Cornish Walks: Lamorna & the West

Following the last hike I managed to find an old newspaper walk that I wrote more than 20 years ago which includes the area west of Lamorna Cove. Here it is…

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 I said to my friend Bins: "Who needs an eclipse when you can watch double-sunsets in Cornwall?"

St Loy west of Lamorna

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 - so brilliant and all-embracing was the glow of these twin orbs.

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 two horse-drawn carts. As they had arrived with their backs to the suns we pointed 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.

Merry Maidens, West Penwith

The unsmiling exception - a 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, in case my trusting readers thought I had finally lost my few remaining marbles, I am glad to report that the wayward young boffin was right. I phoned the Met.

Office's enquiries desk at Bracknell and the knowledgeable chap there 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 causes 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 extraordinary apparition caused me to have a bolstering snifter later that evening in Zennor's Tinners Arms, I hope 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 and little else because 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's as romantic a place as any to be found 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 contrary way typical of children, 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.

Her mother 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.

Zawn Gamper just happens to be a cove along the way, but I have a weakness for places with weird names. This one sounds a bit like some half-boiled psycho in a second-rate 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 just can't resist them.

Indeed I can't resist this fabulous hike. As for Bins he couldn't resist a word or two with some American girls who were 'doing' the peninsula from St Ives around to Penzance. They complained that this south coast was too "bitty" and they much preferred the bolder, 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 a French-speaking pirate bidding a secret and passionate adieu to the lady of the manor, or perhaps a Nazi spy counting the hours until darkness would cloak his escape in a U-boat.

This is especially feasible when you 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 clandestine 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, but if you really don'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 ancient stone circle known as the Merry Maidens.

For us it was getting late and, having spotted the twin-suns sinking fast we wanted to hop along to the sepulchral stones which seemed the perfect place to soak up an atmosphere which seemed half Camelot, half X-File.

So rich is this corner in ancient remains that within just a stone's throw there's a 4,000 year old stone grave on the grass verge of the road and two enormous monoliths called The Pipers looking ominous and vibrant with hidden meaning in the next field - not to mention what must be one of the finest stone circles in the country.

We were soaking up all this ancient rune meets cosmic-happening type stuff when the hippies arrived on their horse-drawn traps and wandered about in their robes wafting scents of wood-smoke and horse in the warm evening breeze.

There was something rather beautiful and alluring about them and my youth-yearning, middle-aged bones wanted to stay up there on the hill in the hopes that some of their carefree existence would rub off on my own, but instead we turned down the cool leafy lane that leads back to Lamorna so that we could reach Zennor in time for a bracing drink.

After all, it's not every night that a chap sees double before the sun goes down.

We stayed in the are with Classic Cottages