Short take: nice walk to finish off the South West Coast Path for this year.
Dinner last night at the Finnygook Inn was excellent, for all the usual reasons (quality of food, portion size, service), but also for an unusual one: the waitresses seemed to have been hired from the famous actress doubles pool. There was a Mira Sorvino, a Minnie Driver complete with accent, and at least one more whose name escapes me. No famous actor look-alikes for Suzi, Rochelle, and Sally... but life isn't always fair ;-).
The hike itself was slightly anticlimactic after the wonderful days before. There were a few nice parts, but several longer stretches along roads, most of which were unexpected. In one case we had to detour around a Ministry of Defense site that was conducting a live fire exercise, in a couple of others the problem was landslips that had wiped out portions of the Coast Path. There were a lot of unusually heavy rainstorms in this part of Cornwall this past winter, and the result was big landslides. The weather, too, was so-so: cloudy with a few showers.
A longer term thought: I'll have to check the maps more carefully, but after a quick glance it seems to me as if the ratio of unspoiled nature to built up areas starts to decline after Plymouth, so it is possible that this is the last big hike along the SWCP. I don't know anywhere else in the UK that offers such a combination of landscape and culture, nor outside of the UK that combines those two with excellent hiking trails, so at this point I don't know what the next non-Alpine hiking trip might be. I'm open to suggestions!
We arrived at Cremyll, from where a small ferry to Plymouth departs, after about 6 hours of hiking... pretty much as planned. The walk through Plymouth after the ferry crossing was uninteresting, but our B&B seems nice and the owners have been welcoming. We also met up with a German/Colombian Canadian couple, relatives/friends of Suzi and Thomas (complicated, I know, but I'm not to blame!), with whom S&T will be travelling for the next several days after they leave us. And then we all went out to dinner to a good Japanese restaurant not far away. Fun!
