Port Isaac to Padstow

12 September 2009 - Port Isaac to Padstow

Distance - 13.8 miles

Weather - Sunny

We stayed at - Symply Padstow, 32 Dennis Road, Padstow, Cornwall, PL28 8DE Cost - £80.00

Today we left the SWCP and headed off inland to Wadebridge and beyond! If you remember, at the start of this blog, I said Al & I had drawn up some rules regarding our LEJOG and one of these was that we couldn't take any ferries. If we had continued to follow the SWCP we would have needed to take the ferry between Rock & Padstow to cross the River Camel. 

So we left Port Isaac by a footpath at the back of our B&B and scrambled up to the top of a steep pasture. The view from the top, was stunning and well worth the effort. We then headed to the small village of Trelights. There are only just over fifty houses here and about twenty per cent of them are holiday homes, so there wasn't really very much going on.

From Trelights we made our way by footpaths to a farmhouse called Trevathan. This was my first attempt at putting together a walk just using mapping software, without any local source to tell me whether the footpaths still existed or to comment on what state they were in. So far we had been really lucky, everything was as it should be. The footpath from Trevathan was actually a nice wide agricultural track and we thought we would be fine getting to Chapel Amble; however, suddenly the track came to an abrupt end in a flat field, where in the distance someone had built a big pond. The entrance to the field itself was very boggy. I started poking the ground with my walking pole to see just how firm it was, but Alistair decided he would just run across. Now if you can visualise a swan trying to take off on water, that was what Alistair looked like, but instead of finally taking to the air, he just sank further and further in to the mud and was covered in it, by the time he reached firmer ground! After circumnavigating the pond at least three times, we finally found the remnants of an overgrown footpath going through a hedged ditch. We scrabbled through and finally joined up with the footpath again. We reached Chapel Amble (and more importantly the pub) and sat outside and had some lunch. We were glad there were tables outside as we were too muddy to consider sitting inside!

After lunch we found that our adventures weren't quite over yet! We wandered up and down looking for the next footpath, but couldn't find it anywhere. The GPS suggested it was in the middle of a patch of very tall stinging nettles growing by the side of a stream. There was no way we would have been able to walk there, except after having treated the area with some Agent Orange and so I started looking at the maps to find an alternative route. It was at this point a man appeared and asked if we were OK. I explained our predicament and he sympathised, apparently he had been on at the parish council for ages to get the footpath reopened. He then mentioned that he owned the property adjoining the path and if we liked, we could walk through his garden and join up with the footpath on the other side where there we no nettles. What a jolly decent bloke we thought and did just that.

Unfortunately at the other side of his garden, the footpath was equally lost. We again battled through water, weeds and hedges until we came to a corn field. It was bliss just to be walking over stubble, rather than roots and bog. In the distance we could see a couple of those junta/civil war style pick-ups and a couple of blokes with dogs. They looked a bit shifty, so we sauntered past, avoiding eye contact and soon met up with the end of the footpath, where it joined a B road. At this point we had to avoid a bit of string with a cardboard handwritten sign saying footpath closed. Oh well!

In order to cross the very busy A39, we had to walk under a flyover sandwiched between two fields. There were bulls in these fields and they were leaning against the footpath gate. I found that by waving my walking pole at them and making vaguely farmer-like "Hup, hup" noises they would disperse and we walked through the field and into Wadebridge unheeded.

The town provided the first available pedestrian bridge to cross the River Camel - I'm not sure whether it was "the" Wade bridge, but we were grateful for it nevertheless. From there it was a pretty straightforward five and a half miles of flat walking in the sunshine up to Padstow on the Camel Trail. The only skill required was to avoid being ran over by the cyclists, who were out in their droves.

I booked the hotels for this trip about six months ago and at the same time I booked a table at Rick Stein's famous Fish Restaurant. Even then I could only get a 10 pm booking. I wasn't sure about eating that late, but Alistair reminded me that if we were in Spain we would. I was so glad we took the booking. The food was gorgeous, the staff friendly and the venue relaxed, but well run. As it was a fish restaurant, I expected dessert to be an afterthought, but that too was sublime. After the meal we had to waddle round the harbour before walking back to our B&B, but Padstow harbour was so picturesque, even that wasn't a hardship!