Friday, July 14, 2023

It’s absolutely chucking it down when we wake up this morning. Steve had warned us yesterday that it was supposed to rain today, and raining it is. I check the website for St. Michael’s Mount, which we’d really like to visit while we’re here, but they say they’re closed today due to the weather forecast and the choppy seas. I’m not terribly fussed about it. This place is so cozy, and it’s no pain at all to have a large pot of French press while I write and watch the rain fall in the garden. I get on instagram. I text Andy. It’s his birthday today, nearly over already in New Zealand. Happy birthday, Andy! He responds saying he’d rather be spending the day hiking with us. It’s still so wild that the PCT is already so far in the past. 

The rain eventually lets up a bit, transforming into a mist rather than a downpour, and we leave Dormouse in search of food. We wind up at the deli again, me in a semi-conscious and highly food-motivated state. Obviously, because this is Cornwall, I order an enormous Cornish pasty. Mom gets a sausage roll. We order it takeout and go to sit on a bench we saw last night facing the water. As we sit there nomming, several people pass walking their dogs. One woman looks at us and smiles. “Nothing like a pasty in a gale!” Another couple have to try very hard to get their dogs to keep moving once they smell our lunch. “No, that’s not your pasty.” Same energy, friendos. But this pasty is mine. I devour it. This is living. I wash it down with salt and vinegar crisps and a rose-flavored soda. Hi, yes, I’d like to formally report that if you need me, this is where I will be.

After lunch we stay there for a while soaking in the waves. We’re mesmerized. The sea, now at high tide, is very choppy today, crashing with a vengeance against the rocks, totally covering the rock pool we walked along last night. It’s easy to see why the Mount is closed today. It’s on the verge of scary. It’s cloudy, but still kind of bright, so I have to put my sunglasses on. Still, it’s relaxing in a trancelike way. “I could sit here forever,” I say, and mom nods in agreement. 

We don’t sit there forever, though; there are cute shops in Mousehole that need perusing. Peruse we do, though we don’t buy anything yet. We stop for ice cream while we walk, and then I decide that since it’s stopped raining for the time being and the weather is really unpredictable, I’m going to do my little coastal walk I’ve been planning on today rather than tomorrow. So we return to the Dormouse and I change clothes, and we each set out. Mom’s going to walk east towards Newlyn, and I’m gong to walk west along the South West Coast Path towards Lamorna Cove and the Tater Du lighthouse. We set out on our respective adventures, planning to meet back up here before dinner at the pub.

The trail first goes sharply up a hill that rises quickly out of town. Before long, I can turn around and see all of Mousehole and its harbor. The hedges are a riot of flowers and grasses on either side of the rapidly narrowing lane. Then the trail turns left, leaving the road, and enters a gravel track that soon becomes a wooded path. I pass a few other hikers coming the other way. Then I remember with a feeling of “duh” that I had a friend message me on Instagram saying that she’d just been to Mousehole and did a walk where she had to wear long pants and long sleeves because of all of the nettles. I look down at my very exposed legs—I can’t stand hiking in long pants and put my hiking skirt on by default—and brace myself for the sting. 

It’s not really just nettles, though, it’s overgrown ferns, blackberry bushes, and other varieties of pokey thing, often combined with mud, rocks, or steps with rebar that you can’t see. Every once in a while the trail will enter a wooded area and there will be a break in the overgrowth, or a viewpoint with a rock where you can step out of it for a minute, but for a while, it’s really just blindly walking through plants and hoping for the best.

After a lovely view out to see and of some waves crashing on rocks below, the trail enters the Kemyel Crease, a small woodland that was purchased in 1974 by the National Trust and is today a preserve. There are remnants from terrace farming in the form of trees that were used as shelter for the bulbs, and later potatoes, that farmers planted here. It’s a very distinctive little area since everything else around it is open, grassy, and closer to the ground, and it’s a really nice little reprieve from the absolutely disgusting thicket of mud, rocks, and pokey plants I just went through. When I get into the merciful cover of the trees I throw my pack down in frustration and curse England out loud, looking at my very expensive rain jacket that now has a tiny hole in the sleeve. I’m really just upset with myself, though; I should have accepted my fate and taken the scratches on my arm.

