First week in Cornwall

Since we arrived in Cornwall last Tuesday we have only talked about the day of our wedding anniversary. In this post, we will summarise what other things we did last week.

Last time we were on the North coast of Cornwall was more than 10 years ago. What attracts us to Cornwall is its breath-taking views of the intimidating and often rough seas, its dramatic coastline, its sometimes challenging coastal paths taking you up and down the rugged cliffs and, of course, its traditional pasties and its cream teas with heart clogging clotted cream, which I never have, but Gary always welcomes a second portion.

Unfortunately, as it is six to eight hours drive from London, depending on the traffic and the bottlenecks around the A30, we have only been to Cornwall twice since then, . Last year we went to the Eden project for the first time. We went by the Night Riveria sleeper train, which was great fun but extraordinarily expensive! We also took the opportunity to do some walking around St Austell.

Eden project:

We returned again in March this time with Toro, our car. We went back to the Eden Project, making use of the annual ticket and trekked around the Lizard and kayaked in Roadfordlake, which was the first outing for Barca and Barco.

This time we have decided to focus on the North coast, to return to Tintagel, and to visit Newquay for the first time. We need to end up at Iflracombe where we will depart to Lundy on Saturday, 20th September.

See map below for the places we visited last week

TUESDAY – 9th SEPTEMBER

We left Dartmoor on Tuesday morning heading towards the North Coast of Cornwall and arrived at Newquay around lunchtime. It was a sunny afternoon, the sea was calm & bright so we took the kayaks out to explore the coast around this area. We had only two hours before dusk so after quickly inflating them and getting the equipment ready, we realised we were missing three gloves. We looked intensively for them everywhere, the external cupboards, high level cupboards, under the seats. All the clothing was removed from the wardrobe ending up littered around Dora. Finally we remembered they were sitting on the top of the sofa drying out for a few days after kayaking at Lulworth Cove.We ended up taking the sofa apart, unscrewing the back of the sofa to reveal a small slot where they had slipped and there they were, all of them! Bizarre. Dora looked like she had been broken into or a tornado had hit her, but we decided to leave her like that since we only had one and a half hours left for kayaking. We shut her blinds down, we would sort her out when we got back.

Kayaking was brief but calm and beautiful. This time, we didn’t take many photos but we did take a video which we combined with the video we took the first time we went kayaking at Lulworth Cove

Gary had promised to cook one of (to my opinion) his best dishes: mushroom risotto. However, on the way back from canoeing, the smell of fish and chips people were eating in the harbour was so enticing we changed our plans. With another stunning sunset coming up, we decided to get take away fish & chips and drive Dora to the top of the cliff where we could enjoy it better with a glass of white wine.

WEDNESDAY 10th SEPTEMBER

The Cornish coast is ideal to enjoy a variety of sea life so we went for a walk around Navax Point, close to St Agnes to see what was on offer. The scenic views from the cliffs were absolutely stunning. With a tide at its highest point and strong winds, the views from the cliffs were particularly dramatic. We walked to St Agnes for four hours and got a taxi back to the car park where we had left Dora.

As we went along, the shallow waters revealed rocky areas where potentially, with low currents, could be good for snorkelling

We searched desperately for seals until we reached a cove where a bunch of people were standing, looking at something which turn out to be about a dozen of seals, resting, swimming, feeding and sleeping. An opportunity not to miss so we lay on the ground, right at the edge of the cliff, took out our binoculars and watched them for about half an hour. People were queuing up to borrow our binoculars.

The next day, we took our kayaks out and went back to this place to see them in their own environment. And what an experience that turned out to be and is described in our post 10th years wedding anniversary post.

Gary tried to take a photo through the binoculars and was pleasantly surprised by the result.

Can you spot the seal in this photo? For us it was incredibly difficult to make them out due to their incredible camouflage.

We continued to delight ourselves with the scenic views of the rugged cliffs, battling with the wind which was blowing in our faces.

The island with the lighthouse upon it was the one we tried to go around the next day when we went kayaking which really tested our paddling strength and it all nearly went horribly wrong.

The tide was receding by the time we reached the final part of the walk, uncovering a rich seashore life. The fishermen were hunting the best catch before anyone else did.

The beaches became clearer and wider, although lovely, we still prefer the immaculate sandy beaches of the Gower Peninsula.

The ocean looked so clean and calm. The deep-blue colour contrasted with the brightness of the sunlight.

This is St Agnes harbour, our final destinations, where children were going for a swim after the school day. The coldness of the waters didn’t stop them from continuously jumping. Some of them didn’t even wear wetsuits!!

Walking Map:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walking Profile:

Distance: 7.8  Kms

Time: 3 hrs

THURSDAY– 11th SEPTEMBER

Please refer to our latest post 10th year wedding anniversary

FRIDAY – 12th SEPTEMBER

After the exhausting and scary experience of the previous day, we had a chilled out morning and went for a short walk around Holywell beach to pick up some blackberries before the season ends.

 

The path led us up and down the dunes to an isolated beach with nobody there. We sat down for a while to contemplate the calmness and brightness of the sun reflecting on the clean waters of the ocean before going back to the cliff on a steep and sandy path.

