Saturday 28 November 2015

Day 22 Boscarne to St Ives

St Newlyns East

 I popped the last of my super-pills and was away by 7.45am in a brief lull between showers and took a back road to Rosenannon, then St Columb Major where I grabbed some sandwiches. I took the road through White Cross and into St Newlyn East,  a pleasant enough village but absolutely dominated by 100 metre high turbines (more than twice the height of the original ones). Nice one Scottish Power and local councillors. And what have you done with St Newlyn West? I dropped into the village shop which was busy, and had a cup of tea, chocolate, bananas and a pain au chocolat as good as any in France. I was less impressed with the headlines of the local paper: BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES FOR STORM CLODAGH.
Arsenic Mill, Cornish Coast-to-Coast






Cornish Coast-to-Coast
Then it was onto the NCN32 into Zelah, and down the east bank of the River Allen and into Truro where I took refuge in a Costa as a heavy shower went through. I headed for the Cornish Coast-to-Coast Trail along the very undulating NCN3, and joined the trail at Bissoe, where the friendly bike shop staff told me to take the higher of the two paths to stay out of the mud. Thanks chaps! The trail mainly followed old tramlines and railways; surely they must be flat(ish). I don't think Cornwall does flat. There were lots of spoil tips, chimneys and old mine buildings, and the area has World Heritage Status for its industrial past. Many of the pale white slag heaps are still vegetation-free after 80 years due to the toxic arsenic.
Wacky place names were now back in vogue: Playing Place, Come-to-Good,  Cripplesease, Splattenridden, Goon Gumpas and Wheal Busy. There were a lot of wheals around and I assumed it meant mine; in fact it's Cornish for 'place of work.'
Cornish Coast-to-Coast
 The rain held off for most of the trail, but the wind really hit me as I approached Portreath on the bike/pedestrian pavement. Storm Clodagh was ahead of schedule!
Portreath
I took the coastal B road, and once up on the moors I felt the full force of the wind, the strongest yet of the trip. The gusts would stop me, and during the lulls I wasn't doing much more than walking pace. St Ives was starting to look very distant. There was a steep downhill to St Gwythian, but with the wind roaring up the slope to meet me I could barely reach 20kph. It was soul-destroying.  By the time I reached Hale it was dark, and I took the St Ives turning which put me onto a horrendous large busy roundabout where I brought both lanes to a halt as the drivers let me scuttle to safety.  I headed along a hard shoulder for half a k, then turned back as this wasn't where I wanted to be.  I dismounted and led Horse around the roundabout of death, back to the B road and into Hale and back on track. There was a bit of off road around the estuary, then into Lelant where I did a wee back road diversion to avoid the A road, and into St Ives at 6pm. I went straight into the nearest pub and had a couple of celebratory pints.
After a couple of no's at B&B's (not for one night sorry) I booked into the Sloop Inn, and had a great night in the bar with good food, company and beer. Just over 30k's to go, into the teeth of Storm Clodagh.

Day stats 95km   1412 Metres of ascent
Off road 14km 
A road 4km 
B road  19km 
Unclassifed road 58km


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