Gathering myself for a moment, I look at the time and realize that this bushwhacking fiasco has really affected my pace. I probably will not make it all the way to the lighthouse and be back in time for dinner. That’s fine. I’ll just see what time it is when I get to Lamorna Cove, the next little hamlet. 

The next section does involve some overgrowth, but none of it holds a candle to the really bad muddy bit I just went through. The plants start to get smaller, and I can see way out into the ocean. There are more rocks, and then what I’d probably more accurately call cliffs, and massive white waves crashing against them, spraying into the air. I stand there in awe, watching the water gather into wave after wave, then come hurtling towards the shore and CRASH! Every time a good one rolls by, I can’t help but let out a cheer of “woo!” The energy propels me up the next hill, and at the top, I can see the Tater Du lighthouse far in the distance, and the break in the cliffs that leads to the little town of Lamorna Cove. The waves are thundering and the wind is pushing me around and I am just there, transfixed, a little moving bundle of energy on this huge, fathomless shore. 

I continue down the trail along the cliff’s edge, entering some overgrown bits again, then strolling down the open hill as it leads to the town. Two guys pass me and ask how far it is to Mousehole and what the trail is like. I say two miles, which is a little off because a sign I see five minutes later says 2.5, and I say honestly that a lot of it is overgrown, but the views are beautiful. 

It seems like this part of Lamorna isn’t really the town; there are a couple of cottages and a little shop that closed at 4. But there is a very nice bench, and since I’ve decided that I won’t make it to the lighthouse, I have some time to spare and have a seat. I then walk up to the wall at the edge of the land and watch more waves break against it, then find another little hidden bench up a hill a bit and take in the view. I realize also that there are snails all around me, chomping on plants. Once I see one, I see a bunch of them. Then I notice that my foot is very close to one. Oh no! I don’t want to be responsible for snail death, and it’s getting close to dinner time, so I walk back the way I came on the path. 

The sun is out now, properly. It’s shining on the rocks and the water and the sky is actually blue. My mood is light and electric as I climb back towards that point with the really good view of the lighthouse. I plant myself there for a minute. I don’t want to move.

Layers of waves crashing, crashing on the rocks. One after another, white spray thrown into the air. Metaphors enter my mind, of being strong like the shore and the rocks that weather the adversity of water, but I can’t see any adversity here, only joy. Joy, spraying up in the form of saltwater caught in the surprising sunlight that leaps against coastline and sends gulls swaying on the swells. I stand with my arms out to the wind that pushes against me and I feel purified. Salted, as Raynor Winn might put it. And I only hiked five miles along this path. What would 630 do to you? I’m crying as I stand here. Salt spray and tears mingle on my skin. How awesome this world is. Ancient, overgrown, nettly world, I love you, and I love what you can do to a person, and I love how much you can give, and take away, and give back something greater over and over again. 

The overgrowth doesn’t seem as bad on the way back, but nothing seems as bad once you’ve gone through it already. The cliff views slowly fade, I enter and pass through the Kemyel Crease, survive that really rocky muddy bit without losing my balance completely, and soon, the trail dumps me back out onto the road again and I’m walking downhill towards Mousehole, the water of the harbor swaying and shimmering in the light.

The Ship Inn, where we have dinner reservations, is packed when we arrive. We eventually work out where our table is, order, and marvel at the absolutely ridiculous coziness of this place. The ceiling is low and sloping, wide dark beams punctuated by white. The wooden walls are covered in paintings and photographs, none of them perfectly straight. There are lamps that cast golden light, and a band is getting ready to play. Picture a country pub in rural coastal England in your head, and the Ship Inn is what your imagination would naturally come up with.

I order fish and chips and a wheat ale that the bartender recommended to me, devour every bit, lingering especially on the mushy peas. (This is definitely a food blog now.) I follow this up with a cider called Rattler, only because Mash said I had to try some because it tastes like “misspent youth.” I can kind of see it. It’s simultaneously too sweet and too dry for me, but it’s Cornish, and I’m in Cornwall, and I never want to stop being in Cornwall, so I drain it and then am suddenly very giggly and very obsessed with this pub and England and this coast and Mousehole and I never want to leave.

Dormouse seems especially cute and cozy tonight. We’ve figured out that there’s an electric fireplace, so that goes on, and I fall asleep, happy, still burning with nettle stings and the aftertaste of cider.