Crowlas

Today started with a shock. While I was packing my tent away, a sneaky thief came and stole one of my most treasured possessions. After realising it was missing, we searched around the campsite and found it had been discarded up high on a nearby rooftop - and sparkling in the sun. To add insult to theft, the culprit was even sitting there gleefully calling at me perched just out of reach while I took stock of my loss.

And then he flew off!

Anti-Blister tape is an important thing for hiking and the local crows should really have known better. It also turned out to be prescient: we hadn't needed it until this point but as I write this both of us could use it tonight - typical!

Today's walk was one of two halves the tough bit, and the long but flat bit. I'd originally hoped we'd be able to take a break at the halfway point, but the tough section to the amazingly named Mousehole (nothing to do with either) took us well into the afternoon, and so we stopped before at Lamorna. It's a good thing we did because it meant the unexpected delight of a smoked mackerel and horseradish toastie!

The tough bit was hugely varied, with the typical ups and downs of the coast mixed with woodland glades, stone stepping across beaches, amazing gardens, jungle-level amounts of undergrowth around the path, and a fair bit of clambouring over rocks. Josh had been disappointed when we broke for lunch that it hadn't been rockier. As I've experienced before, be careful what you wish for!

It was pretty hot today, so cold soft drinks were essential at our breaks. We also had a great ice cream at Mousehole before embarking on part ii.

Mousehole is a lovely little village with a peaceful harbour. It was also a site for cable landings, particularly the transatlantic telegram cable "Imperial Cable 1". During the WW1, a cable running from Germany to New York was seized by the allies and redirected to be from Mousehole to Nova Scotia - and was significant enough to be included as a "prize of war" in the Treaty of Versailles.

More recently, Grenfell Street in Mousehole has a memorial to the namesake London disaster, and it celebrates the solidarity sent by those in Cornwall to those affected, including inviting people to "have respite by the sea" in the south west. As the plaque says "Let a stranger turn into a friend!"

It took us about 5 1/2 hours for us to complete the 7.5 miles in the tough bit. The flat second bit was almost the same distance, but after got a march on, it took less than 3 hours. It seemed natural to sing along when trying to keep our movement in time and at a good pace. And fittingly the song we found worked was a Sea Shanty. I later found out that Josh was singing the words to a great solidarity shanty about refugees in response to Theresa May, The Citizen Shanty. I need to learn the words before the next long haul.

Along the way, we passed Newlyn harbour, the third largest fishing harbour in the UK. And with the concrete around the Newlyn and later Penzance came graffiti again - something absent since around Porthtowan.

We finally marched into our campsite around 6:30 in the evening after a long, hot day. We're both feeling a bit bruised and battered at the moment so it's probably a good thing that we have just one more day's walking until a day off.Read more