Day 11. Crackington Haven to Tintagel

A change of Strategy.

It was still chucking it down in the morning and the wind refused to let up.
The thought of packing away the gear in wind and rain, yet again, was not a pleasant prospect.
I picked up a bus timetable at reception and hatched a cunning plan.

I could leave the tent and gear in its sheltered spot, carry on walking down the coast, get the bus back and repeat the next day.

It was still wet and windy as I walked back down to Crackington Haven so I stopped in the Cabin Cafe for breakfast and had a laugh reading about the Tory debacle in the papers.
When I left the cafe something amazing happened.
It stopped raining!
Although it remained very windy the sky cleared and it looked like being a good day.

Crackington Haven. 

Look at that blue sky.

Carrying just my waterproofs and stuff for a day walk I felt like I was walking on air.

There wasn't many doing the uphill hurdles race out of Crackington Haven.

I thought I had already ticked all the boxes for longest, highest, steepest, deepest, most severe etc but today I had to climb the highest sea cliff in Cornwall; the imaginatively named High Cliff at 223 m.

Will there ever be a low cliff ?

It was a beautiful day but still very windy.

Did I mention it has been windy?

As I came around Beeny Cliff the wind buffeted me from three directions and had me staggering like a drunkard and then on all fours clinging to prickly gorse and sharp rocks.

I stopped at Boscastle for a pasty in the National Trust cafe and was told it would take three hours to walk to Tintagel, which was a bit of a concern because the last bus from Tintagel leaves at 5.00 pm and it was now 2.00 pm.

But I still had to spend some time watching the wave cave where the incoming waves trap air in a cave at the base of the northern cliff until the pressure builds and sends an enormous jet of spray out with a boom like distant canon fire.

Boscastle

I've walked this section before but couldn't remember how long or difficult it was and my old map ended at Boscastle.

Here's the very old map with a great picture of Hartland Point that I was denied seeing through the storm.

The walk to Tintagel is brilliant and I was flying along up and down the cliffs and pretty quickly into the Rocky Valley where there's a diversion up to the pagan house cut deep in the rocks, but I didn't have time for that.

Rocky Valley-ano

Tintagel was packed with tourists lapping up the whole Arthurian legend and anything with a vaguely cosmic connection.

Every shop, cafe and establishment was Arthur this, Camelot that, round table the other.

Even the local council were in on the act with 'the sword in the stone pay and display car park'.

So I had a King Arthur kebab and got the bus back to the campsite.

(I made that up about the kebab).