After my middle of the night activities, I was a little tired this morning. In addition, I had developed a couple of irritating ailments overnight -- left foot and right buttock, if you must know -- perhaps a touch of gout and a slightly pinched nerve somewhere in the lower back, so today's planned six hour hike was a bit daunting.
Russell also has a few dings -- as he put it at breakfast, he's "a mass of bruised meat". The other two are either indestructible or don't talk about problems short of hospitalization.
But the weather was fine, with little wind, so we set off in good spirits.
The start of the hike was inland along the Gannell River to a tidal footbridge. First time I've encountered one of these -- it is covered at high water, but can be used for a few hours on either side of low tide. We then walked back out to the sea along the south side of the river... quite idyllic, one would never know that bustling New Quay was just over the crown of the ridge to the north.
Afterwards, lots of sand walking -- across some smaller beaches, mixed with heather and turf covered headlands, then past an ugly Ministry of Defense installation, then down onto the immense expanse of Penhale Beach -- almost two miles long.
We had a surprisingly good lunch at a beach cafe in Perranporth at the end of the Penhale sands, then climbed up to the top of the cliffs for the last stretch to St. Agnes.
Once again the landscape changed -- now we were in mining country. I'd guess that there was an igneous intrusion here -- at any rate the rocks were completely different from anything we've seen along the path so far. When you looked at the sea cliffs, they changed color every 30 feet -- iron red, copper blue/green, yellows, greys, whites... tons of different minerals, and holes in the bare rock faces like Swiss cheese. On the surface mine shafts scattered around, and tailings everywhere.
And that's it for now... dinner beckons.
