Back in the depths of winter we were holiday planning for 2023, we’d booked a week in the Lakes for early May, which we booked whilst we sat in the Lakes on our previous holiday in November. We then decided that we needed a week in March split between Lancashire (visiting family) and the Yorkshire Dales (walking). We then had a wedding to go to (still to come) plus my mum and dad’s golden wedding anniversary in August 2023, so we then booked a week in Snowdonia around those occasions. Looking at all that we had a gap in late June/early July and nothing related to the coastal path in the years’ outings. Now up to this point, a day outing to walk the South West Coastal Path has been possible, however I am at the stage where the drive is over an hour now, one way, and I need to consider other options to bag multiple day walks in one visit. So we looked at the map and immediately went for the Land’s End area, but how would we tackle it? There was Penzance, Newlyn, Mousehole, Porthcurno, Land’s End itself, Sennen Cove, Cape Cornwall and Botallack plus many more highlights around to St Ives depending on how many days you spend here. We went for 3 days walking and 2 nights, and then started looking for some accommodation for the 2 nights. We wanted to head out from Penzance, leaving the car there and working out that Porthcurno and St Just may be good spots to stay in, with a daily distance around 10-12 miles. St Just was easy to find something to stay in, at the time we wanted, but not Porthcurno, even when we reversed the route, changed the dates or altered our walk. We’d already worked out that a bus would be needed to get us to Penzance from the north coast and that seemed to mean Pendeen would be the cut off as any further around to the east meant a bus to St Ives. So we hatched a plan to park near to Porthcurno and start from there, walking first to St Just and sleep, then carry on around to Pendeen before a bus to Penzance and walk the seafront to another accommodation on the edge of Newlyn. Then walk back to Porthcurno and the car, it was a bit of a cobbled plan but it worked for us. It means that when posting these walks they will be split into four on this website to help distinguish the different areas.

So enough about how we planned the walks, and onwards with this walk. We’d set out from Plymouth at 7am and planned on starting to walk around 9am, however we hadn’t factored in the roadworks on the A30 after the Truro turnoff at Carland Cross, we lost around an hour in traffic on a Wednesday morning! We arrived at Little Trethewey, and a little car park by a memorial and bottle bank at 9.45am and hastily hoisted our rucksacks and headed off down the lane towards Porthcurno. The walk to St Just is stunning, we had overcast weather for the day, but the coastline is studded with rocky outcrops, or tors in theory as the whole of this part from Penzance across to St Ives and out to Land’s End is granite, the same as Dartmoor. It shows in the towering stacks which are everywhere, just everywhere. You couldn’t possibly name every one of them, as is done on Dartmoor as there are just hundreds. It is truly a gorgeous landscape, and in sunshine it must be magical. We loved every step, that is until Land’s End itself, my GPS marked it as a “Theme park”, and I can’t argue with that. We took a photo and scooted on towards Sennan Cove. The only blemish on the walk was the drizzle at Sennen Cove, which is said to be a stunning place, it looks nice but isn’t the most beautiful beach in England by a long way. So we carried on towards Cape Cornwall and our bed in St Just, as we rested there the cloud cleared to unveil the Isles of Scilly and a lovely sunset. It was a fantastic day of walking and one that will live long in our memories with so many highlights.

Start – Little Trethewey

Route – Porthcurno – South West Coastal Path – Minack Theatre – Porthgwarra – Gwennap Head – Porth Loe – Nanjizal – Trevilley Cliff – Land’s End – Sennen Cove – Trevedra Cliff – Aire Point – Hermon Hill – Bosorne – St Just

Distance – 12.5 miles    Start time – 9.50am   Time taken – 8hrs Highest Point – St Just 120metres

Weather – Cloudy, warm, drizzle at Sennon Cove, sunshine and sunset in St Just