Short take: laissez les bons temps rouler! Fine weather, good hiking.
Not too much to report this second to last day of hiking along the South West Coast Path. Sunny, warm, little wind. Mostly cliff-top hiking with a few ups and downs but none that were particularly steep. A few more walkers than we have been seeing, especially around Looe, because of the fine weather and it being a Saturday.
Looe itself was potentially nice but actually a bit tawdry. The potential was given by the estuary of, as our ferryman tongue-in-cheek said, "the mighty River Looe" with sloping hillsides rising beyond the banks on either side, and many old buildings on twisty little streets in the old town center. But in reality it seems the town fathers took the decision a long time ago to cater to a slightly lower class of tourists than perhaps they should have, with caravan parks on the outside of town, too many small bungalows, and too many tourist-oriented shops and other businesses.
We stopped around 1:45 for a light lunch (I had a coffee and a little cake) in a cafe next to a beach, and then continued on to Portwrinkle, arriving around 4:20PM, having taken about an hour less than planned. Without rushing, I hasten to add -- it just seems that we are all pretty fit.
We are staying the night at the Finnygook Inn, a nice old pub in the village of Crafthole, 10 minutes walk up the road from Portwrinkle (there being nothing available in Portwrinkle itself). Gook means ghost, and Finny was apparently a smuggler who betrayed his fellows to Her Majesty's Customs, which so little endeared him to them that he was subsequently murdered, and his ghost is supposed to still haunt the area.
There we found Marcus, Rochelle's husband, who had arrived about an hour earlier, surprisingly chipper for someone who had been travelling for the last 24 hours coming over from Pittsburgh in the States. He'll be hiking with us the rest of the way, and with him the last but one of the hikers has appeared as planned. The last hiker will be our cousin Oliver, who will join us in Ivybridge a few days from now.
Tonight we'll eat here in the inn, and tomorrow we walk to Plymouth, where we'll spend a couple of days seeing stately homes and gardens in the villages around about.
