Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Category: Personal

A rest day and 14 days on The South West Coast Path

Light Breakfast at Cornerways after my evening with owner Tim
Light Breakfast at Cornerways after my evening with owner Tim

Today I’m taking a rest day in the pleasant town of St Ives, enjoying the hospitality of the owner of Cornerways, Tim after first rescuing him from paying a fortune for a .mobi url!!

After our little drinks session last night I couldn’t face a mega breakfast (tomorrow will be different)  so today it was just haddock & mushrooms with the most stunning fresh fruit salad of the trip 🙂

We went for a jaunt in his little sports car over to Penzance to do his fresh fruit & flower shopping and to see where I will be walking in the next few days & a jar at the Gurnard’s Head.

As you can see from my spreadsheet I’ve now covered over 232 miles of the 630 in 14 days. Thats a daily average of nearly 17 miles 🙂 implying that it should be about 37 days to do the walk. so finishing about the 20th May.

The weather has been pretty poor although not as bad as Sally has been reporting on the East Coast . I’ve got rained on heavily once a couple of days ago (I bought a flourescent yellow rucksac cover today just in case, as the black dry bag has loads of micro perforations in it – spotted by sticking my head in the empty bag and pointing it at a bright light.

Anyway must go now as Tim and I have just returned from another bender 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cracking onto Crackington Haven only 495 miles to go.

495 miles to go on The South West Coast Path.

Firstly many thanks to all the new visitors that came from this tweet:

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/swcoastpath/status/192577773414518785″]

and also many thanks to Betty & Chris for the lovely email sent after I met them in the woods atop Clovelly

Today started of very miserable & wet (both me & and the weather 🙂 can’t say I enjoyed Bude at all!  Plaice & chips last night was ugh and a garret bedroom with no room to stand up in the shower, might be OK if you are 4′ but not for me 🙁 However, things started to improve at breakfast, the kippers & poached egg were excellent.

The day was once again amazingly windy especially at the 500/130 bench on top of  Dizzard Point (wonder if it got his name from making folks dizzy)  where I nearly was blown over! Thank goodness for my sticks. The scenery is totally stunning.

I tried to find the landing point for TAT-14 our umbilical cord to the rest of the world  in Widemouth bay but it is not to be found anywhere not even any notices warning about submerged cables.

The section as always, has many steep coombs. Here is the profile:

Bude-to-Crackinton-HavenI dropped down into Crackinton Haven and decided I had heard enough wind for the day so I settled for a pint and room at The Coombe Martin Inn, room 6 has fab views, to watch the sunset, over the bay and it’s own terrace. Real luxury compared to last night. Food is excellent too. To top it all I just missed the last torrential downpor of the day 🙂

As usual the stats are in my google docs and photos on google+ and the actual trail walked is over on Everytrail:

South West Coast Path – Bude to Crackington Haven at EveryTrail

 

 

Leave only footprints

footprints in the sand

footprints in the sandOne of my mottoes when travelling has been:

Leave only footprints
Take only memories 

So whilst walking across Woolacombe beach as part of my South West Coast Path trip I couldn’t resist taking the above photo.

In fact one of my ambitions in 2000 was to walk around the coast of the UK as far as possible in barefeet and carrying a coracle for the estuaries. 🙂

I started (without a coracle) by walking from Scarborough to Redcar in 2000 followed by Kings Lynn to Cromer at various times since.

I’m now on the South West Coast Path which will add another few miles to the total…

 

Geoff’s Weather Station

Sally bought me a Oregon WMR88 weather station with anemometer, wind direction, outside temperature and rainfall gauges. I’ve finally have it working with the Asus Eee running XP Pro in its 8GB of memory and uploading the data through my WiFi to Wunderground. Giving the lovely chart above.

Next job is to mount the anemometer onto the TV aerial above the house to minimize ground effects. That can wait for the warmer weather though.