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Journal: |
Got up at 7am and took my time getting ready to leave, chatting
with Beat over breakfast. Left the Hostel about 8:30am and
found my way back to the Coast Path via a farm road and crossing a
field on a cold and overcast morning. The Coast Path mostly
bordered farm fields with cliffs to the left, although it sometimes
strayed inland. It began drizzling, but was not unpleasant,
and although there were still climbs, the cliffs were not as high
and the ascents and descents not so steep. One of my healing
blisters was causing me to limp because of the pain, so I stopped
and applied a number of bandaids. This seemed to do the trick
and movement was easier thereafter.
One early highlight was spotting a family of foxes, including
five pups, moving along the side of the cliff edge. One false
move by a pup and it would have fallen about 100m. I made
reasonably good progress round Hartland Point, but realised that I
would not reach Clovelly, my target for a late lunch, until very
late. As the sky cleared, it became a very pleasant day and
the Path was mostly easy walking. The terrain had become
"softer" with more vegetation on the cliffs and plenty of sections
through woods carpeted with bluebells. I finally reached the
road down to Clovelly and realised that the Coast Path didn't
actually descend to the village, that Beat had told me was a "must
see". So I made the long walk down a steep back road to the
village, that only cars with permits were allowed to be used.
The village lived up to its "Chocolate Box" description with a tiny
little fishing harbour and historic houses cascading down the
hillside along the cobbled narrow main street where no powered
vehicles were allowed. The only drawback was that the place
was crawling with tourists. Of course, I was one too! I
climbed back up to the top of the village and had a quickCornish
Pastie and coffee in the visitors centre adjacent to the car park.
By the time I was ready to leave it was nearly 4pm and I had to
decide whether to look for a B&B in the nearby Higher Clovelly or
keep walking and free camp along the Path. I decided to look
for a B&B, but missed the track junction to the village and went to
plan B. The late afternoon walking was very pleasant, despite
sore feet, and alternated between woods, fields and a little cliff
edge.
I didn't find a spot to camp until 7:30pm, and quickly set up.
Not much for dinner tonight!
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