“Keep the water to your right and the land to your left” – Mike (helpfully explaining how to find Porthleven.)

After we visited the Mount, a ride had been arranged to take us to our starting point, a few miles away, for our first day on the SW Coast Path. Technically we could have left from the hotel, but we’d planned our first few days to have shorter mileage to ease into the walking..

Just before we were picked up, we checked with the hotel registration desk one more time and surprise! they’d found the packet.  Turns out it had somehow gotten on the floor near the registration desk (a small wooden stand) and kicked? completely under the stand -like sent to live with dust bunnies.  I don’t know how they found it under there, but they did.  I give the hotel and staff a lot of credit.  They were actually very kind and as helpful as they could be about our situation.

Our driver dropped us off in a small parking lot and pointed down this path and said… “Go that way!”  As it turns out -our starting point was Prussia Cove!  That’s where the most infamous smuggler of the SW Coast operated.  

There’s a mindset that goes with embarking an active trip like this.  The intent with which you start contributes quite a bit to how the trip unfolds.  We didn’t arrive thinking that we “had” to walk it all; I think it was more like -we’ll take it day by day.  And we did.

We thought we were ready to walk.  At home, 7 miles wouldn’t be much of a challenge for us -but then again, Florida is pretty flat!  The day was challenging to say the least.  We definitely got a bit of a reality check about what was in store for us in the coming days.

This is the famous Prussia Cove… (tide out).   I didn’t even realize that I’d gotten a picture of the cove until much later when I was doing a bit of research about the smuggling tradition in Cornwall.

As the path took us a bit inland, I thought this was an interesting building There wasn’t a sign of any kind on it, but my research says it was built around 1911 and is now called “The Lodge”.  I think it might be used as an air B&B these days.

There are more than 150 beaches along the Cornwall coast, with varying accessibility.  The more accessible ones are very popular for public use.  The services along the way varied, but there was usually at least a concession stand and restrooms available.

Looking back at Praa Sands.

This is the Coast Path’s directional marker.  They were often not there when we needed them! You could be in the middle of nowhere, following the only thing that resembled a trail…and one would pop up.  Or, you could be walking along and suddenly see the path fork in 2-3 different directions and no helpful directional marker.  We had to be somewhat intuitive about staying on track.  The map book we had was not done in a small enough scale to provide guidance at those spots where guidance might have been helpful.  Mike’s words of wisdom (quoted at the beginning) served us well.

In the 1700’s and into the 1800’s, mining for tin & copper was a big industry in Cornwall.  Mining for those metals in this region historically goes back as far as 2300 B.C.  There are still some crumbling buildings related to mining along the coast.  This one was called Wheal Prosper.  “Wheal” was the word for “mine”.  I imagine today we’d say it was the Prosper Mine.  If you’re a fan of Poldark, which was set in Cornwall, mining was a large part of the story line..

There are various walls and gates along the SW Coast Path.  The general term for the way over a wall is “stile”.  When I got to this one, it took me a minute to figure out how to cross it.

We had to step up to the top, walk to the right, then climb down the other side. The other side (shown below) had large rocks sticking out of the wall to use as steps on the way down.

This is what’s left of Wheal Trevawas.  It is now cared for by the National Trust, which is a conservation charity dedicated to preserving historic places.

At one point, we had a long descent down into a valley and then had to go back up to the top of the cliffs. You can see the trail for a good part of the route we took. What isn’t in the picture is the steep downhill part -and far end of the climb back up. (But you can see a lot of the path if you zoom in on this photo).

It was at this place (above) that I was walking ahead of Mike and going down some steps that were not the standard height -so I was going slowly.  I was surprised when, rather abruptly, “Mike” pushed past me and then started moving down the stairs and onward twice as fast as we’d been moving -and doing it on a very tough section.  This surprised me because he had been being extremely careful so far to make sure he didn’t trip on something and fall off a cliff!  

Not wanting to be left behind, I put it into gear to try to keep up with him!  I didn’t know why he was moving that fast.  I wondered if he was just annoyed about the section of trail and wanted it over with… Or, maybe I’d been moving too slow on the stairs and he wanted to go at his own pace?  And when I mention stairs in this story – be sure that they were never standard, sure-footed steps.  They were “stair-like” -but no two the same height and often were made by putting a piece of wood against the slope and hammering iron rods to hold it in place at random heights.

I was never quite close enough to him to get his attention until we were reaching the last section of stairs before getting to the top.  I was huffing and puffing and had had just about enough of that pace, so I yelled…”Honey, WAIT!  I can’t go this fast!!!!” And he stopped at the top and waited.  On any climb “stairs” or not, it is wise to keep your eyes on where your feet are going.  So that’s what I was doing as I finished the last of the stairs.  As I arrived at the top, I looked at him in surprise and said…. “You’re not my husband!!!” 

Oh man, that guy laughed so hard. But he was so nice to wait for me!  Ha ha.  I turned around and saw that my “Mike” was actually just a short distance behind me.  I kindly thanked the guy for waiting even though he wasn’t my husband and apologized for the fact that I called him “honey”.   When Mike got there we had a quick chat with “not Mike” about where we all were from, etc.  Nice man.  After he moved along, Mike said… I knew you thought that that guy was me!  The guy had a similar backpack, was tall and also had a darker shirt on like Mike…and I never looked any closer.  It never occurred to me that someone moving faster had caught up to us from behind…and passed us (without a word) so that he could continue at his faster pace .

Toward the end of our day, we walked through a stretch of the Path that was overgrown on both sides with a narrow dirt trail to follow.  In places, the trail was more like a trench that was barely big enough for Mike’s boot to fit in.  He had to pay a lot of attention to where he was stepping.  The growth was so tall that neither of us could see anything but the path in front of us.

We finally popped out of the “bramble” and got our first glimpse of our “home” for the night -Porthleven.  There is a large harbor there.  We came in on the side where I took this picture…but had to walk around to the other side of the harbor for our hotel.  

We were booked into a very old hotel called the Old Harbor Inn.  Emphasis on “old”.

Our room wasn’t level..but we had a “bedroom” and also a sitting room that looked like a small living room -TV, desk, couch, chairs…. Comfy!

There was a pub/restaurant on the ground floor, so we ate our dinner there.  We made an early night of it so that we could be ready for our first full day of walking.  Our suitcases had to be left at the reception desk of our hotels no later than 9:00 A.M every day -or they wouldn’t be waiting for us at our next hotel.

Categories: England -SW Coast Path 2025, Prussia Cove to Porthleven -7 Miles