The wildest stretch

HARTLAND POINT TO ST AGNES HEAD 102 MILES (164KM)

The wildest, most windswept part of the Coast Path, this is the place for escaping the madding crowd (though it makes huge demands of your legs and lungs). Here gulls cruise above the rusted remains of ships claimed by huge Atlantic rollers crashing onto deadly rocks. The only seafarers braving this swashbuckling shoreline were those who knew where and how to land their boats straight onto the sand and shingle in the smugglers’ coves wedged between the towering cliffs. Rocky tors and windswept trees are silhouetted against the skyline, and the shadows of scudding clouds swell and billow over high farmland. Baked hard by geological rumpus, for millennia the cliffs have resisted the pounding of the waves, and water falls roaring to the beaches from the high “hanging valleys”. Further south, the sea has eaten into softer rock, carving underwater caverns that boom beneath your feet, fashioning blowholes like the one hurling foaming water into Boscastle harbour.

In Hawker’s Hut, opium-smoking Tennyson dreamed up Merlin plucking Arthur from the surf, and we follow him on through Arthurian Tintagel, all great halls and rites of passage in secret glens bejewelled today with the ribbons and coins of awestruck Wiccans. Bude, Padstow and Newquay need no introduction (but don’t miss the rock formations at Bedruthan Steps and Trevelgue Head).

TRY THIS WALK: 20 spectacular miles from Tintagel to Rock, with an overnight break in Port Isaac and a ferry across the River Camel to Padstow at the end. Port Gaverne’s fish cellars tell of women and children packing the catch into barrels of salt,

Port Quin’s ruined cottages of a fishing community wiped out in a single tragedy at sea. The coastline here is scored with deep valleys, so be prepared for some steep climbs and descents but a lot of stunning scenery over shipwrecking rocks. Both ends have full facilities, with some in Port Isaac too.