Cornish Walks: Mousehole to Lamorna Circular Route

Here's a hike that's been enjoyed by many thousands of people down the centuries. It's a bit of a tradition, the walk from Mousehole to Lamorna Cove, the origins of which have been lost in the mists of time...

Fact File

Basic hike: Mousehole to Lamorna Cove via Coast Path and back across the fields.

Recommended map: Ordnance Survey Explorer 102 (Land's End).

Distance and going: five miles, up and down a bit, muddy in many places.

We stayed with Classic Cottages at the following property https://www.classic.co.uk/holiday-cottage/desc-4608.html

Mousehole Harbour

"When I was a boy dozens and dozens of people would do the walk on a Good Friday," I was told by Douglas Williams, the man who knows more about the distant south west corner of Cornwall than anyone else. "And before that it was hundreds and hundreds.

"The people of Mousehole and Newlyn mainly - a few from Penzance - would walk out to Lamorna. Why? I don't think anyone really knows. It was just a tradition. What did we do when we got there? Nothing much. Sit down and a have a lemonade. I think it may have had something do with going out to see all the flowers. You know, Lamorna is in a very sheltered spot and you get any number of primroses and daffodils down there in the valley.

"It was a young people's do really, although parents might go along as well - making it a thing for all the family," remembers Douglas. "But it's all come to an end now. I'm not sure anyone does it any more - I think it may have dwindled when bikers and the like started turning up and being noisy. Maybe there were one or two incidents. But the people from Newlyn would have to pass my house and I don't think I've seen any doing the Good Friday walk for years."

Time to revitalise tradition then. Let's re-inaugurate the old Lamorna walk. I can think of nothing more civilised and altogether pleasant than a mass migration to somewhere so utterly beautiful.

Douglas told me that the walkers of yesteryear wouldn't necessarily take the Coast Path - they'd get to Lamorna anyway they could. And, as there are several options, I've made this a circular hike. Moreover, I start in Mousehole - not because I'm lazy - but because the Newlyn route takes you along the road, which isn't much fun, especially on a Bank Holiday.

Mousehole Harbour

At Mousehole we parked on the quay - which I imagine will be mission impossible from this weekend onwards - there were only three other cars parked in the pouring rain and the famous little fishing port was as empty as it will ever be.

St Clement's Isle, Mousehole's own ship-wrecking reef, looked particularly black, grim and dangerous just a few hundred yards offshore. Staring at the surf that surged around it, I recalled a tale once told me by the port's harbour master, Frank Wallace. It was to do with the wrecking of the Thames sailing barge Baltic in November 1907.

Apparently the beleaguered crew set fire to paraffin-soaked mattresses to alert the coastguard of their plight. Half-a-dozen brave Mousehole men hauled a fishing boat into the wild seas so they could cross to the island and, after five attempts to land, they were able to save three men and two women from the stricken ship...

"One of those rescued men was my cousin's father," said Frank. "He came ashore, stayed and married the harbour master's daughter. I'm harbour master now and I've got three daughters. They're all married - but for years I wondered if there'd be a ship-wrecked sailor coming off St Clement's.

"Yes, I remember doing the Good Friday walk," sighed Frank when I asked him about it. "So many did it - the hill would go black with people. And when you got there there'd be stalls all over the place - a real fairground atmosphere. Trouble was, at this time of year you could never be sure of the weather. I can remember taking my wife and daughters round there in the snow."

NOTE: I have done this walk several times including just a week or two ago - and I must say a lot of the undergrowth around the tops of the cliffs really has grown at an alarming rate. The path is not in a good state either - but it’s still a truly wonderful hike. I wrote the following account of the walk some 20 years ago…

It was far from snowing when we climbed the hill out of town. A heavy drizzle hissed at us on a breeze so mild that we began to regret having to wear our billowing waterproofs. Good growing weather, I should say. In fact I know it must have been because we were treated to any number of flowers throughout the walk - flowers that won't be popping their heads out on my native heath for a month or more.

The road veers inland just above Point Spaniard, and this is where the Coast Path begins its trudge south in earnest. Basically this is a saunter among the quinells.

Quinells? Well, I think that's what the little fields are called. We've seen them time and again along the south coast from Lyme Regis to Land's End - the miniature, cliff-hugging, paddocks that were once groaning with new potatoes, beans and other early edibles, not to mention swathes of flowers.

The Corsican and Monterey Pines along here took one hell of a beating during a mighty storm in the early 1990's, and 90 percent of the trees were blown down. The Cornish Wildlife Trust is now busy making sense of this marvellous, tangled, place.

NOTE 2: Be warned that when we walked along this section recently we were attacked by the most angry hit-squad of angry wasps it’s ever been my displeasure to encounter. Several other walkers on the coast path had been stung by these really aggressive insects. In 25 years of walks-writing I have never experienced such a thing before. They had made a nest in a hole an inch or two from the coast path, which at this point is surrounded by impenetrable thickets of gorse on either side. As I walked past thousands of the little blighters spewed upward out of the two inch wide hole like so many sparks firing out of a large Roman Candle firework. I was stung three times on the arm - and my friends ran one way while I legged it on towards Lamorna. It took them ages and a long detour to catch up with me..

At last we came to Carn-du, which is the ragged headland that turns the corner into Lamorna Cove, and we sat there for a while watching trawlers setting out to sea. The conditions were so wild that they regularly disappeared in the enormous troughs between the waves.

Entering Lamorna Cove from the east

It was difficult to imagine thousands of Good Friday hikers milling around stalls as we walked into Lamorna, there was not a soul in sight, but perhaps this article might inspire one or two of you to take up the old tradition again.

Path back to Mousehole across the fields

In the meantime we must get you back: it's simply a matter of climbing north out of the cove, following the footpath to Kemyel Wartha, and beyond past Kemyel Crease and on again past Kemyel Drea. These are farms and at the latter you pass right through the milking yard, which comes as a bit of a surprise both for walker and for cow. But soon you are deposited back on the road above Point Spaniard - having enjoyed what I promise is the perfect, traditional, coastal, hike on a Good Friday or at any other time of the year…

Mousehole’s narrow streets