Blog Status: Mostly unconverted Archive
| Date: | 14th. May 2007 | |
| County: | CORNWALL | |
| Location: | Land's End | |
| Type: | Scenic Area (Coast) | |
| Sub-Type: | Headland | |
| Viewed by: | WALK from car park | |
| Car Park: | ? | |
| Difficulty: | Easy-Moderate. Mostly flat. Some mild climbing | |
| Distance: | xKm | |
| Season: | Spring | |
| Weather: | Sunny with moderate cloud. | |
| Time Of Day: | Mid-Late Afternoon | |
| Camera: | Casio Exilim EX-Z850 Pocket Zoom (JPG) | |
| Scene Rating: | ••••• |
Please note: all data and opinions presented on this site are offered in good faith, but they are advisory only and are utilised at the risk of the user. The authors can accept no blame or liability for any loss or accident or other negative effect resulting from errors, omissions or data that has changed over time.
Original photographs found on this website are Copyright © Richard Baskerville 2015, All Rights Reserved. If small versions of other photographs are found here, they act only as links to larger versions on their originating websites. Such images may be copyrighted by their original owners. Please see the linked websites for copyright details.
Original photographs found on this website are Copyright © Richard Baskerville 2015, All Rights Reserved. If small versions of other photographs are found here, they act only as links to larger versions on their originating websites. Such images may be copyrighted by their original owners. Please see the linked websites for copyright details.
Land's End Walk: Introduction
Land's End is the most westerly tip of the English mainland (although not of Great Britain as a whole - a place in Scotland is 22 miles further west.) In recent years the tip of the peninsula has become commercialised, due to the construction of a theme park. But the coastline was still reputed to be pretty - so we decided to maximise our experience of the natural landscape and minimise contact with the commercial side by parking a mile or so north-east of Land's End - at Sennen Cove - and walking down the coast from there.
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On the top of Dr. Syntax's Head (which must be a little uncomfortable for him, is the First and Last Refreshment House - the most westerly building in England and one that (unlike the tourist complex) was already there when I first visited Land's End as a child.
Oddly, I have been unable to find anything about the history of the building, other than a statement (on an American website!) that the building is "over 100 years old."
Whether it was built as a cafe or was converted from a farm building, the cafe seems to hold the key to the history of when tourism started at Land's End in earnest.
Tourism in the UK generally increased with the coming of the railways. The Great Western Railway reached Penzance (not so far from Land's End) in March 1852, so this would have lead to greatly increased numbers of visitors to Cornwall. But this was 3 decades after the peak popularity of Dr. Syntax and a long time after Dr. Johnson, so maybe there were already some intrepid tourists visiting the end of the country before this.
The First and Last Inn (now part of the tourist complex) is supposed to date from the 17th century, so there would have been somewhere for them to stay.
About a mile due west of Land's End are some mostly submerged rocks called the Longships. Again I was shooting into the light, so this photograph (and the next) are mostly "for the record."
There is a very dramatic painting by William Turner entitled the Longships Lighthouse, which was painted circa 1834 - so the area was obviously visited by artists before the coming of the railways. Natural beauty would have been very much in vogue at this time, with Wordsworth reaching the peak of his popularity around 1815.
According to the Trinity House website, the author John Ruskin - a great admirer of Turner - described a storm at Land's End as "an entire disorder of the surges... the whole surface of the sea becomes one dizzy whirl or rushing, writhing, tortured undirected rage bounding and crashing and coiling in an anarchy of enormous power."
If you can find a print of the Turner painting on the web (e.g. through Google Image) you'll find that Ruskin's description is quite a close verbal equivalent to the energy of Turner's impressionistic brush-strokes. Turner cheats heavily on his subject matter, by the way. It's hard to identify the Longships rocks in his picture, although you can see the natural arch which is half-a-mile slightly east of south...
The full story of the Longships Lighthouse can be found on www.trinityhouse.co.uk, but here's a very brief version: before 1790 coast dwellers gained an ample livelihood from plundering the ships driven on the rocks, of which each winter brought a full harvest. In 1791, Trinity House obtained a patent after lodging a petition from seafarers, and gave a lease to Lieutenant Henry Smith by which he would erect a lighthouse on the Longships.
A circular 3-storey tower was soon established on Carn Bras, the largest rock. The lightkeepers used the top floor as a bedroom under a wood and copper lantern (24m above the sea.) The lightkeepers on the Longships led a primitive existence. There were four men, two of whom were on duty at any one time - working one month at a stretch.
