“No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees/No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds—November!” complained Thomas Hood. Perhaps not the most auspicious of months, then, for embarkation on another hundred miles of South West Coast Path. But (following one of the best railway journeys going, along Brunel’s line that runs by the red-coloured coast past Dawlish, and later over the Tamar bridge past Plymouth) we nonetheless find ourselves setting off from the Ferryboat Inn at Helford Passage and proceeding at some speed over six days to Portwrinkle, near St Germans.
A vision from Rosemullion Head of harbour porpoises delighted the eye on the first day. The next, ferries took us under a cloudless sky across Carrick Roads; we walked past the lighthouse at St Anthony Head, and on from Zone Point to Veryan; the next, in horizontal rain, we got to Mevagissey, roughly half-way on this stint, and dried out in the ancient Fountain Inn (good fire, commendable scallops). Day 4’s slower progress (much mud about) to Par saw us arrive in darkness; we were benighted again on Day 5, which took us over Par Sands and around Gribbin Head, and (by ferry) over the Fowey Estuary, with the descent into Polperro lit mainly by the brilliancy of the stars. Day 6 took us from Downend Head, past the imaginatively-positioned war memorial to the fallen of Polperro and Talland (which has the names of the sailors facing seaward, the rest landward) and on through Looe and past Downderry, to reach Crafthole’s eerie Finnygook Inn in dusky gloom. (This blogger started this national trail in the wrong place, Plymouth, about 16 years ago, so is now not many miles off completing it.)
Good things, national trails. It was in 1935, in an article in the Daily Herald, that Tom Stephenson floated the idea of one, to run from the Derbyshire Peak to the Cheviots. It took a few Parliamentary committees, and an Act of Parliament, and public inquiries and a lot more besides, to secure it. Opposition took many tacks. The Manchester Corporation were concerned about the pollution of reservoirs. Others feared the taming of the landscape by a plethora of painted waymarks and intrusive signposting; some thought that the plan was to build an unbroken concrete path.
The usual concerns about walkers’ behaviour were aired: a letter in The Times informed its readers that “there are townsmen who enjoy taking stones from boundary fences and rolling them down precipices.” (The present writer is yet to witness this phenomenon. In his experience it is not the walkers but the trippers – the ones who drive to what are called “beauty spots” to park their cars, stare briefly at the views, buy their ice-creams and souvenirs, and disport themselves beach-fashion, without walking many yards – who leave the litter and do the damage.) There was alarmist concern about people going ill-equipped on the more challenging sections, one pamphleteer declaring that public access might have “disastrous results”. The sporting interest feared the effect on the grouse-populations, with the Manchester Guardian reporting an opponent who said that a walker on Emmott Moor “might clear the moor of grouse for a day by the drop of a handkerchief”.
But for all that protest, the Pennine Way was opened in 1965, a mere 30 years after Stephenson promoted the idea. Thousands of long-distance walkers, and hundreds of thousands of day walkers, use it, or parts of it, annually. The contribution to the local economy made by its users is more than significant; large numbers of jobs are sustained. There can be no doubt that a national trail is a Good Thing. The South West Coast Path generates over £300 million a year for local businesses, and supports over 7,500 jobs. The case for establishing a path all round the coast could hardly be more compelling. The opponents’ arguments are no more persuasive than the old ones against the Pennine Way.
There are aspects of coastal walking which you don’t encounter inland. Sea-birds, sea-craft, sea squill, sea-pinks. Inland, mountains and other landmarks come and go quickly: on Offa’s Dike you see Skirrid for a day in front of you, and a day behind you, and then it’s gone; whereas on the coast your progress is measured by great seamarks looming ahead and then astern of you for days (and sometimes weeks) on end – rocks, islands, lighthouses, points, headlands, promontories. There is the continual presence of the ocean, sometimes congenial to the walker’s heart, sometimes brooding, always dramatic. With the Cornish coast in mind, Hardy (no stranger to this blog of late) wrote of “the ghostly birds, the pall-like sea, the frothy wind, the eternal soliloquy of the waters, the bloom of dark purple cast that seems to exhale from the shoreward precipices,” which “in themselves lend to the scene an atmosphere like the twilight of a night vision.” Yes, it’s time there was a path round all these shores.
Eugene Suggett is the Senior Policy Officer for Ramblers.