Despite many setbacks, including breaking my wrist in January and our car breaking down just three days ago, we return to Bude in a sexy red mini – the garage courtesy car. Our overnight bed and breakfast at the Edgcumbe Hotel in Bude, perched above Summerleaze Beach, is perfect. The lady showing us our room couldn’t have been friendlier, the upgraded sea view room extremely cosy, and the breakfast as good as the one we had enjoyed here last November.

The grey and white clouds hang low over Summerleaze and Crooklets beach as we return over Maer Cliff to start today’s hike to the Old Smithy Inn at Welcombe, our newly purchased larger rucksacks strapped to our backs.

The garden at Northcott House. marked on the map as The Bungalow, has been newly landscaped since we were last here. Young Rosemary plants atop the neat dry-stone wall.

Today’s walk starts and ends with mud; at first sprinkled with the snow like petals from the wind-swept Blackthorn. The first down and up is just a teaser of what’s to come, a gentle zigzag path taking us to the cliff, where we walk across the open grassland to the car park at Sandymouth. Sheep and lambs grazing and depositing heart shaped poos on the grass!

It’s quiet on this blowy April day. We weave up above the beach and back down where more sheep are grazing on the lush green grass in the valley between the gorse and scrubby hill sides. It’s lambing season, a few are hiding and one appears to be in labour – poor lady is making an almighty noise. She is sheltering by a gorse mound; I hope a farmer comes along to help her soon.

We get our first glimpse of the white dishes of GCHQ Bude perched, like scattered parasols, on the other side of the hill. We take our first break of the day on the rocks on Duckpool beach, the waves splashing over the many dark rocky outcrops. Most visitors don’t seem to stray too far from the car park. I’m not surprised it’s a narrow quite treacherous muddy path carved out of the side of the cliff. Looking back, we can see the small car park, white washed cottage and meandering stream.

The path opens out on the top of the cliff then skirts round GCHQ radio station which is surrounded by a double row of fencing, topped with barbed wire. We soon stop again for sandwiches against a dry-stone wall, below the sight of the many security cameras.

We’ve been walking over three hours as we reach Stanbury Mouth where water is rushing through the valley and gushing below the wooden boarded bridge. The sun now peeping through the clouds, but the wind still blowing.

The next section of the path is extremely precarious – sheer cliff to our left dropping down to the sea and to our right a barbed wire fence, separating us from open farmland. The path is very muddy, sometimes completely waterlogged. The sheep are acting very peculiarly in the next field, a group of maybe seven or eight are huddled together on a muddy part of a mostly grassy field, they seem to be jumping like lambs but it’s more of a dance? I look away and I wonder if they just dance when we’re not looking? If only we could read their minds.

The going is really slow heading towards Higher Sharpnose Point. Nigel poses for a photograph at a lookout building then we weave down the path and over the river Tidna.

I’ve heard about the Hawkers Hut; in fact, it was recently featured on BBC’s Countryfile. So, we follow the slight detour to the iconic wooden hut set into the hillside made by Reverend Stephen Hawker in the 1800s. The ramshackle construction from what looks like drift wood, and the bountiful graffiti etchings have been carefully tended and preserved by the National Trust.

At times, I’m pleased I have my walking poles and other times, squeezing down tight, steep, pathways I’m not really sure what to do with them, but they definitely help going up the next few cliffs.

Vicarage Cliff, Cotton Beach, Henna Clif, Westcott Wattle, Yeolmouth Cliff and Cornakey Cliff are a breeze. We can see the rounded humps of Gullrock, gently undulating out to see, but there is nothing gentle about the look of the very straight set of steps leads up Marsland Cliff.

I guess 81 steps, Nigel thinks more and he’s correct. A gruelling 181 steps takes us to the top of the today’s last cliff. It’s been a tough six hours walk today.

We have reached a momentous point in our walk as we cross the tired wooden bridge over a fast-moving stream at Marsland Mouth. Insignificant wooden signs either side of the bridge announce our departure from Cornwall and arrival into Devon. It has taken just less than three years to walk the Cornwall coastline. We crossed into Cornwall on the 30th of April 2021 just after the third Covid lockdown.

This is where we finish today as we take the ridiculously steep road out of the valley past West Mill to the Old Smithy Inn, Welcombe. Here we enjoy the warmth of the woodburning stove in the busy bar, playing Trivial Pursuit, drinking beer and eating fish and chips in Devon, while the rain comes down. Idyllic.