During storms the terrific seas which swept over the rock meant the lantern was so often under water that the character of the light was unreliable - so the first tower was replaced by the present circular tower of grey granite in 1875. Longships Lighthouse was automated in 1988.
There are some tables for eating snacks at the north side of the First and Last cafe - not that anyone was using them. Actually they're a very bad background for this close-up, but Xue was looking cheerful so I snapped it anyway.
The dark glasses are typical. Oddly, despite her dark eyes, Xue seems quite susceptible to strong sunlight and if I don't let her wear them she normally squints at the camera!
From there we had to pass through the tourist zone, so we thought it might be a good opportunity for Xue to take a quick trip on a fishing boat.Presumably the "PZ" license number on this one means that it came out of Penzance - where there is still an active fishing harbour crowded with boats (as we saw later in the day, when we drove along the coast from Mousehole.)
Not that it took her very far!
Next to the fishing boat is a lifeboat. I didn't read the plaque while we were there, thinking it would be on the theme park's website - but it isn't so I'm not sure where it came from, when it was decommissioned and what class it is - sorry!
Not being much into boats myself I decided I'd just cosy up to the crew. This is me having a "who's got the baggiest and most shapeless trousers" competition with Johnny Depp...Yes, I am wearing the same down jacket that I was wearing for our winter walks - I told you it was windy!
The best scenery at the tip of the peninsula is found south of the First and Last Inn. Looking from the lower headland at the tip of Carn Greeb, you can see that the tourist zone is perched on top of cliffs that drop precipitously into Greeb Zawn.
This is the same view, a little wider...
...and the same view, a little wider...with Xue!
A coastal path continues along Carn Greeb, behind a tourist farm (which did have a couple of cute ponies) - and you soon feel that you are back in a relationship with the wilderness, away from the demands of the modern Cornish economy.
This shot is looking across the back of a group of rocks with the inexplicable (unless you speak Cornish, perhaps) name of Enys Dodnan and across Zawn Wells to Pordenack Point.
Approaching Pordenack Point you can look back and see that one of the rocks is a perfect natural arch.
I mentioned earlier that there was a rock called the Armed Knight - that's it to the left. (The sun was being blocked thin stratus clouds at the time, so the contrast isn't as strong as I would like...)
Here's a closer shot of the arch from a little further back, which shows the hole in the rock more clearly...
...while this (wider) shot shows it's location with regard to the First and Last Inn. The sun has come out again here, although the horizon is another candidate for reorientation-by-Photoshop!
In several places (including the northern edge of Pordenack Point) the grass was growing thick with flowers. I'd seen these pink ones while at Godrevy, but couldn't identify them (see earlier post.) I've since found that they are called Thrift or, more commonly, Sea-Pinks.
Of course, we couldn't resist the photo opportunity! The sun was behind thin cloud again so I used fill-flash, which gives it a slightly flat and artificial look.The background is nicely bordered by another of the large-stoned walls typical of this area.
The coast between Pordenack Point and Carn Boel (the bay is called Zawn Trewilley) features granite cliffs, which plummet into the sea like a castle guarding an ancient harbour.Although it was windy the sea was not particularly angry - and yet even in its calm mood, the surf could still send spume aching high in the air as the waves challenged the impassive stone.
The cliffs above Zawn Trewilley nearest to Pordenack Point are known as "The Lion's Den", which may be an indication that this is definitely not a place you want to be when there is a gale smashing against the shoreline from the west!
At the top of the Lion's Den, the sheer rock has a curiously stratified appearance, which gives it a distinctly "man-made" quality and reinforced the sense that these were buttresses from an ancient fortress, acting as the country's western bulwark against the armies of an invading ocean.
When we arrived at this viewpoint, the sun was still hampered by a flimsy veneer of cloud, which reduced the strength of the scene - so we found a sheltered cranny and absorbed the grandeur of the scene as we waited for the sun to stream out from the edge of the cloud and bring the shadows back to full strength.
When the sun did climb back in to the blue, I couldn't resist a little photographic overkill. This is a closer shot of the layered granite battlements...
...a wider shot showing more of the cliffs abutting Trevilley Bay...
...and a shot from further towards the tip of the point showing one of the many granite pillars, topped by fractured rock which sat like a broken Eastern island head.
As the sun passed again under a filtering gauze of cloud, we set off again - along the top of the Lion's Den...
...until we were close to Carn Boel.
The coastal path did not hug the cliffs here, but passed over Carn Boel's neck. This short stretch had the "feel" of moorland...
