| Date: | 29th. January 2007 | |
| County: | CORNWALL | |
| Location: | Perranporth (Perran Sands) | |
| Type: | Scenic Area (Coast) | |
| Sub-Type: | Beach, Dunes | |
| Viewed by: | WALK from car park | |
| Car Park: | Pay and display (hourly.) Free in winter. | |
| Difficulty: | Walk fairly flat. Easy walking except on dune sand. | |
| Distance: | Walk fairly flat. Easy walking except on dune sand. | |
| Season: | Winter | |
| Weather: | Light cloud or clear skies. Chilly. | |
| Time Of Day: | Late Morning to Evening | |
| Camera: | Casio Exilim EX-Z850 Pocket Zoom (JPG) | |
| Scene Rating: | ••••• |
Perranporth boasts one of the long, unspoiled sandy beaches for which North Devon and Cornwall are rightly famous.A small town is built around the small stream at the South-Eastern end, but beyond that the beach is backed by sandy hills which rise 200 feet or so.In Victorian times these were probably developed very little, but the World Wars brought an army training ground, and today there is a steady encroachment from caravan parks and a golf course. 
The two views above were photographed from the headland in the South-Eastern part of Perranporth, which is the end of the beach and allows you to look down the entire 3-mile length.This was where we drove first, since it's the best place from which to get oriented. It's also the closest part of the town to St. Agnes. There is a sign post here directing walkers to the coastal path, which takes them along the cliff tops to the edge of Perranporth airfield, Trevellas and Wheal Kitty (see my first post.)Xue and I have walked the route on a previous occasion, but any shots we took were made on the old 35mm SLR, so until I get a scanner capable of scanning slides, or we have time to make the walk again, you aren't going to see that!
Perranporth town spreads up to the viewpoint from the shops lining the main road which forms the town "centre", along the long curve of Cliff Road.Down the side of this road there are many family-run holiday hotels built in Victorian times, or the early part of the 20th. Century, from local stone. The top of Cliff Road broadens into a car-park and a public green, with seats, stone monuments and a sundial giving contrast to the expanse of grass.
The car-park is free in winter, which makes the place a popular destination for the area's many retirees, who like to drive up here and then take in the view from their car or from the memorial benches.This old gentleman has a crash-helmet next to him, so he presumably came either by motor-bike or beach-buggy...
Surprisingly, you often find the kind of vans popular with surfers parked here too, since the can avoid the Pay-and-Display parking fees levied by the beach-level car-park.The vans provide a more convenient way of carrying the boards, wet-suits and so on, than a car with a roof-rack and they are a common sight in the area all year round.The viewpoint car-park gives a long hike down to the beach to surf, however. And an even longer hike back up the hill with a wet board and wetter-than-wet-suit!If you click on the first picture of Perranporth (above) and look at the 800 pixel version, you can see a surfer walking back up the beach from the sea. They say that the sea is warmer than the air in winter. We'll take their word for it...!
On a small raised piece of ground by the side of the clear stream that spills across the beach into the sea, is a beach hotel and various eateries and tea-shops.Amazingly, there are even bungalows built on the side of the hill beyond it, which looks like it is entirely made of sand.Presumably they either hadn't read the biblical advice when they decided to build ... or just ignored it!Or more prosaically, maybe the sand is just a coating over a base of rock forming the headland. From our observations, as we walked later, this is a likely exlanation, since parts of the "sand hills" behind the beach have drops which are more precipitous than you would expect from large dunes made entirely from sand...
On the top of the sandy hill is the start of a golf-course, which runs higher up the hill, and then down the side of a holiday caravan site back to the beach, about a mile and a half later.The road out of Perranporth runs up the hill by the side of it, for about a mile, and then turns back towards the highway.There's a public car-park by the turn off, which gives access to a wide scrubby area with paths which run alongside the golf-course, to the edge of the caravan site and the dunes.That was our next destination. Xue was really looking forward to it, as you can see!
The walk from the car-park, along the side of the golf-course, is initially broad, flat and featureless, but by the time you reach the corner of the caravan park the dunes start to rise.Whether or not there is a rock underlayer, the landscape here is conditioned by the thick sand banked up on the surface and the vegetation is very similar to other dune-backed beaches in the West Country, such as Saunton Sands.Mostly the sand has been anchored by tough, ground hugging vegetation and long spikey grasses typical of dune areas. But any erosion, such as that caused by people using pathways, quickly exposes the sand beneath.
Some of the "dunes" seem a little too steep to be natural. It's possible that this one may have been bulldozed higher when they were clearing stretches to make the golf-course fairways.But the vegetation has already fully reclaimed it and it's otherwise indistinguishable from other areas, further up the beach.
A few hundred yards further on, the dunes flatten a little and start to slope gently downwards, revealing a pleasant view of the North-Eastern part of the beach.After a great deal of persuasion, I finally managed to get Xue to pose for the "this is me in front of Perranporth sand" shot.I was rather unpopular afterwards though, since the ground was still very cold and - surprisingly - a little damp...
The jutting headland at the end of the beach is Ligger Point. This and Penhale Point separate Perran Bay from another long (1 mile) sandy beach with large dunes in Holywell Bay.There was a "Holy Well" in the village behind the dunes, and the name is a good indicator that this area was once a popular place of pilgrimage in the mediaeval Christian era.Further down the Perranporth dunes, towards Holywell, are the remains the old oratory of St. Piran. This was an important early Celtic monastery with a shrine containing relics of St Piran, St Brendan and St Martin.
