It’s the night after England’s semi-final at Euro 2020 – so everyone is smiling. The number 24 bus which picks us up right outside our incredible campsite at Heligan takes an hour to get to Par. It goes round the houses, literally, and I feel sick from breathing in my own breath in a face mask. However, the lady’s discussion behind makes up for it – her best comment after coming off the phone to a relative in Australia was “do you think he watched the football before us or after us?” ha-ha…

Take a deep breath as at last we disembark and remove our face masks and wander down to Par beach where we left off two days ago. It’s a huge sandy beach with rolling sand dunes, but green and murky with seaweed at the water’s edge, the sea is right out this morning. I have mixed emotions at the incongruous sight of the China clay factory dominating the western edge of the beach. For one it’s the history of this area with the clay pyramids inland, but plans to turn it into a marina and tourist complex leave me in two minds…

Take the path back through the dunes, at times with beautiful roses with large hips (ha-ha that’s not me with all this walking) and I don’t think I’ve ever seen evening primrose flowers on a beach before? The path takes us back to the road, turning left towards the factory. We pass a very tempting greengrocer and purchase some Herefordshire cherries – massive and juicy.

It seems that one section of the factory is still working but as we climb up besides the railway bridge and over a road bridge close to the western side there is a massive, and I mean massive, empty factory building. Signs of dusty looking clay in the doorways, with the biggest asbestos roof you ever did see . I bet working in these factories was grim.

From the path edged with high hedges we can see a circle of sea ahead of us – popping out we are surprised to see a little beach with people enjoying the sun and sand. The path takes us right as we head along towards Carylon Bay golf club.

I’m never sure of the sight of perfect short grass with perfectly dressed ladies and gentlemen pulling along trollies, hitting little balls with long sticks and shouting “fore” as we duck in fear of being hit?? It seems all 18 holes are spread linear along the coast, as the course goes on forever – but it’s a chance to amuse ourselves with the variety of clothing choices of those ball hitting peeps.

As we pass the club house and hotel we can see down to Carlyon Bay beach – it looks rather regimented with sections fenced off for parking and eating, a row of bright blue portaloos – a far cry from the delightful deckchairs I remember dotted on the beach at Beer. A sign on the entrance to the beach has an essay on how to behave on the beach – not eating your own food in their private enclosures etc. Wow, not very welcoming, we continue on to our destination of Charlestown.

The path ascends a lovely grassy bank with people sitting on benches enjoying the view then pops out on a row of houses and hotels, with large stunning pine trees, passed a National Coastwatch station before dropping down the hill into Charlestown. We remember stopping off here many years ago, it’s unchanged from them, in fact unchanged for the last few hundred years. Alice in Wonderland, Doctor Who and Poldark are just a few movies and tv shows filmed here. Maybe I should watch Poldark some time and see what the fuss is all about?

The seabream and salad I have from a trailer food cafe is worthy of any good restaurant, with a location hard to beat. It takes us a while to find the footpath out, eventually resorting to looking it up on our phones, finding there is a diversion due to a landslide. The diversion takes us through the back of the village onto the main road and back into the little hamlet of Duporth where we re-join the coast path.

A strange concrete constructed look out post, reminds me of the I imagine in the book “Where the Crawdads Sing”.. hesitantly we climb up and are rewarded with a fabulous view of St. Austell Bay and Duporth beach.

Porthpean beach is alive with holiday makers enjoying the break in the clouds, but we carry on the footpath towards Black Head. It’s a fairly long way but the sun is shining, the view through the trees gives glimpses of an almost turquoise shimmering sea. The path varies from single track through high bracken to the occasional open field, high above some stunning beaches. At times we are far away from any other walkers but can hear voices – they turn out to be a couple of paddle boarders making their way to one of the beaches.

The path briefly pops out on to a road with a little car park and a sign with a visitor’s guide to Trennaren set in the AONB, hence there are a few more walkers here. But in general, we’ve had the coast path to ourselves yet again today. As the route continues, we circle an enormous field of sweetcorn, the views of the sea from here are quite spectacular especially on this sunny day.

We pass the large granite stone laid down as a memorial to the poet and author A.L. Rowse saying “this was the land of my content”.. and a little further the trench of the Victorian rifle butts. We stop for a while to enjoy the view and the sunshine at Black Head where Nigel briefly falls asleep.

It takes just over an hour from here to Pentewan Sands – along open cliff tops, through woodlands and some very steep steps up and down – we weren’t expecting that. The views looking back are quite stunning. Pass a row of white painted houses with a pillared veranda and the most gorgeous wooden painted doors with black studs and ironwork – a far cry from the plastic doors I remarked on from the bus through St. Austell.

We are so relieved to arrive into Pentewan and head straight to the local pub, sadly everyone else has, even though I’m sure they haven’t earned their pint after a 9-mile walk! The queue is so long we give up and wander up to the next pub where we wait for 10 mins and give up there too so find the footpath back to our campsite.