Gasp!!! This is why the sensible time to do the SWCP is the summer! The weather has turned.

I wake up in my tent on the Clovelly Estate after howling gales all night. Check my weather app, DarkSkies, and it’s forecast rain starting very soon. So fast as possible (I’m getting good at allthis), a scramble to get my still dry tent and gear packed up and get moving.

Signs appear about venemous adders along this part of the path, that they are a protected species and I need to be extra special nice to them if I encounter one. I just hope the are similar signs in Adderish, saying long distance walkers are a rare species and not to bite them…

The scenery is spectacular along this part of the coast. You definitely feel you are getting further away from civilisation. Eventually I get to Hartland Point. It is wet wet wet and howling winds from all four compass points. Words just not enough!

There are some bullocks to navigate standing determinedly in my path (memories of a similar encounter in Nepal means I am super wary).

I pass the cottage where “The Night Manager” was filmed. All locked up or I would dive in from the wind. In sight is the Hartland Quays Hotel where I am hunkering down to ride out the weather for a couple of days. No chance staying in the tent until weather settles.

I bump into Josh again in the Hartland Quays restaurant. His family have come up from Padstow to pick him up for a quick break back home, whilst the weather sorts itself out. We exchange numbers, possible path cross in the coming days and a shared wild camp if we do.

Hunkered down…

This is also where ‘Rebecca’ (2020) with Lily James was filmed. The boat the first Mrs De Winter died in still remains. I’m staying in the room, bay window at top (minus all n the props).