Porthleven

Today I did the shortest hike, which was 5.5 miles. Partly because it ended in Porthleven, which the other two did not. And partly because a week in London, a day in Penzance and a 9.5 mile hike yesterday caught up with me.

Here is the trip description:

"Follow the South Cornwall Coast Path from Poldhu Cove over Halzephron Cliffs then across the sands of Loe Bar to finish at the fishing harbour of Porthleven."

It was another gorgeous day.

A word on birds. Lots of choughs playing on the cliffs. Once quite rare, we were chuffed (can't help it) to see maybe a dozen wheeling up and down together. I took photos but they don't capture the action very well. Similarly, I took photos of kestrels but they appear as dots. The kestrels were very entertaining, magically hovering in perfect stillness in one spot despite the strong winds. I don't understand how they do it--something to do with thermals. I understand riding thermals, I don't understand staying perfectly still in one spot while remaining motionless.

We stopped at St. Winwaloe Church, nestled in the dunes. The 5th century church was buried by sand. This is a 15th century church, founded by Breton Catholics. I never knew that Catholicism was divided into Celtic Catholics (Wales, Cornwall, Ireland, Breton) and Roman Catholics. Under the leadership of St. Hilda, the two churches merged, which was terrible news for women given greater equity in the Celtic church.

The church had impressive rafters.

Close up:

There were wildflowers all along the way.

Loe Bar next to Loe Pool had two lovely flowers. Loe Bar is an area that silted over, preventing the River Cober from meeting the sea and thereby creating Loe Pool, a large freshwater lake. This plant, whose flowers looked like poppies, looked like a tryphid or some alien plant.

This is sea holly.

I usually take great care to upload (to Google Drive) and then download (to my Mac) and then re-upload (to the blog platform) my photos in the same order I took them. That is not the case today. Everything is out of order.

But you get the general drift.

The stone walls here are different to those I've seen everywhere else. Our guide, Paul, gave us some geology lessons about the Devonian Period. Whereupon my mind turns off.

As we neared Porthleven...

The reason I wanted to see Porthleven was that I had seen paintings of it in a gallery in Penzance. I'm a bit smitten with the work of the artist, Neil Pinkett, who did a series of quayside paintings. I'm toying with going back to Penzance and buying one of his paintings. But not sure about the additionial shipping cost to Ulster. Below you see the outer sea defence wall and the first pair of sea walls.

Below are the first and second sets of sea walls.

Which create, at the back, an inner harbour.

Porthleven is the southernmost port in the UK. Its harbour faces southwest--the direction from which the strongest storms come. Hence the major defence works.

The town had a nice vibe. Not quite as touristy as St. Ives.

I went through all the galleries to see if Neil was represented anywhere, but no luck. I had a vegan pastie--absolutely delicious--and a half pint of cider at a very old pub. Then on the bus that took us back to St. Ives. A very satisfying day.

June 27