St. Ives
Narrow streets on a tight headland between beach and port.
Visited the the amazing Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Gallery:
via Penzance (sorry, no photos)
The Scilly Isles (Hugh Town)
Oh, my goodness. What a day!
Two hours and forty-five minutes of horribleness. Actually, the first half hour the Scillonian ferry to the Scilly Isles was kind of cool. I got my happy-snaps on deck, then found a spot in the forward café lounge on the third floor where I could see the horizon and enjoy a coffee.
This bliss lasted about twenty minutes – just long enough to pass Saint Michael’s Mount, get out of Mount Bay, and pass into open seas. I should have got a clue from the gusty drizzle that danced around me on the half hour walk from the Glencree B&B. But I guess my natural optimism was winning at that point – I’d been judging success of my day from the fact that I’d woken in time to get showered, breakfasted, packed, and out the door by 5.45. I know – a miracle!
Not long after I’d imbibed a watery but hot (and therefore appreciated) flat white, the waves started. I’m not talking waves you watch out the window creating a little white-water wake. I’m talking vertical waves that fill the windows and tip the ship till all you see is sky, and then the deep blue ocean, and then you hear the boom and feel the shudder and your gut falls through the floor seconds before it’s asked to rise to the heavens again.
Initially, I was feeling pretty smug. The night before, I’d asked my host at Glencree (a shout out to Andrew from Melbourne) for some sea-sickness pills and he’d come through for me. I was ready, you see, for some rolling seas. But…yes there’s a but…those little pills didn’t do much of anything against this angry Atlantic.
I held on. I really did. I watched the roiling horizon. I took it on the chin when the steel shipping container on the front deck came loose on a big wave and slammed into the front windows (two meters from my ‘safe’ location)(the photos below are taken after we’d made land at Hugh Town and I could finally stand on my feet).
I even bore it well when a lady a few tables over from me started heaving.
Yep. I was feeling pretty proud of myself.
That is, till the boat shifted direction ever so slightly and went up the wave incline at a bit of an angle and slammed back down in a way that meant my brain just couldn’t convince my stomach to hang on any more. I won’t gross you out with the details. I do have to say, though, that the staff on the Scillonian are quite amazing. When I answered in the affirmative to the question ‘would you like a sick bag, just in case?’, and they came back with a stack of six bags (one open in the ‘ready’ position) and rolls of paper towel, I knew I was in good hands. When they took one bag away and handed me another expertly opened fresh bag, I was truly appreciative. Making everything worse was the sedative effects of the sea-sickness pills. I just could not keep my eyes open. But every time my eyes drooped down off the horizon the heaves would come back.
There came a time, though, when empty truly meant empty. I gave up on the horizon, and slept. And when I opened my eyes again the seas were calmer and in the near distance were blue skies and the Scilly Isles.
The Eastern Isles, St. Martins, Tresco, then St. Mary’s – all gorgeous, solid-looking, lumps of land. Beyond Tresco would be Samson and Bryher, and beyond St. Mary’s would be Annet, St. Agnes, Gugh, and, finally, the Western Rocks.
I celebrated by standing. Don’t knock it. Standing was an impossibility an hour previously. Then I tried walking. When that worked I really got excited. Small joys 🙂
Shaking off the high-seas adventure, I stepped onto the quay at Hugh Town and saw my hotel (Tregarthans Hotel) looking beautifully white-washed and solid-of-stone, just a couple minutes’ walk up the hill. Finally!
The reception staff happily took the beast for safe storage, gave me a few tips on walks around the island, and off I went.
This trip to the Scilly Isles is technically a diversion from the coast path mission that I’ve been on, but on St Mary’s there’s plenty of coast and there are many a path, so I’m counting the trip as a collective Day 19. I went through the town, marvelled at the gigs on display along the Strand (I discovered after arriving that the Pilot Gig World Championships had been on this past weekend), and dodged the crowds of rowers all hell-bent on celebrating their successes and drowning their losses.
I continued around the coast path in a clockwise direction (bucking the swcp direction – I know, I’m such a rebel), waving goodbye to the Scillonian as it returned to Penzance, I checked out the coast guard station and white-sanded Porthmellon beach, where the marines had landed four amphibious craft to stay in while they took part in the gig championships, then came across a beautiful yacht that had come loose from its’ mooring in Hugh Town bay and run aground the night before. I know nothing about boats, but this looked like a serious job for an insurance company. I’ve since come to discover that the Scilly Isles is a hot-bed of ship-wrecks (but that’s a story for tomorrow).