Scary caves appear occasionally in the distance. Although intimidating, that doesn’t stop us from exploring them when we are kayaking.

We arrived at Crantock at 16:30, our final destination. The village was surprising busy. All the locals were heading for a hay bail pushing contest, they really know how to have a good time in Cornwall. We got back to Dora in time to make iced yogurt with the blackberries we had picked up on the way.

Very simple recipe:

• Lots of ripe blackberries
• Natural yogurt
• A bit of sugar (optional)

Gary patiently shivering all blackberries to extract as much juice as possible

And making quite a mess in the process. That juice really stains!

Mix the juice with natural yogurt and add a bit of sugar if blackberries flavour feels a bit sharp

Put in the freezer and stir occasionally. Don’t make the same mistake as us. We only stirred it once and it turned out from Dora’s freezer as a block of ice, but just goes to show how good Dora’s fridge is.

Still very nice and tasty. We had it the next day for breakfast, mixed up with a bit of milk and poured on our muesli. Delicious and cheap! However it took twenty minutes to shave off enough for the muesli.

SATURDAY – 12nd SEPTEMBER

A fishing festival was advertised in the area so we decided to head back to Newquay. We had to drive through there anywhere to get to Tintagel, our next destination. The festival’s programme looked promising, with lots of activities from culinary demos, to lobsters pot running, educational marine activities and lots of seafood and fish dishes. As big fish-eaters we couldn’t resist the temptation to attend.

As most of the activities we were interested in were taking place in the afternoon, we decided to fill in the morning by going deep sea-fishing, as fish was turning out to be the theme of the day.

We booked with Atlantis for £25 each. There was no refund if we did not catch anything unfortunately.

Once we arrived there, we caught the skipper in the middle of a row with an Asian woman and her two friends and seemed to think she had hired the boat just for them. The company’s leaflet clearly stated that the boat could take up to twelve people on each trip so when this was pointed out to her, she had no choice but shutting up and coming along. I wish she’d read the full information before making a fool of herself and delaying the start of the trip. We should have ditched her at sea, or used her as bait.

Eventually, we left the harbour. The skipper explained that we would sail to a reef where most of the fish had been around that week. However, he warned us that the high tide coupled with strong current may make fishing particularly challenging, since the weight of our rods wouldn’t go very deep. The day before people had caught lots of fish so the day looked promising. “Not everything is lost” I thought.

The skipper used an echo sounder to identify where the majority of fish were that day. This device reads the fish tracks and indicates in a graphic way the amount of fish sitting beneath our boat. Amazing!

After a brief by the skipper of how to handle the rod, hold it and put the bait on, we got on fishing.

The skipper preparing the bait with us waiting patiently to attach it to the hook.

Some people started to catch small fish, not big enough for dinner so the skipper threw them back. Suddenly, one guy caught a pollock, an edible greenish-brown fish of the cod family. Interestingly, this is the most commonly used fish in the  famous British Fish & Chips dish now that cod has been overfished and there are so few left; whenever the fish and chips establishments don’t specify which type of fish they have cooked, it is most likely to be pollock.

Most felt bites and some clever fish took the bait away without being caught. We waited for an hour and a half on that spot but not much happened. The skipper tried to keep our spirits up by saying that the trip he took the day before started like this and ended up with most people catching something for dinner. He then moved to another spot which, according to the other boats around, appeared to be more promising.

Soon after arriving at the new spot, people started to catch up lots of dog fishes typified by its long, slender body, flattened head and large eyes. They are very rarely eaten. Their skin is so rough and hard that it is very difficult to strip it from their flesh. Most of the time, some of the flesh gets taken away in the process, leaving only a small portion to eat, so it is not really worth the effort. However the Asian woman still seemed keen to cook one, so one was saved and the others were thrown to the sea. Gary happened to catch two and a half of them. “How is that possible?” You may wonder. Well, the third one he caught, the greedy dogfish had not only grabbed Gary’s hook but the hook of the guy who was fishing next to him as well.The hooks were so far embedded in the fish that the skipper had no choice but to cut the lines. That dogfish now has two hooks inside of him.

 

The skipper trying to unhook Gary’s dog fish before throwing it back to the sea. Watch out how he holds its tail. There is a risk that, as the fish tries vigorously to remove the hook from his throat by swinging his long, strong and rough tail around it can rip off the skin of your arm in one hit. The skipper told us that dogfish is actually a species of shark, so Gary caught two and a half shark!

The skipper neatly filleting the pollock that one of the lucky guys had caught.

13.30 – time to go back to the shore. Everybody caught something but me and the other two Asian women. Not even a dog fish. I did not even feel any bites on my bait. These are all the fish we caught among the group. Pretty unsuccessful really Someone also caught a cuttlefish!

We returned to go around the fish festival. Not as good as expected. Quite disappointing, although well attended. We felt their could have been more about fish conservation and depleted fish stocks and what is sustainable to use, instead there were choirs, races and quite a lot of non-fish related selling, cheese, meat and tourist junk. Maybe we were just bitter about not having caught a great deal.

We decided to have a quick lunch looking at the harbour before driving towards Tintagel. We took the rest of the afternoon chilled at a campsite at Rock.

SM