Charlestown to Fowey

Distance 10 miles - Grade 4 miles easy and 6 miles Moderate - what these grades mean

Leaving Charlestown behind you, today’s walk takes you around the Eastern side of St Austell Bay initially on an easy ramble above low cliffs past a golf course and then the huge china clay works before you reach the wide and spacious Par Sands and the start of Daphne du Maurier Country. The walk gets wilder as you climb to the remote Gribbin Headland with its memorable red and white striped Daymark Tower on the site of one of the coastal signal stations used at the time of the Spanish Armada

Before you reach the Tower the challenging climbs and descents start again but this time you are rewarded by a lunch stop at the beautiful cresent shaped pilchard fishing cove and beach at Polkerris. At the foot of the cliffs you find a well preserved little quay and stout stone built former pilchard cellars tucked into the bottom end of a narrow wooded valley. With its fine sandy beach, harbour wall and rockpools this is a favourite for swimming,  scrambling and exploring.

In the 19thCentury as = part of the Rashleigh Estate it had its own lifeboat and Coastguard Station and the Pilchard Cellars were the largest  in Cornwall  - Today it’s a handful of jumbled cottages with a fine restaurant in the Old Lifeboat Boatshed at Sams on the Beach. If you prefer sit outside the Rashleigh Inn (the former Coastguard Station) on its sunny terrace right above the beach. This is one of the nicest and safest places for a swim and you can also hire sit on top kayaks for an hour to paddle out for a superb view of the cliffs and coves you will be walking above this afternoon.

Its hard to leave Polkerris not least due to the steep zigzag ascent through wild garlic woodland to regain the cliff top path and this takes you onto the headland at Gribben Head which you last saw 15 miles back from Black Head before your journey around St Austell Bay

A commanding spot the tower does the location justice standing 84 feet above the cliffs built in 1832 to enable mariners to recognise and avoid this wild and entrancing headland from the sea. Watch out for Peregrines up here soaring above a carpet of coastal flowers in the spring.

Between here and Fowey its iconic Daphne Du Maurier coastline. The wild beauty of the coves and low cliffs becoming the location for so many of her novels including Rebecca, The Birds, Rule Britannia, the Kings General and The House on the Strand which were all faithfully based on this immediate landscape.

At Polridmouth an enchanting hidden beach opens upon the coast path in front of a placid ornamental lake which houses the “infamous” Boathouse from Rebecca, whilst Menabilly, better known as Manderlay and once the writer’s home is now just inland of this spot up one of the many wooded coombes.

The route onto Fowey is a joy with a series of former smuggling coves infamous for landing contraband which was whisked away under cover of dark to the remote farms that can be spotted inland as the path rises and falls from shingle beach to low clifftop and back again

At narrow Coombe Haven cove you pass above a popular smuggling point which became very famous locally when in 1845 the Fowey coastguard surprised the landing party here who fled to the delight of the people of Fowey as they left 92 barrels of Brandy floating just off shore.

As you approach Fowey you pass the grand Mausoleum of the Rashleigh Family high on the clifftop below which is King Henry Viii’s  St Catherine's Castle, built by Thomas Treffrey as far back as 1540.

You can access it directly from the coast path and freely wander its compact ramparts for the most stunning introduction and views over the natural harbour and river mouth of Fowey, without doubt the most stunning location on this section of coast.

At the foot of the wooded cliffs the ancient trackway of Love Lane leads your descent to Fowey arriving at tiny Readymoney Cove a wild feeling swimming beach which looks straight across the estuary mouth to the village of Polruan.

We may be biased, but– Fowey,  by virtue of still being a working port is the least spoilt and most pleasant of the Cornish Harbours. Normal life continues here without being taken over by visitors in the same way as can happen in the likes of  St Ives, Padstow and Port Isaac.

You are here for the next 2 nights so make the most of its vibrant restaurants, salty waterfront pubs and the views over the ever changing natural harbour as boats arrive and depart. Fowey is a unique and utterly charming location in Cornwall and one of the only places in the South West to win the most desirable place to live in the UK award.

Click Here to read about overnight stays and facilities in the harbour of Fowey.