the river – 8 Aug, 2018
Day 6 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Harlyn to Polzeath
Distance: 30km
Cumulative distance: 148km
Well then…I think it’s safe to say that stubborn little decision I made a couple of days ago at the River Gannel came right back to bite me. Today it was the River Camel standing as the obstacle between me and progress, and unfortunately there was no early footbridge to reward me for shunning the ferry. But we shall get to that shortly.
It was a nervy start this morning when the rain came a pounding down at about 4am, but by the time I woke up again it was sunny and it looked like we were in for another clear day. The tent held up too which was pleasing, so I strode on back down to Harlyn Bay in a pretty decent mood with a pretty big day planned. I didn’t realise just how long a day it would be until after lunch. The first target was Padstow which I’d been told was a delightful town on the River Camel, but before that I walked around a few more headlands as the path weaved along with the eroded coastline. I passed a section full of benches which were all in memory of different people, some of who were younger than I am. When I got to the final headland there was an old lighthouse or some similar structure which you could go inside, and then a little bit further on I saw the River Camel for the first time.
Now this was going to prove an Amazonian obstacle…it was easily more than a kilometre across at its mouth and didn’t appear to narrow at all from what I could see upstream. I passed a viewing station on the corner of the headland manned by a friendly looking chap in a Navy hat, then walked the few extra miles into Padstow where I enjoyed my first Cornish pasty (of this trip anyway). This was one of my life goals for the day, and I absolutely chowed down on that thing, it was delicious. I went on to learn that the Cornish pasty was originally made as a lunch for the tin miners, and the reason the edges were crinkled was to soak up the arsenic in their fingers. The idea was you wouldn’t actually eat the crinkled edge, it was just a design feature to allow dirty hands to hold the meal. I devoured the pasty, crinkled edge and all, then had a smoothie further downstream once I’d passed the ferry which would’ve taken me over to Rock before heading on my way.
I was facing a five mile walk just to get to the first footbridge across this damn river. That would mean a five mile walk back to Rock, so I was looking at 16 bonus kilometres roughly thanks to my unwavering stubbornness. Wadebridge was the town I needed to get to, and the walk there was super simple along part of the Camel Trail which was particularly popular with cyclists. So I was charging along this thing as quickly as I could, a nice enough path it must be said with the river to my left and a tunnel of trees for most the way, and every five seconds a group of cyclists would fly past. Oh yeah, I’m not allowing myself to cycle any of this by the way. There was a cycle hire place at either end of this stretch of trail, so there was no escaping the hundreds and hundreds of bikes. In any event, I made good time and made it to Wadebridge where I did a quick spot of shopping, then crossed the river over a delightful old bridge of many centuries. By now the river had narrowed to maybe 20m or so, and it looked like a gentle stream passing through town.
The Camel trail doesn’t actually cross the bridge, so this is where things began to get tricky. All the guidebook said was that I was to take minor roads back to Rock. There was no actual footpath for morons like myself. I started on a B road and that was okay for about half a mile, until the footpaths stopped abruptly on either side and it was just me and two lanes of traffic. This was like the main road in this part of Cornwall and it was fairly well patronised, so I ducked off into a farmer’s field and started walking alongside the fence behind the last row of some towering crops. This quickly turned into me thrashing my way through head high blackberry bushes and other weeds, and by the time I’d made 200m of progress to an opposing fence, I was knackered and fairly well scratched up. I came to a barbed wire fence and tried to go over it, but the weeds around it were too thick to allow my progress. It didn’t matter, a few metres up the fence stopped and I was out onto an unused driveway which spat me back out onto the road. The next section I spent darting down the road whenever there was a break in traffic, and tucking myself into the edge whenever a car came past. I got sick of doing that pretty quickly so I just started walking in the left hand lane. At one stage there was a car on the opposite side of the road which had stopped, and started letting traffic through. A line of cars had built up behind me pretty quickly and the lovely motorists of north Cornwall were doing everything in their power to facilitate this imbecile who was walking on the road because he wasn’t interested in catching a ferry. Not once was I honked or yelled at so that was nice at least in a fairly not ideal situation. We came to a bridge where the road narrowed to just one line, and there were traffic lights on either side. The bridge was maybe 40m long, so I walked up to the traffic light, jumped in line as if I were a car, and when it turned green sprinted across the bridge with the row of traffic I was now embedded in. This is ridiculous I thought, so I ducked into another farmer’s field and bailed, deciding there must be a better way. Unfortunately I knew I was still probably four miles from Rock, and my legs and feet were starting to wane. I walked across a field for maybe half a kilometre then jumped a barbed wire fence and ended up at the banks of the River Camel. It had widened a bit further upstream, and looked like a vast lake stretching right across to the farmland on its other side. I figured all I needed to do was follow this thing and I’d be getting closer. It started well enough, although quickly enough it began to widen further and walking became very tough. Given the lack of rain this summer in the UK, the Camel had clearly receded. I suspected that usually the entire field I was walking in would be underwater. Instead I was walking in knee deep river debris, grass, dirt, bits of trees and other detritus that the river had picked up over the years. It all combined and created a false top in the ground which cracked open like a crème brulee every time I stepped through it. The going was tough and at times boggy and I genuinely found myself dreaming of sand dunes.
Eventually I was forced right up to the fenceline with nowhere else to go. I managed to navigate another fence and ended up in yet another field, and I knew if I kept heading to my right (away from the direction of the river unfortunately) that I would find another road. I knew I was on private land so I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, but that can be tricky when you’re carrying a backpack and tramping through an open field looking like you’ve spent the past decade living in the Amazon. I came to another fence and managed to get over the top of it, then teetered on the banks of a little creek through some tough shrubs and eventually marched upstream, completely ignoring the family that was playing in the creek barely 20m away from me. They would have seen me no doubt, but I suspect their thought process was “Let’s just let the crazy man walk out of here on his own, there’s no need to talk to him or approach him…”. I came to a gate and left the field, turning around to see a big sign saying “PRIVATE PROPERTY, STRICTLY NO ENTRY WITHOUT PERMISSION”. I was in another caravan park and eventually stumbled through that and found a road again, about an hour after leaving the last one. This was a much quieter road and after walking for about 20 minutes I saw a sign telling me it was still two miles to Rock. I almost cried…Rock wasn’t even my final destination for the day! The head went down, the bum went up and I walked as quickly as I could to Rock, eventually arriving and passing the other end of the ferry terminal as Padstow glowed on the other side of the bank.
I had no interest in the ferry and its inner workings so I kept on and eventually left Rock behind to see a sign that said 2.5 miles to Polzeath, which is where I planned to stay. Finally I was getting somewhere! But then came the sand dunes. More bloody sand dunes. I ploughed through them, walked past another beach and around a bit more coastline and finally stumbled across Polzeath with nothing left in my legs. I mustered enough energy to walk up the hill to reception for the campsite I’d picked out, and the lovely old lady behind the counter told me she’d give me a patch in the budget area for 30 quid. It was worse than yesterday! I couldn’t believe this (the budget area was on a right slope by the way) so asked her where the next campsite was. She told me there was one through town which would only charge me 12 quid for the night…” Just walk through town love, then turn right and head up the hill. But be careful, it’s very steep and narrow and there are no footpaths. About a mile up the road, turn right and you’ll come to the campsite.” I grumbled under my breath a fair bit going up that hill but I finally found the campsite, and there was a restaurant next door serving beer and found so I shouted myself to both and spent the rest of the night cursing the River Camel.
