Before autumn, the north coast of Cornwall is the destination for a last glimpse of the summery seaside. Through undulating pastoral land, across headstreams of the meandering River Ottery, narrow lanes are overwhelmed in drab ferns, meadowsweet, hemp agrimony and seeding vegetation, all entwined in late honeysuckle.
The prehistoric hillfort of Warbstow Bury should give the first sight of the sea, but its panorama is part obscured by drizzling cloud. Like the flock of sward‑maintaining sheep, we huddle alongside one of the encircling banks, sheltering from wet gusts of wind. Adjacent turbines spin and generate power, and the distant ocean is a grey blur apart from gleams of light on the huge white dishes of Morwenstow’s satellite tracking station.
Nearby, around the parish’s sheltered graveyard with its mossy, lichen-encrusted headstones, ripe blackberries and scarlet rowans (this year’s ubiquitous and most prolific berry) mark the season, as does the rare sighting of four twittering swallows perched on overhead wires.
Towards the coast, hilltop trees lean inland and, beneath a clearing sky, the foaming waves of white horses race across the ever-nearer expanse of cobalt-coloured ocean. In Crackington Haven, at the mouth of a steep wooded valley, the tide is far out, the surf messy and rough, but visitors scatter across the shining sand. Lifeguards’ flags fly horizontal and, around the crowded beachside cafe, tamarisk billows and bends in the strong onshore wind.
Above jagged ribs of the wave‑cut platform and the contorted, folded slate of dark cliffs, the coastal path leads uphill through miniature thickets of flowering ivy, prickly blackthorn and brambles. From high up, near the precipitous headland of Pencannow Point, isolated cliff-land is covered in the purples, pinks and fiery gold of heather and gorse. Down‑coast, toward Tintagel, shadowy headlands jut into the sea. Eastwards, the churchyard of St Gennys, in its sheltered dip above the high cliffs, gives wide views up-coast beyond the greenery of Dizzard Wood and across Bude Bay, fringed with white and spectacularly blue until the next bout of cloud and rain.
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