coast Path through some high sand dunes backing the beach when we would have been wiser to drop down to the flat hard sand beach itself and walk along that. Lesson learned.
After another long attractive stretch of cliff-top walking on easy trail, with expansive views along the coast and out to sea, we made a steep descent to Ligger Bay and Perrin Sands Beach and walked along the beach, whose sand wasn’t quite as hard as we hoped, for a couple of kilometres. Nevertheless, it was very pleasant to be walking along the relatively unpopulated broad beach with the breakers crashing to our right and huge sand dunes rising to our left under sunny skies. Sadly, the tide wasn’t far enough out for us to walk all the way to Perranporth Beach, and we had to negotiate one more headland before dropping down to this very busy beach. Despite the sun, the breeze was cool and the water apparently cold (~17°C) as most of the many swimmers and boogie board riders were wearing wetsuits.
We had made good progress all morning and still had time to take a second break, for lunch, knowing we would make the earlier bus (2:30pm) at St Agnes, our goal for the day. We found a spot sitting on what looked like the remains of an old fortification or industrial site on Cligga Head and were entertained as we ate by some parachutists descending to the adjacent Perranporth Airfield, dating from World War II when it was a base for multiple squadrons of Spitfire fighters.
Our last hour of walking took us down to Trevallas Cove, and the remains of historic tin-smelters, before a long climb to the busy village of St Agnes. From there we caught a bus to Truro where we have an AirBnB for two nights and a day off hiking.
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