...a feeling emphasised by the curious combinations of bounders found on rising ground, like more stone-age tribal markers.
It's hard not to characterise piles of granite boulders. As soon as I saw this one, I kept thinking about Pac-man - as if the granite would suddenly start moving its mouth and start chomping its way hither and thither above the horizon!
But it was also very clear that if the weather was in a different mood - stormy, or even in heavy, cloying mist - the same rocks would take on a wild and sinister quality which would not make them out of place in Wuthering Heights...
Seen in profile and in full sunlight they already have an entirely different quality.
Looking back towards the East the feel of moorland continued, although it was starting to give way to farmed land as it reached the horizon. Closer to us, the rocks were humanised by a sprinkling of bluebells.
Beyond Carn Boel the coastal path widened as it headed towards Mill Bay. Confusingly, the point which borders the southern side of Mill Bay is called Carn Les Boel, which means the bay has a Boel either side. Again it probably all makes more sense if you can speak Celtic...
Once we reached the edge of Mill Bay, we decided we wouldn't go further. Since the car was parked at Sennen Cove, every mile we walked southwards was a mile we had to walk back before we could drive home - and Xue was already tired from being on her feet for ten hours while she was working the previous day!
Our vantage point gave us a pleasant view of the beach the other side of the bay - above which was a white building that had been a clear direction marker for some time now.
The beach had no name on the Ordnance Survey map - but the building was marked "Nanjizal" and Mill Bay was also marked as having the alternative name of Nanjizal. Surprisingly, Nanjizal had a Wikipedia entry which took the name to mean Nanjizal Cove and Nanjizal Beach.
The entry continues: Nanjizal has no direct access via road and is usually reached via the South West Coast Path, and so is often very quiet. Nanjizal is also a noted bird watching location. Nanjizal [beach] can vary from a beautiful sandy beach to a stony cove - all at the whim of the sea. To the south is the 'Song of the Sea', where the sea has worn through a narrow passageway from the cove to the ocean. Inside the cove are large rockpools with many types of sea anemones and seaweeds, although the rocks are very slippery and the cove dark and damp. Several of the rocks appear to be covered with a purple substance. Maybe we shoild have gone further after all!
From the highest point on Carn Boel there was a good view further down the coast, encompassing three separate heads: Carn Les Boel, Carn Barra and Carn Guthensbras.Carn Guthensbras is only a few hundred metres from Gwennap Head, which is probably the most southerly point in England outside the Lizard Peninsula.
This shot looks like we did carry on towards Nanjizal, but actually the white building is in the direction of Sennen and this is Xue retracing our steps back to the Sennen Cove car park.
We arrived back at the car at about 5 o'clock, but we were planning to eat out after nightfall, so we still had a few hours of daylight at our disposal.
Having lived in Hong Kong for so long (which is not far from the Tropics and where the time the sun sets varies little year round) we have found it very hard to acclimatise to the the wild variation - between winter and summer - of the time night falls. Even in May it was only really "night" after 9.30pm - which, once you get used to it, means that you can cram a lot more into your summer evenings!
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Land's End: The Walk
Getting There and Parking
The village of Sennen Cove is very small and has little of interest in itself, although there is a Cornish roundhouse at the entrance to the Harbour Car-park (Pay 'n' Display - £1 for 3 hours.) The door was just behind the tail of the car in the photograph and this opened on to some narrow stone steps, which lead up to a surprisingly spacious single room (now a handicraft shop.).
1 - Photo descriptionUnder construction.
The Walk Itself
Under description. 2 - Photo descriptionOddly, I have been unable to find anything about the history of the building, other than a statement (on an American website!) that the building is "over 100 years old."
Whether it was built as a cafe or was converted from a farm building, the cafe seems to hold the key to the history of when tourism started at Land's End in earnest.
Tourism in the UK generally increased with the coming of the railways. The Great Western Railway reached Penzance (not so far from Land's End) in March 1852, so this would have lead to greatly increased numbers of visitors to Cornwall. But this was 3 decades after the peak popularity of Dr. Syntax and a long time after Dr. Johnson, so maybe there were already some intrepid tourists visiting the end of the country before this.
The First and Last Inn (now part of the tourist complex) is supposed to date from the 17th century, so there would have been somewhere for them to stay.
About a mile due west of Land's End are some mostly submerged rocks called the Longships. Again I was shooting into the light, so this photograph (and the next) are mostly "for the record."
