Secret Cornwall 8 - Lamorna Cove and The Merry Maidens
Many years ago I wrote the following walk article for the newspapers after my pal Bins and I had enjoyed this extraordinary hike. I was there again this week, so thought I’d repeat the words here - because this really is a magical part of Cornwall….
We walked west as far as St Loy from Lamorna Cove and turned up onto the hills so that we could find a stone circle where we could watch the suns going down. That's right - suns. Two of them dipped towards the great, vast illuminated void of the Atlantic Ocean and we knew these were special moments indeed.
Lamorna Cove - autumn 2020
The whole of England's most far-flung peninsula was bathed in light to the extent that even our chins and my long nose cast no shadow as the glow of these twin orbs was brilliant and all-embracing.
We were standing amidst the standing stones of the Merry Maidens watching this cosmic phenomenon with incredulity when a band of hippies galloped up on board two horse-drawn carts. As they had arrived with their backs to the suns we were glad to point out this somewhat miraculous occurrence and were instantly repaid by a chorus of 'wows' and 'far-outs' from all but one of this merry gang.
This tall, emaciated youth who looked as if he'd be more at home on University Challenge than galloping across the rocky downs of Penwith behind a pair of unshorn horses, stroked his wisp of a beard and said: "Interesting. Rather a rare meteorological phenomenon commonly known as a 'sun-dog'.
And dear readers, in case long suffering and trusting among you thought I had finally lost it, I can report that the wayward young boffin was right. I rang the Met. Office's enquiries desk and the knowledgeable chap manning the phone informed me: "Parhelia - otherwise known as a sun-dog. Quite rare, noteworthy at the very least.
"It happens when there's a very high layer of ice-crystals which cause the light to bend. then you can get a halo and, more rarely a mock sun or even two to the left (as ours was), right, both sides or even above the real sun."
So there you have it. Although this truly far-out apparition caused me to have a bolstering snifter later that evening in Zennor's Tinners Arms, I'm sure that you will now believe that not a drop had passed my lips before I saw the twin-suns.
Indeed I had been doing a good deal of driving, as that's what it takes to get from almost anywhere to Lamorna Cove.
Ah, Lamorna Cove. Even the name is worth repeating and in the shadowy silence of a sunlit evening it is as romantic a place as any along our rocky coasts. Not that it was in the least bit romantic last time I visited its granite strewn shore.
My daughter Nancy had just learned to walk and, in that way which children have of doing exactly the opposite to what they normally do, she insisted on clambering along the path under her own steam rather than riding in that well known object of parental torture - the back-pack.
Sue still has nightmares about Nancy teetering along this path which, for the first half-mile or so, is riddled with unexpected abysses and sudden, vertical drops.
And so it was with particular ease that I strode out west of Lamorna on the evening of the two suns with my family tucked up safely at home and only my pal Bins to worry about as he cantered off like some wily old goat in the general direction of Zawn Gamper.
I only put that in because Zawn Gamper is a cove along the way and I have a weakness for places with weird names. This one sounds a bit like some half-boiled psycho in a second-rate American backwoods horror movie.
Anyway, it's a lovely enough place and you get to it by walking up out of the shadowy setting of Lamorna Cove, along the sunny headlands of Rosemodress Cliffs, past Carn Barges, Gazell, Tol Toft and Tater-du.
The names won't mean anything to anyone except the lobster-pot fishermen who work along here, but like I say, I simply can't resist them.
Indeed I can't resist this fabulous hike and have promised Sue that we'll return Nancy-less one sunlit evening when the walk is at its best, and do the whole thing without a panic-attack in sight.
As for Bins he couldn't resist a word or two with the American girls who were 'doing' the peninsula from St Ives around to Penzance. They complained that this south coast was "bitty" and they much preferred the bold, emptier northern cliffs past Zennor and St Just.
Once I would have agreed, but now I'm not so sure. There is something Du Maurier-esque or even Secret Seven about this stretch, as if the most natural thing in the world along here would be to stumble across the French-speaking pirate saying a secret adieu to the lady of the manor, or perhaps a Nazi spy counting the hours until darkness cloaked his U-boat escape.
This is especially feasible when you eventually get to St Loy's Cove where there are a couple of remote houses - one watching over the sea as bold as brass, the other lurking in the woods in a secret sort of way.
A footpath climbs up through these woods and along this you must go to reach the B 3315 which will take you back east. I'm sorry about this road bit, and if you really son't want to be on the tarmac there is a zig-zag route on a footpath across the fields from Boskenna Cross to Boscowen Rose and then up to the Merry Maidens.
But it was getting late when were there and, having spotted the twin-suns we wanted to hop along to the Merry maidens which seemed the perfect place to soak up an atmosphere which suddenly seemed half Arthurian legend, half X-File.
