SWCP Day 46 – 9 Oct 2018

Polruan – Looe

I’m no scaredy cat, but getting back on that bus to Polruan after a rushed breakfast had my stomach rolling.

I now know (with the benefit of hindsight) that I was coming down with the lurgy, but at the time all my disgruntlement was focused on that crazy driver, and my eyes were diligently focused on the horizon. Forty minutes later I tumbled off the bus amongst a dozen other green-at-the-edges passengers (including three dogs) and sucked in the fresh Polruan air. Survived!

Polruan to Looe is just under 20 km, but, due to the difficulty rating, the swcp Association advises you do it over two days, with a stop in Polperro just after the halfway point. Couldn’t be that hard though, could it? I was Beast-free and the day was spectacularly fresh and clear. Just one foot in front of the other, right? Absolutely. Yes. Definitely.

I wasn’t wrong, as such, but boy was it a long day!

After the too-steep-to-get-my-heels-down climb up the lanes of Polruan, I took a quick break and geared up for the rest, but nothing could really prepare me for the roller-coaster ride up and down and up and down and…you get the picture…for miles…

…good thing it was such a beautiful day.

Sometimes I had company…

…but for the most part it was just me rocking along the undulating cliffs, climbing down and up again whenever there was a spring, of which there were many hidden under the bracken and gorse.

Five hours of that was hard going, and I couldn’t tell if the overwhelming heat I felt was a result of the sun and the effort, or of a fever too. I was sucking down water at an unprecedented rate, and the horizon swum around weirdly.

Knowing the only way is forward has a beautiful simplicity that breaks through all those concerns. One foot after the other. Pressing on. This is the true lesson of the path. Everyone walks their own path, but the commonality is persistence. There’s nothing remotely complicated about it. I don’t want to quote Nike, but their slogan pretty much says it all.

Eventually the path rounds Chapel Cliff and Polperro harbour is just suddenly there, in all its quaint glory.

I stopped briefly to fill up my water bottles and for icecream, because it was entirely necessary, but fairly promptly got on my way.

According to the swcp guide, I still had three hours walking to do, and not much more daylight in which to accomplish it, but the path prooved entirely doable. After the arduous stretch from Polruan to Polperro, the stretch on to Looe was a surprising breeze. Thank goodness!