Today's route is another challenging one of thirteen to fourteen miles that has rolling countryside of up to about one hundred metres for the first part of the journey and a couple of two hundred metre whoppers towards the end, which I think are the highest sea cliffs in Cornwall.
Between Tintagel and Crackington Haven the only services of any note are at Boscastle, which you reach fairly early on. Accordingly, we only ate a light breakfast at the campsite (while the moisture on the tent dried off) so that we would be ready and able to take on food at Boscastle to keep us going until we reach Crackington Haven. Our next campsite is a good mile outside the Haven, so we will eat dinner in the village before heading for the campsite at Coxford.
Because of the route we took yesterday to arrive at the camp and which resulted in us doubling back on ourselves, we are able to take a shortcut out the back of the campsite and on to a path that exited straight on to Smith's Cliff, just above Gullastem and so avoid having to go back to the village.
It was lovely walking in the early morning light with the sea glittering with bright diamonds. From Willapark, there were great views across Benoath Cove to the rock features just before 'Trewethet Gut', an inlet beyond Rocky Valley. Looking back to Tintagel we could see to the hotel on the peak, overlooking 'The Island', home to King Arthur's Castle. There were a number of little bays and coves arching out from the mainland, blue seas and white horses breaking against the bottom of the rocks. As we started the long descent to Rocky Valley, we walked through a field completely covered in bright yellow buttercups. It was a wonderful sight and provided us a lovely light touch to the morning.
It is a steep drop to the lower cliff above the haven and, when you go round the headland, there is a steep ascent on a zig-zag path to command the clifftop again. This early part of the walk was very busy with people walking in both directions. The distance from Boscastle to Tintagel is short enough to make it a popular day walk, even with extended family groups of kids, parents and grand parents.
On return to the clifftop, looking back and down on to the Haven, we could see the tall, narrow archway at the bottom of the cliff on the beach which is accessible at low tide. Probably the remnant of a collapsed seacave, its tall elegant shape reminds one of the archways common in cathedrals.
The valley is a little jewel of a place and we spent a bit of time here just clambering about the rocks and the wee river (River Trevillet) that flows through it. There are lovely views down the valley out to the sea where the granite rock features dominate or, upstream where the hillside, wild flowers and shrubs hem in the water to its rocky course. This is a place where you could easily spend a day by the burn, accessing the beach at low tide. The tumble of rocks is beautiful and I was left thinking that if it had been on the west coast of Scotland where I was brought up, I would have been working the river to ginnle some wild brown trout for my dinner.
From Boscastle it is almost constant uphill, with only a couple of low descents as you go between different high points. In front of us were the climbs to Rusey Cliff and the aptly named High Cliff and when you see some of the terrain from a distance you wonder what you have let yourself in for. In fact it is a joy and delight. The cliff and hilltops here are stunning. The visual extravaganza was a contrast of the hard and soft with the granite cliff faces and rock features vying for attention with the soft, pretty and colourful wild flowers. The granite is further softened when you see it used in wonderful perpendicular slate walls. There are also some very nice shrubby areas, shrub tunnels inviting you in.
Perhaps our strangest encounter was with a herd of wild goats that graze the cliffs above Crackington Haven. The old males of the herd had the most amazingly shaped, sweeping horns arching over their heads.