LEJOG Day 6: Come to Good to Tregony

Weather: Cloudy, then sunny and windy

Distance covered today: 16.5km ( 10.3 mi)

Last night's B&B: Come to Good Farmhouse (£40)

% Complete: 5.5%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 6 (click!)

I should have worried!  Last evening, when I had read the blurb for the King Harry Ferry, it had assured me that the Ferry operated every 20 minutes throughout the year.  Except, that is, early this April when it had to go into dry dock!!  It doesn’t say anything about that in the local publicity blurb, though I now find that it does say so quite clearly on the website; or at least it does now!
 
Anyway, at breakfast this morning, one shared with a rather prim couple from Dorset, my hostess, Sue, casually asked me where I was going and the problem emerged. All of a sudden I was into the 27 mile detour I had feared last evening and my schedule was in chaos!  I might have had to detour via Truro, find another B&B and cancel the next free day. But the real trouble was that I would have been forced to walk the “A” roads and that would have been unpleasant and dangerous.

Sue was nothing if not inventive. Under fairly continuous, and much resented, instruction from her husband, Sue phoned an array of numbers with no result. Most phones remained unanswered. “Cornwall!”, she said.  I went off to pack my things, resolving to take my medicine and sacrifice what I had hoped would be a lovely day doing the back roads of Cornwall and the ferry. But I was underestimating Sue!  By the time I returned to the kitchen, she had unearthed a boatman in the village of Loe Beach, by name Alistair, and he had agreed to ferry me across the river in his own boat.

I resisted their invitation to take me there in their 4-wheeler and set off at a fast clip through the village of Feock to the exquisite little resort of Loe Beach, where I found Alistair next to a colleague who was teaching a bleached blond the principles of sailing. Alistair dragged himself away and went to fetch his boat. There was no jetty, but I managed to clamber aboard without getting water into my boots and we set off on a fascinating trip to the King Harry Ferry site. On the way we passed the famous Trelissick Gardens and Lord Falmouth’s huge pile in this really beautiful estuary, besmirched only by the presence of an enormous car carrier, riding out the recession in a cheap and sheltered cove.
 
For those of you who are being anal about my statistics, I’m pleased to announce that I have adjusted all of today’s statistics to exclude the boat ride, though of course you will still see me motoring along in the estuary at great speed if you look at the Everytrail page!

I’m not sure whether it was my enthusiasm or Alistair’s kind heart, but he kept wanting to show me other treasures. In the end I persuaded him I needed to get on, secretly worrying that he would adjust upwards the fare that had been agreed before we set off. I needn’t have worried!  When we landed at a jetty next to a café closed for the winter, he decided that he had enjoyed the trip so much that he reduced the fee!

I felt so exhilarated by the whole affair that I decided to be even more inventive in my selection of short-cuts through the ensuing rural countryside.  I soon realised that I was again off the beaten track and the dreaded Cornish footpaths conspired to ensnare me yet again. At one point, I had to scale a giant wall or retreat at least a mile. My foot slipped and I grabbed some foliage to prevent a fall, realising too late that I had grabbed a fistful of nettles! Hasn’t happened to me since I was 7!

On the plus side though, I listened through earphones to a wonderful BBC programme on the cuckoo that my brother-in-law, Julian, had told me about, and which I had downloaded from the internet onto my mobile phone. There can be few greater pleasures than walking through the English countryside in spring while listening to the Beeb at its finest, describing the wonders of nature!

Tomorrow is a rest day, so no walk and no blog post! It’s also the last of my three-day weeks! Next up, its four days and escalating!  

In my B&B garden this morning. Not a Nuthatch? What is it?

Now they tell me!!

This the water I had to cross

And this is Alistair - the man to get me there!

And this is a car carrier ship, laid up for the recession in the estuary

And this is the same river, just 10km upstream. How can such a small river feed such a huge estuary?

Passed on my walk this morning; the entrance to "The Secret Garden"??