The oratory of St. Pirran was overwhelmed by sand sometime before 1500. It was excavated in Victorian times, but had to be reburied in 1981 to protect the structure and the site is now only marked by a memorial stone. Not far from the memorial are the ruins of a Norman parish church - built around 1150 and abandoned due to the sand in 1804. Those ruins are barely more than a rectangular pit, but there is a fine 10th. Century cross in the celtic style next to itXue and I have walked there, and also to Holywell, but again there are only pictures on film - sorry! Wait for the scanner...This photo is actually nothing to do with St. Pirran. It's just a shot looking back up the dunes. I just liked the contrast between the grass and the sky...!
I think the cold ground must have put Xue either in Revolutionary or Exploratory mode.Here she seems either to be considering planting a flag on the beach and claiming it for China, or posing for the cover of her latest book on sub-arctic treks! Someone must have stolen the sled-dogs...
Not to lose the opportunity, I also took a closer shot.Xue's very difficult to photograph since she refuses to look in the direction of the sun in case it hurts her eyes or makes her screw them up.So this is an experiment with flash-fill. The little Casio camera has several manual overrides, but I'm still trying to find the best way of using these...
Further down the dunes, towards the cliffs, the ground gets stonier.You can see that a large area of the sand on the beach has been corrugateded by the tide.I'm not sure why the sand forms such distinctive ridge-patterns in some places and is totally flat in others. Maybe it's down to currents. Many Cornish beaches have dangerous undertows or rip-tides in places.
Thought I'd better let Xue take the helm for a while. It's her camera after all!Well, actually, she just took it saying "why do you take so long taking a photograph? You just need to point it and press the button!"Which is what she did.Not bad, although I think I would have given it a bit less exposure...
And the close shot. Actually this was at my insistence, since I wanted to show that most people can smile when they are having their photo taken ;-)It was only when I looked at the full size image that I realised that we'd rushed out into the sun before I'd shaved! Shhh! Don't tell anyone! It's OK at the 400 pixel size anyway...Note the glasses hanging conveniently around the neck. I need these to be able to see all the overlays in the camera's LCD viewfinder...
Another view down the beach. Yeah, it's becoming a bit like overkill, but how often do you get clear weather and blue sky like this?!This is the closest we got to the Holywell end of the beach, and the sand in the dunes is deeper there.Sometimes the thick tussocks of dune-grass are not enough to anchor it and the dunes slip to reveal bare sandy patchesWe could have reached the St. Piran oratory memorial by following paths just below the bare patch of sand in the centre-right of the picture.
Had we walked to the St. Piran site, we could have then walked back down the dunes to the beach, but in the central and South-Western part of the bay the drop is too sheer for this.Fortunately the owners of the caravan site have made a path down to the beach for their patrons, so we took that...
On the way down, I tried another quick experiment with flash-fill.Technically the first attempt was better, I think - I'm not convinced by the auto-focus here - but this time there was a subtle, lambent smile which outweighed all the technical shortcomings!
Despite the cold winter air, there were still many people walking on the beach.From a high vantage point, they appeared lost and lonely against the huge expanse of sand. Their dark silhouettes appeared like a kind of Cornish equivalent of L.S. Lowry stick figures, but with Nature providing the background scale rather than factories.Maybe a better parallel would be the kind of wide rural panoramas described in the opening paragraphs of Thomas Hardy novels, with a single human figure walking though them, dwarfed by the countryside, as if they were an ant...
Down on the beach the scene also engandered a feeling of pensiveness and isolation.There is something about long evening shadows which gives a sense of something drawing to a close...
At the South Eastern end of the beach there were more people - although this did nothing to dispel the sense of walking in a lonely expanse.In the summer the beach is much busier - with surfers, swimmers, people walking and playing beach-games, sand-yachts and also sand-yacht-type buggies towed by something resembling a paraglider on the end of a rope, kite-like in the sky.But whatever time of year it is, the beach is so vast when the tide is out, that the people somehow always appear scattered and diminished by it.
The walk on the beach was somehow less impressive than walking on the higher parts behind it, so we climbed back up and took one last look at the vista to the North-East...
...before starting back...
...through the long spikey grasses of the dunes...
...up the hill...
...and over the crest...
...to an area looking like what most people would expect sand-dunes to look like...
...and on towards the edge of the caravan site...
...the wooden fence of which would lead us back to the common-land popular with dog-owners and finally to the car park.
Before we finally reached the highest point, we could squint into the descending sun for one final view of South-Western Cornwall.From this point you can see a long sweep of the north Cornish shoreline: Cligga Point, St.Agnes Head and in the long distance the headland around St. Ives Bay.
Zoomed in a little tighter, the high ground around St. Agnes can be more clearly seen.The small dimple near the left end of the most distant headland is St. Agnes beacon.
The low sun can be a serious hazard when driving westwards on Cornish roads in the winter.Coming out of Perranporth up the long hill which leads to St. Agnes, there is a bend which is especially dangerous, since the sun suddenly strikes you full in the face and makes it impossible to see a small junction which branches left or any pedestrians who might be walking there.But the setting sun can have it's compensations.
This is the sunset we had hat night, viewed from our back garden. The St. Agnes beacon is here just hidden by the trees, but the rays slanting out of the clouds made us wait for the choir of angelic voices for a while.....until the sun dropped below the horizon that is. Then the air immediately became very frosty and made us happy to retire inside for a hot dinner and the warmth of the fireplace...
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