There is a very dramatic painting by William Turner entitled the Longships Lighthouse, which was painted circa 1834 - so the area was obviously visited by artists before the coming of the railways. Natural beauty would have been very much in vogue at this time, with Wordsworth reaching the peak of his popularity around 1815.
According to the Trinity House website, the author John Ruskin - a great admirer of Turner - described a storm at Land's End as "an entire disorder of the surges... the whole surface of the sea becomes one dizzy whirl or rushing, writhing, tortured undirected rage bounding and crashing and coiling in an anarchy of enormous power."
If you can find a print of the Turner painting on the web (e.g. through Google Image) you'll find that Ruskin's description is quite a close verbal equivalent to the energy of Turner's impressionistic brush-strokes. Turner cheats heavily on his subject matter, by the way. It's hard to identify the Longships rocks in his picture, although you can see the natural arch which is half-a-mile slightly east of south...
The full story of the Longships Lighthouse can be found on www.trinityhouse.co.uk, but here's a very brief version: before 1790 coast dwellers gained an ample livelihood from plundering the ships driven on the rocks, of which each winter brought a full harvest. In 1791, Trinity House obtained a patent after lodging a petition from seafarers, and gave a lease to Lieutenant Henry Smith by which he would erect a lighthouse on the Longships.
A circular 3-storey tower was soon established on Carn Bras, the largest rock. The lightkeepers used the top floor as a bedroom under a wood and copper lantern (24m above the sea.) The lightkeepers on the Longships led a primitive existence. There were four men, two of whom were on duty at any one time - working one month at a stretch.
During storms the terrific seas which swept over the rock meant the lantern was so often under water that the character of the light was unreliable - so the first tower was replaced by the present circular tower of grey granite in 1875. Longships Lighthouse was automated in 1988.
There are some tables for eating snacks at the north side of the First and Last cafe - not that anyone was using them. Actually they're a very bad background for this close-up, but Xue was looking cheerful so I snapped it anyway.
The dark glasses are typical. Oddly, despite her dark eyes, Xue seems quite susceptible to strong sunlight and if I don't let her wear them she normally squints at the camera!
From there we had to pass through the tourist zone, so we thought it might be a good opportunity for Xue to take a quick trip on a fishing boat.Presumably the "PZ" license number on this one means that it came out of Penzance - where there is still an active fishing harbour crowded with boats (as we saw later in the day, when we drove along the coast from Mousehole.)
Not that it took her very far!
Next to the fishing boat is a lifeboat. I didn't read the plaque while we were there, thinking it would be on the theme park's website - but it isn't so I'm not sure where it came from, when it was decommissioned and what class it is - sorry!
Not being much into boats myself I decided I'd just cosy up to the crew. This is me having a "who's got the baggiest and most shapeless trousers" competition with Johnny Depp...Yes, I am wearing the same down jacket that I was wearing for our winter walks - I told you it was windy!
The best scenery at the tip of the peninsula is found south of the First and Last Inn. Looking from the lower headland at the tip of Carn Greeb, you can see that the tourist zone is perched on top of cliffs that drop precipitously into Greeb Zawn.
This is the same view, a little wider...
...and the same view, a little wider...with Xue!
A coastal path continues along Carn Greeb, behind a tourist farm (which did have a couple of cute ponies) - and you soon feel that you are back in a relationship with the wilderness, away from the demands of the modern Cornish economy.
This shot is looking across the back of a group of rocks with the inexplicable (unless you speak Cornish, perhaps) name of Enys Dodnan and across Zawn Wells to Pordenack Point.
Approaching Pordenack Point you can look back and see that one of the rocks is a perfect natural arch.
I mentioned earlier that there was a rock called the Armed Knight - that's it to the left. (The sun was being blocked thin stratus clouds at the time, so the contrast isn't as strong as I would like...)
Here's a closer shot of the arch from a little further back, which shows the hole in the rock more clearly...
...while this (wider) shot shows it's location with regard to the First and Last Inn. The sun has come out again here, although the horizon is another candidate for reorientation-by-Photoshop!
In several places (including the northern edge of Pordenack Point) the grass was growing thick with flowers. I'd seen these pink ones while at Godrevy, but couldn't identify them (see earlier post.) I've since found that they are called Thrift or, more commonly, Sea-Pinks.
Of course, we couldn't resist the photo opportunity! The sun was behind thin cloud again so I used fill-flash, which gives it a slightly flat and artificial look.The background is nicely bordered by another of the large-stoned walls typical of this area.
