Higher Clovelly to Hartland Quay – The First Pain – Third Blog Today

If you ignore pain in your legs or feet when you’re walking then you’re an idiot. If you don’t ignore it you’re a big, raving, barmpot idiot. It’s only pain. Bert Trautmann played most of the 1956 FA Cup Final in goal for Man City with a broken neck.

It’s a dilemma. Bert got away with it but I have to remember that I’ve got another 4 weeks walking this part of my walk.

I got up at 8.30 am, packed and headed for the campsite shop. It works on an honesty system. I bought a coffee, made it with their kit and ate a pasty with it that I’d bought in Clovelly yesterday.

Eating at this rate I’ll be a 600 pounder. Not that there’s owt wrong with that. It’s aspirational. If you’re an 800 pounder.

To get to the coast path I had two options. Cut back to Clovelly and walk along the cliffs, or cut westwards to Stoke, where I would camp, make better time on tarmac and get the tarp up before forecast rain.

Four main considerations were leading to the tarmac route westward:

1. I’d done one of those steps yesterday on the boulders where your knee goes backwards on itself and it hurts. And it hurts today. My left shoulder, which is the one I brock, hurts. But so did Bert’s neck.

2. Over the next two days I’ve got the most difficult part of the path. Folk coming the other way have described it as brutal and punishing. I know it is.

3. The rucksack weighs 16 kgs.

4. I’m a day behind.

Westward so I don’t damage myself! I’m already a day behind so I need to keep a pace when I can. I’ve already meandered more miles than the coast path.

After less than two hours tarmac walking I covered the four miles to Hartland and carried on westward. Past St Nectan’s well. I hope his head isn’t flogging about somewhere on the campsite. Without his head St Nectan certainly can’t be well. Boom boom.

The road led straight to the campsite opposite the Church of St Nectan

I pitched old tarpey boy and walked down to Hartland Quay for a crab sandwich and beer at The Wreckers. What a location. Looking north was wild.

The cliffs showed how the battering sea seeks out the weakest rock and creates caves, before further landslides.

Some fit lads were surfing in the bay. In wet suits. Southern softies.

Looking out to sea the Atlantic was rolling in. We are beyond the haven of Bristol’s Channel now.

And southwards, along the most difficult part of the entire path, for the next two days, it looks like this. The distant cliff top is in Cornwall. I’m sat here in a barn at the campsite in Devon. See below.

I’ve only just heard and I’m celebrating the engagement today of my darling daughter Antonia to a most wonderful person called Katherine.

I can’t express how much I love my wife and daughters and Katherine. I’m emotional and happy. Well done girls.

The two sons in law know I love them too. They’re good lads.

Back to now. It’s peeing it down now and it’s very cold. I’ll get up at sparrow’s fart and see how far I’ll get in the rain. There are streams coming down the campsite. Bloody ell! It’s a ridiculously difficult two days which I only allocated two days to complete. Arse!!!

Night night.