Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Category: The South west Coast Path

South West Coast Path – Pendeen to Porthcurno

Lands End sign

Geoff at Lands EndA much better walking day today. Light winds and only the threat of rain, in fact the sun popped out at various intervals.

The walk started in the industrial wastelands around Pendeen and the Geevor Tin mine which had me thinking how does The National Trust handle highly toxic & radioactive industrial waste 🙂  I met a guy who said apparently the old Uranium waste reacts with the sea air to make pretty colour stones. Just remember to bring your geiger counter.

I met up with Paul who is taking a week out to walk around this section of the path. He is using Penzance as a base and taking the bus out each day, thus only travelling with a day bag. Guess this will only work for certain sections etc.

The walk itself had quite a few hardish sections some I thought as hard as yesterday. Walking with Paul kept my times down to The Guides. So a bit steadier than yesterday.

Gramophone theatre companyIt was good fun walking upto Lands End, totally amazing the number of people setting off to John O’Groats on their bikes. My sister did it 20 years ago. My favourites were the three young lassies from The Gramophone Theatre Company in Nottingham who were trying to get there by using as many modes of transport as possible. We met them cycling. I hope they make it but without maps etc it could be a challenge 🙂

The other fun guy was Kevin the pedalling plumber on his trike with it’s modified luggage carrier using 15mm copper pipe 🙂Plumber Kevin and trike

We made it to Porthcurno via the Minack Theatre where Sally and I are going in September for The Minack Proms. Mike of Luggage Transfers had me booked into the rather deluxe apartment at The Wearhouse, such luxury!

Oh! I think I know where Adam Ant got his name from, take a pee here 🙂

The pictures are here, statistics here and Everytrail.
South West Coast Path – Pendeen to Porthcurno at EveryTrail

South West Coast path – St Ives to Pendeen

Old tin mine rising in the mist

Carbis Bay DentalI really cannot thank Tim of Cornerways enough for getting his dentist to see me so quickly (the ones I phoned wanted 4 weeks notice), he not only took me there but had to wait whilst I had an X-ray and the tooth’s extraction (what an expensive tooth that has been, with capping root canal treatment & emergency visits).

The pain from that and the hang over from our meal out  and drinkathon at his local restaurant  Cafe Pasta last night made for a hazy farewell to St Ives, but I will be back with Sally for the final weekend of their festival. Yes I enjoyed it that much 🙂

So just after midday I started the walk to Pendeen where Mike of Luggage Transfers had booked me into The North Inn (and yes, you cynics, I’m still carrying my bag!!

Muddy pathIn The Guide it shows the 13.9 miles as a severe 7 hour walk! so a midday start didn’t look to promising, especially after the heavy rain. Boulder fieldWell, I didn’t find it to bad at all, in the middle there are some granite rocks etc in the way and at the end it does get very marshy in places and indeed there are no cafes etc.

However, I pushed on with my tooth pain getting worse as it thawed out from the injections and the dire warnings from the dentist preventing me from drinking & eating. I completed the section in 5 hours of walking and 1 hour of stops for twittering, putting waterproofs on/off/on and eating mint cake 🙂 I would imagine on a fine day it would be an excellent walk.

I loved these notices from a farmer with a sense of humour:

Clever sheep

notice for a dog

As usual the stats are here the pictures aren’t up yet as I’m on a tethered computer and I’m not sure what Mr T-Mobile counts as ‘reasonable use’ Pictures now up here. Everytrail is here:
The South West Coast Path – St Ives to Pendeen at EveryTrail

Local weatherOh and here is the depressing weather forecast for next week:

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 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How long should a pair of hiking boots last?

I bought my latest pair of Scarpa Terra GTX boots, from Open Air in Cambridge, UK on the 7th April 2012 for over £120 (the price has rocketed recently since they moved production back to Italy from Romania) , in preparation for walking the whole of The South West Coast Path which is just over 1000km or 630 miles. Here are snapshots of the boot over the past 14 days:-

Scarpa Boot after two weeksThe first image is with zero steps, centre image after 279,604 steps (127 miles) and the right hand image after  533,415 steps (243 miles)

As you can see the heel is getting worn out very quickly , now down to the core material with the toe rapidly catching up. The terrain is not particularly harsh mainly grass / mud /sand /tarmac but no granite limestone etc.

So will they last the 630 miles? It would be interesting to hear what Scarpa have to say about their boot life!  In fact the first pair only lasted 1 hour as there was a broken needle stuck in the leather 🙂 but Open Air replaced those straight away.

Update: 30 April 2012

The left boot leaked really badly today from somewhere at the front of the boot, thats 680,000 steps, 102 hours of walking, 307 miles. Pretty poor show