I continued on to Juliet’s Garden – location of a delicious crab sandwich lunch, with a view…
…then further around the coast to the ancient village and burial chamber at Helangy Down. These ancient sites always get my imagination going, and I wonder how they arrived at the decision to set up homes in that location for generation upon generation. Apparently, the people of Hugh Town pillaged the village’s stones to use when building the quay, but there’s enough left to see the outline of the houses in the village, and the burial chamber is complete. These days the site is overshadowed by an enormous BBC tower. I guess they had to put it somewhere, but there’s a marked discord between the two.
Further on got to chatting with a local couple who helped me out with reading the island map (nature trails and roads seem to be interchangeable according to Scillonians) and getting my bearings. An important stop at the islands’ Kaffehaus was in order and I didn’t want to miss it. Did I tell you I lost my compass back on day 17? This was, I think, the first time I’d wished for it again, although I can probably mostly blame the pretty, but useless, map. When neither roads, nor radio towers, nor cows are where they’re supposed to be, then you know there’s something wrong with the map.
Anyway, to cut a long blog entry short, I roamed around on the west side of St. Mary’s for a fair few hours before heading back to the hotel to check out my fancy digs for the night. Going to Scilly was definitely a treat, and it warranted spending a fair bit of time in the hotel to do the price justice. I collected the beast from reception and found my room had both a view and a bath to wallow in.
Many bubbles later, and with still an hour of daylight to utilize, I dressed and headed up the hill behind the hotel to the garrison. I didn’t have time, or light, to walk around the whole headland, but it was cool to check out the star castle on the peak of the hill and watch the sun set, once again, over the Atlantic.
The next day, I awoke to gorgeous blue skies and calm seas – the perfect day for an explore and a calm, early-afternoon return Scillonian voyage to Penzance. But, it wasn’t to go as planned.
The first hint I got that all was not well was when the hotel receptionist asked me which flight I was on. He then hmmmed when I said I was due to return by boat.
The long and the short of it is that the ferry had not left Penzance in the morning, as scheduled, and may not be coming at all. This meant a potential extra night stay on Scilly – which doesn’t sound terrible, except I didn’t want to shell out silly (ha ha) money to stay again, and I couldn’t go exploring when I didn’t know what would be happening. The best advice I could get was they’d know more at noon. At noon, the advice was they’d know more at three. Frustrating initially, until I looked out at the gorgeous day and inspected my new map (replacing the dodgy one), and realised that I could break it up into two walking circuits (a figure-eight) and actually see quite a lot of the island with a stop back in Hugh Town to get the latest news.
First I went through town and north-east to see the rock formations (both natural and human-made) at Peninnis Head…
Returning to Hugh Town, I was told they’d know in another couple of hours, so I went west to explore and circumnavigated the beautiful headland known as The Garrison…
I’m so glad I managed to do this walk. It was fascinating and beautiful. Clear skies meant amazing views across to St. Agnes (the least developed of the main islands). Along the way I met a retired gentleman who walked his dog four times daily around the Garrison. He’d lived on St. Mary’s for forty years, but still wasn’t considered a local – and was proud of that fact because, in his opinion, Scillonians are “lazy”. He’d come to the islands with a passion for scuba diving, staying to search the multitude of shipwrecks where he and his son had found thirty-odd gold coins from the 17th Century. These are apparently worth over 1000 pounds each, so, as he put it, he’s sitting on a golden nest egg with plans for many adventures to come.
Eventually news came that the Scillonian had left Penzance and would depart Hugh Town some three and a half hours later than intended. I reattached the beast to my back and made my way to the dock in time to enjoy a fabulous Scilly sausage roll (it really was good), got attacked by an irish wolf hound who was also inclined to appreciate sausage rolls, then watched while the dock hands loaded a half dozen gigs into the bowels of the vessel.
Seas were reputably calm, but I’d learned my lesson, so once on board I descended to the lowest possible deck and cornered a sleeper bench where I could lie down and digest with as little disturbance from the waves as possible.
Arriving in Penzance just as darkness truly fell, a taxi ride took me to my next stop – Marazion – for my one final day on the SWCP.
[Surge stats: 49.59 km, 274 floors, 72010 steps]
PenLoper 