Padstow to Porthcothan - 14 miles

We've walked 14 miles today and discovered absolutely loads of lovely big beaches that doggies can play on all the year round. I've had such fun and met lots of other dogs, including masses of collies - but none were as pretty as me!

It took us about an hour and a quarter to drive to 'Porthcothan' where we paid £4.80 to park in an almost empty car park. It was raining but Ann said as we hadn't done a walk for ages we were going to do one whatever the weather. We only had to wait about 5 mins for the 11.54am bus which took us to 'Padstow'. It was the little green bus and I usually bark at those ones but I didn't today. I just waited until it stopped, then I jumped on and immediately lay down under the seat. It cost £3 for Ann to go from Porthcothan to Padstow and I was 'free'. It took us about half an hour to get to Padstow.

Padstow was very, very busy and I didn't like it. We had to walk from the bus station through the town to the coastal path. I was on my lead and all I could see were zillions of pairs of legs coming towards me. I was really happy when we reached the coastal path and I was allowed to go off lead. In fact on this walk I was off lead for the whole of the walk apart from about 2mins when Ann saw a field of sheep in the distance and put me back on my lead so she could double check that I couldn't get to them. I hadn't even noticed them - I was far too busy having fun running around on the coast path and peering over cliff edges. Ann doesn't like me peering over cliff edges. She knows I'm sensible and know my limitations but it still worries her when she sees me near the edge.

Todays walk was relatively easy. It took us just under 5 hours but the worst thing about it was that the coast path went round lots of 'headlands'. It was 14 miles long but almost half of that was probably because the coast is very wiggly and we walked two sides of a triangle on several ocassions.

The other thing that wasn't good today, was it was raining for a lot of the time. The rain stopped after we'd walked about half an hour from Padstow. It was dry for an hour and then it rained for about another hour. But at about 3pm-ish the rain stopped and it didn't rain again until we got back in the car at 5.15pm. However even though it was raining there were people on all the beaches. A lot of them were surfing but just as many were sitting huddled inside their beach tents as only the great British public do. They've come on a seaside holiday and spend a day at the seaside they will do, come rain or shine?! As mentioned above there are lots of wonderful beaches along this section of the SWCP. There are also masses of caravan/camping sites. We had no idea what this area is like 'cos we've never spent any time here. We've been to Padstow a few times but didn't realise there was such a huge 'holiday community' between Padstow & Newquay.

However, what was lacking on this walk was little beach cafes. We hadn't brought any lunch with us because Ann had nothing in the house to make lunch with, so she said we could stop somewhere en-route. We didn't find anywhere. Most of the beaches had ice cream vans parked on them, we saw a burger van in a car park & passed a pub near one of the beaches. And then at the last beach before we got to Porthcothan there was a sign for a cafe at the Youth Hostel. Ann was really happy and said we'd stop for a coffee and a rest, as there was seats outside and it wasn't raining. But, when we got closer we saw a sign that said it closed at 4pm and it was almost 4.30pm so that was the end of that. Ann had water with her but she didn't drink that until she got back to the car and I was OK for drinks 'cos most of the beaches had streams running into them.

Anyway I've had a lovely day. I've had such a nice play on loads of new beaches and when I wasn't on beaches I was trotting along the coastal route which was mainly very well defined paths on top of low lying cliffs. It's always nice when I go to new places and apart from the town of Padstow I hadn't been to any of the SWCP that we walked today.

I've had fun, fun, fun and I'm looking forward to walking from Porthcothan to Newquay so that I can experience more of the North Coast of Cornwall.