Day 17: Upton to Hartland

 

Hard, painfull: That sums up today. We knew we had a fairly long day.. Not great in distance all things considered. however, walking the South West Coast Path is a bit like wading through porridge and every Km seems more like 3. No sooner do you reach the top of one steep rise but the ground falls away steeply between your feet and you decend further into hell only to climb with your legs aching and lungs burning up and up and up.

We set off from Upton down to Bude and along the beach front. We said goodbye to Bude along side the colourful bathing sheds and sort of imagined ourselves as prim Victorian bathers lol.

And climbed our first of many cliffs of the day.

We left the coastal path for a while to route march up the lanes to the pub at Morwenstow for lunch and then into the mist that had descended whilst we were at lunch and passed the Church and back onto the coastal path and the section from hell!

Like the grand old Duke do York we marched to the top of the hill and we marched down again over and over again!

 But we did pass one milestone... We left Cornwall and entered Devon! However Devon's cliffs we no less steep

Finally at Marsland Mouth we surveyed one cliff too many and headed up a marginally less steep footpath to the lane where we could put on a bit of speed and leave the porridge behind in the hope of reaching our destination before night fell.

We were rewarded by the beauty of rural Devon. 

And eventually reached our Hotel for the night in time for a shower, a well earned beer and dinner then beeeed!