The coast between Pordenack Point and Carn Boel (the bay is called Zawn Trewilley) features granite cliffs, which plummet into the sea like a castle guarding an ancient harbour.Although it was windy the sea was not particularly angry - and yet even in its calm mood, the surf could still send spume aching high in the air as the waves challenged the impassive stone.
The cliffs above Zawn Trewilley nearest to Pordenack Point are known as "The Lion's Den", which may be an indication that this is definitely not a place you want to be when there is a gale smashing against the shoreline from the west!
At the top of the Lion's Den, the sheer rock has a curiously stratified appearance, which gives it a distinctly "man-made" quality and reinforced the sense that these were buttresses from an ancient fortress, acting as the country's western bulwark against the armies of an invading ocean.
When we arrived at this viewpoint, the sun was still hampered by a flimsy veneer of cloud, which reduced the strength of the scene - so we found a sheltered cranny and absorbed the grandeur of the scene as we waited for the sun to stream out from the edge of the cloud and bring the shadows back to full strength.
When the sun did climb back in to the blue, I couldn't resist a little photographic overkill. This is a closer shot of the layered granite battlements...
...a wider shot showing more of the cliffs abutting Trevilley Bay...
...and a shot from further towards the tip of the point showing one of the many granite pillars, topped by fractured rock which sat like a broken Eastern island head.
As the sun passed again under a filtering gauze of cloud, we set off again - along the top of the Lion's Den...
...until we were close to Carn Boel.
The coastal path did not hug the cliffs here, but passed over Carn Boel's neck. This short stretch had the "feel" of moorland...
...a feeling emphasised by the curious combinations of bounders found on rising ground, like more stone-age tribal markers.
It's hard not to characterise piles of granite boulders. As soon as I saw this one, I kept thinking about Pac-man - as if the granite would suddenly start moving its mouth and start chomping its way hither and thither above the horizon!
But it was also very clear that if the weather was in a different mood - stormy, or even in heavy, cloying mist - the same rocks would take on a wild and sinister quality which would not make them out of place in Wuthering Heights...
Seen in profile and in full sunlight they already have an entirely different quality.
Looking back towards the East the feel of moorland continued, although it was starting to give way to farmed land as it reached the horizon. Closer to us, the rocks were humanised by a sprinkling of bluebells.
Beyond Carn Boel the coastal path widened as it headed towards Mill Bay. Confusingly, the point which borders the southern side of Mill Bay is called Carn Les Boel, which means the bay has a Boel either side. Again it probably all makes more sense if you can speak Celtic...
Once we reached the edge of Mill Bay, we decided we wouldn't go further. Since the car was parked at Sennen Cove, every mile we walked southwards was a mile we had to walk back before we could drive home - and Xue was already tired from being on her feet for ten hours while she was working the previous day!
Our vantage point gave us a pleasant view of the beach the other side of the bay - above which was a white building that had been a clear direction marker for some time now.
The beach had no name on the Ordnance Survey map - but the building was marked "Nanjizal" and Mill Bay was also marked as having the alternative name of Nanjizal. Surprisingly, Nanjizal had a Wikipedia entry which took the name to mean Nanjizal Cove and Nanjizal Beach.
The entry continues: Nanjizal has no direct access via road and is usually reached via the South West Coast Path, and so is often very quiet. Nanjizal is also a noted bird watching location. Nanjizal [beach] can vary from a beautiful sandy beach to a stony cove - all at the whim of the sea. To the south is the 'Song of the Sea', where the sea has worn through a narrow passageway from the cove to the ocean. Inside the cove are large rockpools with many types of sea anemones and seaweeds, although the rocks are very slippery and the cove dark and damp. Several of the rocks appear to be covered with a purple substance. Maybe we shoild have gone further after all!
From the highest point on Carn Boel there was a good view further down the coast, encompassing three separate heads: Carn Les Boel, Carn Barra and Carn Guthensbras.Carn Guthensbras is only a few hundred metres from Gwennap Head, which is probably the most southerly point in England outside the Lizard Peninsula.
This shot looks like we did carry on towards Nanjizal, but actually the white building is in the direction of Sennen and this is Xue retracing our steps back to the Sennen Cove car park.
We arrived back at the car at about 5 o'clock, but we were planning to eat out after nightfall, so we still had a few hours of daylight at our disposal.
Having lived in Hong Kong for so long (which is not far from the Tropics and where the time the sun sets varies little year round) we have found it very hard to acclimatise to the the wild variation - between winter and summer - of the time night falls. Even in May it was only really "night" after 9.30pm - which, once you get used to it, means that you can cram a lot more into your summer evenings!
Labels:
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