Trevose Head and Booby’s Bay

Our final walk of the week was a lovely gentle coastal walk around Trevose Head which is a short distance from the popular village of Padstow. Being a peninsular the advantage of this circular walk was that over 75% of it was along the coast path. More details can be found on the I Walk Cornwall site where I found the route.

Following coffee and cake in Rafferty’s Cafe and Winebar in Saint Merryn we drove the short distance to the small Constantine Bay car park where we were fortunate to find two parking spaces. We later discovered there is a large National Trust car park near Booby’s Bay and closer to Trevose Head if Constantine car park is full.

Booby’s Bay is named after a small white seabird with a yellow head and black wing tips and more information on the beach can be found on the Cornwall Beach Guide website.

We followed the length of Constantine Bay’s spectacular expanse of golden sand and continued along the path around Booby’s Bay and its many rock pools until we came to Trevose Head.

We walked around the huge collapsed sea cave and peered over the edge where the sea enters at high tide. The height and steepness of this cave gave us a strange eery feeling…

We saw a seal bobbing about near the rocks in this part of the bay.

Time for lunch with a view towards Mother Ivey’s Bay in the distance and a delicious Cornish pasty… these are a pastry snack which traditionally consists of a beef, potato, swede and onion filling and while its origins are unclear is thought to date back to the 1860’s and most likely variations were around much earlier. Ours were vegetable pasties and were still warm having purchased them freshly cooked from a bakery in Saint Merryn a couple of hours earlier.

Apparently Mother Ivey was a sixteenth century white witch and more information on this local legend and the walk in general can be found on the South West Coast Path website.

RNLI lifeboat station can be seen in the distance in the above picture, this was rebuilt in 2006.

Chris was keen for another dip in the sea… unlike Millook Haven beach which was rocky, he was able to enjoy soft sand beneath his feet and gentle waves in which to swim. The rest of our group continued around the coast and Chris and I later met them back at the cars after taking a short-cut across the headland!

Our shortcut took us back past Booby’s Bay.

By the time we arrived back at Constantine Beach, the tide was even further out meaning an even greater stretch of golden sand! There is a cafe at the Constantine car park which is idea for a welcome hot or cold drink and snack if you wish at the end of the walk.

Summary

This is the final post of our recent adventures in Devon and Cornwall. We are looking forward to another UK staycation where we are heading off to Anglesey in Wales in October.