Day 3 - Rest day, picking up Snowdrop 

Up about 0530, then out the door to catch the 0712 from St Ives to St Erth. St Ives is on a branch line, St Erth is the main hub where it all happens, I can get eg to Edinburgh or London from here (5-ish hours to London).

To cut a long day short, I collected Snowdrop (SD) from its storage site and am now sitting in a campsite somewhere near Dartmoor. Tomorrow, I have no dongle signal here, so can't find one yet, I will find a campsite about 15 miles from St Ives, then go back to St Ives and walk to SD. I'll do something similar each day. So that gives me somewhere I can use the laptop for 3-4 hours each morning and 1-2 hours in the evening. Plus, *BIG* plus, I can just use a day sack! Bliss.

 Annoyingly, as I had no hot-spot warning I've a blister on the side of one foot. I have to up the mileage (gradually) but down the injuries. A hot-spot, on a foot or elsewhere, which is the feeling you get when something is rubbing your skin away, is like an oil light on the dashboard of a car. You have to take action asap, half a mile down the road may be too late ...

One thing I'm looking forward to is getting some aerobic exercise, road-walking with big pack was like an endurance weight-training session in a gym.

Day 2

.    Start:      St Just.  Trevaylor campsite    End:  St Ives, Grey Mullet Guest House
Linear distance walked:  14.5 miles

First, all my mileages are very approximate.  I carry a GPS but don't switch it on much
to conserve batteries.  Second, why 'linear distance walked' - because I don't count
exploring in towns eg, or backtracking, I only count miles 'in the general direction of
travel', which used to be Minehead, just by following the coastal path round, but now
is unknown and TBD.  I need to be at a music festival in just under 2 weeks, so I'll decide
where I will aim to end up.

Last evening and night was awkward.  I can't sit up in the tent, which means
I am reliant on campsites having some kind of recreational room to go to, and
I don't know how many sites are like that.  It was also pretty noisy from the
wind, and often as I could feel myself on the cusp of sleep, the tent would get
rattled.  But the good thing is, the tent pitch site I picked was relatively
sheleted and the tent didn't blow away.

The point of this walk is enjoyment, but I also want to be doing some studying
and job-hunting.  The not being able to use the laptop in the evening, coupled
with the size and weight of the pack (probably no more than 15 kg but to me it's
a lot and so is the size 55+10 litres).

So, briefly, the day.  I started off on the coastal path but it's very up and
down and I was making as little as 1mph in places, so I road-walked quite a
distance in order to make St Ives.  I didn't want to spend 3 days over just 22
something miles.  The weight of the pack was an ongoing annyonance, especially
as it's a fairly hilly road.  I suppose ascent over the 14.5 miles was 3-400
metres, not a lot, but it seemed a lot.

So, I've had enough of the tent/pack, and to get rid of both I've decided to
use Snowdrop (Teresa and my campervan) to live in each day on the walk.  Tomorrow
I'll go fetch it.   If it seems wimpish to you to, after just 2 days, abandon
back-packing, well yes, I empathise with that view, but I see no point in delaying
my decision!

Day 1  

Start:  Land's End Hostel
End:   St Just.  Trevaylor campsite  
Linear distance walked:  8.5 miles

So, first day's walking!  I had the whole of my hostel secton to myself, and a
double bunk room just for me, so that was a bit of luxury on my 1st night.  I
prepared breakfast and sat down to watch the news, there was big ugly windy
looking graphics running right through the cornwall area, and I heard "gusts
up to 65mph" (I looked up wind speeds later, 65mph is hurricane force!),  It
occured to me that carrying quite a large rucksack, with a bedroll strapped
to the outside was a bit like having sails, and I was about to start walking
by cliffs.   Having packed once, I then unpacked and repacked with the spinnaker
(the bedroll) inside.  Then off I raced out the door, down to Land's End.

Actually it was a plod.  A slow plod, because the pack is too big and heavy for
me.  The actual Land's End area has been horribly over commercialised, eg the
entrance looks like the entrance to a drive-through crematorium, and there's
rides and .. anyway, I bypassed all that and went off on the costal path
through the countryside.  It's eroded in parts, and widely, but rather than
telling people to stick to the middle of the path to stop the erosion spread
they are doing what has ruined eg the Miner's Trail on Snowdon, but putting
stone down to effectively 'pave' the path.

It's windy, but blue skies and white clouds!  An hour or 2 later I turn seaward
and notice it's gone completely grey.  First sign of 65mph gusts and I'm getting
inland.  In never does get up like that though, all day and night I doubt it gusts
more than about force 7.

Although I'm on the coastal path btw, the point of this walk is "and enjoyable
easy long-distance walking exploring places", it's not fixed how I do it, not a
lot of planning has gone into it.  I like this quote (wrongly attributed to
Geothe.  See:  http://german.about.com/library/blgermyth12.htm):

 "Whatever you can do, or dream, Begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic
  in it - Begin it now."

Back to the walk, it's scrambly in places and the pack doesn't lend itself to that
(it has side pockets eg) and generally I'm just going far too slowly, even though
I intended day 1 to be easy.  I get a bit mislaid occasionally, but ok daygenerally
finising about 3pm at a coffee shop, then back to the campsite, where I've pitched
the tent.  I suddenly realise it being windy, cold and damp, I have no where to go
but prone in my too low tent.  It's a Saunders Jetpacker, 1.4kg, great tent, but not high
enough to sit properly.  Charlie the campsite owner appears about 5pm asking if I'd
like the rec. room opened up and I gratefully accept and stay there until 8:30pm.

Day -1


I'm on the 2nd of 3 trains to get down to Penzance, I expect to arrive there
at about 15:30.  It's taken a good 2-3 days to get ready, and that's just the
packing plus a bit of googling for somewhere to stay the first night, and to
see where I'm likely to get to at the end of Day 1.  I'm storing each day's
campsite or B&B (I originally was going to travel *v* light and just use B&Bs
until I realised what the cost would be.

Two problems so far:

  - my pack is too big and weighs too much
  - I'm too fat and unfit to be doing this

So what's the remedy?  Well, the idea is to start walking reasonably easily,
eg I'm only looking to do about 8 miles the first day.  The goal is Minehead
initially, which as I type this, I don't know how far it is, but generally I'm looking
to average 15 miles a day, so each 'under' day needs to be made up.

Hmm.  I wrote the above from the train, now I'm in the hostel by Land's End
(where I have a room to myself!) called Land's End Accommodation (at
Trevesacan which is maybe 1/2 mile from Land's End.  Nice place) and I've
been googling more.  Minehead is 265 miles by the coastal path!  Aaargh, it's
all those coastal wrigglies. I'll have to cut some corners to get the mileage
down, as I've 2 weeks to get there in order to go to our first music festival
of the year.

So, early night, and looking forward to day 1, tomorrow, when the walking
starts!