“The first two miles are uphill… then the next couple of miles are uphill… but after that, the rest of the way is still pretty much uphill.” -Mike (the increasingly reluctant hiker)

We crossed the road in front of the hotel, and realized that we had a rocky, tricky, downhill trip to Mullion Cove below.  When I checked my photos for today, I was surprised I didn’t have any pictures of this, but I think I was too busy making sure I didn’t have a misstep that would result in me getting to the bottom of it the fast way.  

There were only a few buildings, storage sheds?  -maybe cottages?- at the bottom and a breakwater to protect a boat ramp there.

It was almost an immediate “up” to the top of the headland, which set the tone for the day. Mike says we climbed up (and down) the equivalent of ten 15-story buildings today!

In the picture below, looking back the way we’d come you can see how high the hotel is up on the cliff.  If you draw a line from the hotel to the white buildings below, that’s roughly where the we followed the Path down.

Today was a bit boring as far as the terrain we walked through. For nearly the entire eight miles we walked, it was through wide-open pasture land…with the occasional stile to go over.

Some of this was working farms and some of it was part of a National Nature Preserve. There was no lack of ups and downs, of course!

Mike got this picture of me taking a picture at the edge of a cliff:

The picture I was taking:

The way through these pastures wasn’t clearly marked at all. As long as we kept the sea to our right, we felt like we were roughly on the right path. Occasionally, we could discern a faint outline in the grass where many feet had walked, but other times your guess was as good as ours.  

There was one time where we had no clue where the path actually was… and it was almost an accident that we stopped to get our bearings and saw the signs of a trail across the ravine.  We had to backtrack a little way to match up the trail on our side.  In the picture, the dirt trail to the upper right of the picture is what caught our eye.  When we found the “down” -it is what you see in the foreground of this picture.

And the way down was a plate of “scrambled eggs” -but with rocks instead.  I will say that at the bottom, the cove we’d gotten down to was quite pretty, but it wasn’t reward enough for the trip down!

In the picture below you can see an example of the type of “steps” we encountered along the way. Look at the bottom of the picture -just above the rock surrounded by grass.

The only change of scenery we had was the views over the water and going down and then back up for the valleys. All of the descents/ascents today were pretty challenging.  Even though the terrain we walked through was a bit uninteresting all day, the cliff/water views were amazing. 

Oh, and we saw some cows for a change of pace too!

At about the 6-mile point, we descended to Kynance Cove, which is also a film location for Poldark.  Kynance Cove is a very popular beach destination and it is easy to see why.  It was my favorite “view” along the coastline. 

The way down from the top was a long, rolling grassy hill (I didn’t get a picture of it), which turned into a set of concrete steps to finish up the trip down.

The cove is so popular that the government put the steps and other various stone walkways in pace to help prevent erosion.  It was a nice beach with a snack bar and bathrooms.

it was busy there.  Everyone was out enjoying the nice Spring weather. We stopped for lunch and felt lucky to find a small table next to the restaurant that had just enough shade for us.  We ordered our sandwiches and were given a number and told to return for our food when our number was called.  We took our time eating and enjoyed people-watching, but we still had a couple of miles to go, so we didn’t linger too long.

This was the beach area.  The tide was out.

This was the view looking back, after we’d climbed back up to the cliff tops.

A couple more cows along the way.

More grassy pastures ahead.

Our stop for the night was Lizard.  Even though there is a place further to the West of Penzance, called “Land’s End”, that claims to be the farthest SW point in England; it is actually Lizard Point that is the true location of the farthest SW point in England.  

The name “Lizard” is thought to be a corruption of “Lys Ardh” which means “high court”.  The Lizard is a peninsula and Lizard Town was pretty much exactly in the middle -roughly a mile from any side of the peninsula you might be on.

Our route guide was telling us to stay on the Path until the far side of the Peninsula and enter the village from the East Side at a place called Church Cove. 

But we’d had enough for the day by the time we were arriving on the West side of the peninsula. I knew from looking at maps that there were a few side trails that made shortcuts into the village at points around the peninsula…IF the directional signs were there to point them out.  

We agreed that if we spotted a marked trail, we’d take the shortcut, which would save us from having to walk 2-3 more miles that day. We actually found one -which was super odd to experience. First we had to climb over a gate and walk across a field, then pass through another gate where we entered an enclosed (by greenery) walkway that was about 4-5 feet wide. It went uphill non-stop for nearly a mile! All we could see was two walls of greenery.  There was huffing and puffing going on!

We eventually popped out at the edge of the village and only had to walk about 1/4 mile to find our B&B for the night. 

Our B&B was called the Caerthillian -a name I can’t pronounce and other than finding out it is a Cornish word, I have no idea what it means in English.  We just called it the “big blue house”.  Austin, our host posed in the doorway for me.

Our room was small, but big enough.

By the time we arrived there, most of the little stores in the village were closing, so there wasn’t much else to do except grab some dinner nearby and go back to the “big blue house” to decompress for the rest of the evening.

Due to our shortcut, we didn’t actually walk past Lizard Point.  This is a postcard of Lizard Point from the air.  A better picture than I would have taken!

Categories: England -SW Coast Path 2025, Mullion Cove to The Lizard -Day 3