SSSSSSSuuuuurffffffffffffff...!
SSSSSSSuuuuurffffffffffffff....!
I was being hypnotised.

These were the last days that I found myself walking west. After this I was turning back. I had nearly reached Land’s End.

The days fell into a stable pattern. The mornings were wet as I walked in the rain. Then as the afternoon came the cloudbase broke and the sun would beat down until I became drowsy. These were long afternoons behind my shades on the beach. I walked from cafe to cafe consuming dripping ice creams. California mingled with the flavours of Cornwall. I walked with my rucksack past bikinis and beach bums. But then as the sun came around to the west the mist came again and I walked on into a silence broken only by fog horns.

I had come to surfboard country, to the long open beaches north of Newquay that face the waves as they climb out of the ocean. As I walked I watched people bobbing up and down like seals. From a distance it looked so easy and I found myself sucked into believing that I too could surf. All I had to do, I thought, was to just stroll out into the waves and I would be mysteriously transformed into a wave-riding god.

I did try surfing once. I remember even now the breath sucking cold as I got into the water. I also remember how, in time honoured fashion, I lied to everybody sitting on the beach saying- ‘it’s not so bad once you get in!’ I paddled a short distance off shore and felt the unrelenting power of the Atlantic Ocean.

I could barely control the board when I was not on it. It struggled against my grip and tried to get away from me. As for riding a wave ..... it was more a case of swallowing one. Having selected a breaker that I thought looked right for surfing I pitched myself up onto the board and started paddling furiously towards the shore. In an almost cartoon-like way the wave then disappeared from underneath me revealing a sea floor of stones, bottles and ancient condoms. There was a pause while I comically paddled the air and then gravity intervened and dropped me painfully onto the rocks. I was down and hurt when the sea returned, crashing about my ears. I must have turned over a dozen times. I had bruises on every part of my body.

This experience kept me safe from surf fever though the waves tempted me time after time. I was content to walk through Baywatch with the waves about my ankles.

The view of an engine house silhouetted against the sea has come to be a symbol of Cornwall. The blind eyes of these towers stare like the statues of Easter Island. Monuments to a world that has faded away. As I sat with my back to one old wall I imagined what it would have been like to hear the engine pumping water. I found it easy to hear things.

Out of the mist the voices of the miners came up the path. They joked, fresh before their shift telling stories about the strange misty weather. They talked of fairs and of good looking lasses. I heard their voices until they passed underground. For a second I thought someone had called my name.

Family legend has it that my ancestors spent some time in the Cornish mines. My maternal grandfather was a coal miner in South Wales but like a lot of working families, his forebears had come from outside the valleys following work wherever it took them. In all the moving about through the centuries the roots of my family have been lost. I was listening to the wind search the cracks in the engine house.

The atmosphere of the cliffs and the sea had attuned my mind to the lonely beauty of mist walking. I felt a bit like a ghost myself. Coming off a high rock to cross a holiday beach I would walk past families making castles in the sand without a single person seeming to see me. I would pass through these bubbles of bright beach wear and towels, and then climb out of the beach on the other side. The bright colours would fade, and the sea mist would claim me again.

Holywell Beach. On my own.
The gull rocks that guard the harbour look like whales in the mist.
In the surf they nudge each other in a gesture of love.

Not all of Cornwall was empty. It was mid-July and the seaside towns were filled with people. At Newquay I bumped my way along the sea front dodging deck chairs and kids wanting to go to the loo before I decided that it would be easier to walk along the back streets.

Down here I was told they call us Emmetts. Ants in the old Cornish language. As I looked at the mass of legs and self interest on the front I decided the name was probably well earned.

I was struck by the variety of paths on the Cornish coast. As well as the towns, the cliffs and the open beaches, I found myself slogging across expanses of dunes. After the hard packed sands of Gwithian there were miles of dunes before I came to the Hayle River. I stumbled on, filling my boots with sand. There is something about moving through soft sand that instantly makes you doubt your own map reading. I always acquired ‘lost’ walkers in the dunes. We slipped on together getting a taste of the Sahara.

One of the most crowded towns on this coast was St Ives, it was heaving like an ants’ nest as I approached along the coast. Out of season St. Ives is a charming place but it has become a victim of its own reputation. I moved quickly through the town and sat on the beach. The waves tried another tack at getting me to linger. The sea played up to my ego. Telling me I succeeded - that I had achieved my goal. It repeated. Land’s End. Laaaaaaaaand’sssss Eeeeennnnnddddddddd. Flattering me. I fell asleep on the sand staring out to sea.

At first it was later and then suddenly it was late and the mist had come back. The cliff top walk to Zennor was proving harder than I expected. I stumbled around catching my boots on the old stones. I found myself foxed by the ferns and by the strange bogginess under foot. These cliffs felt terribly old. The light was fading and I kept taking the wrong path . As I tripped up and fell down I told myself this was not the place to sprain an ankle.

I climbed on and tried to figure out where I was. I could not afford to miss the path up to Zennor as there were no villages on the coast beyond St Ives. The cliffs ran down unbroken until Cape Cornwall. If I missed Zennor the next place of any size was Boston, Massachusetts.

There are many legends of mermaids in Cornwall. As I pushed through the layers of cotton wool it was not hard to see why. Perhaps if I had had the testosterone levels of a twenty year old man this story might have ended differently. I would have listened to the siren call of the surf for longer or I would have been led off into danger, blundering around in the mist. As it was I was hungry. There is nothing like the prospect of a plate full of food for keeping other temptations of the flesh at bay. I stuck to the right path and stumbled into Pauline as she came out to meet me.