A lady walking along a coastal path
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Influential

There can’t be any more secret hideaways only the locals know about left. Someone calling themselves something like Travel_Insider100 has no doubt filmed a 10x speed video and overlayed it with circa 1998 fonts and shared it with their 22.8K followers who are all stunned at the location you would never believe is actually England and have since endeavoured to wild camp / swim / block the narrow lanes as soon as possible. Thus crumbles the likes of Pedn Vounder.

Now, if I had any influence whatsoever you would have known about the following secret hideaways more than fifteen years ago because they are places I go back to time and time again, usually to eat the same things, walk the same walks, take the same pictures, and espouse the same waffle. But you can’t blame me for any sudden influx of drones or sugar hit superficiality with a jingly soundtrack. I mean, you’d have to read my stuff for a start.

So off we go, again…

I believe I saw Kingsand and Cawsand recently pronounced as twin fishing villages like going back in time but without the crowds. Now in my earliest memories, there have always been some crowds, just not the crowds of St. Ives or Padstow. Unless it’s a stormy February, the ferry is always busy, the shorefront simmering away, the narrow lanes dotted with people gawping into tiny porthole windows. But there does linger a peaceful charm, even with Plymouth being just around the corner.

A calm cove with pink flowers in the foreground

A newer and arguably welcome development is a spot of half decent waterfront dining / snacking / drinking just as you scramble ashore from the ferry. There is an ice cream van also conveniently adjacent. In between eating savoury and sweet you can wander the lanes, bumble with the bees, cram into a tiny deli to suss out the local cheese, and just semi-seriously enquire as to the price of that vacant cottage. The ice cream is at least within reach.

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You’ll never believe what I have seen two or three times in the last few weeks. Someone has had a camera with them and had the ingenuity to discover one of the best half day walks on the South West Coast Path. It goes between Looe and Polperro, and, like many, I have discovered it before. It’s lovely and reasonably convenient and, yes, you can check out the top ten landmarks of Shipton Abbott if you wish. But for me the highlight is saving for a home deposit by skipping the car park fee at Polperro. There you go, a free travel hack.

A wonderful lady with a pasty and a seagull waiting with menace

Save your pennies instead for a Sarah’s pasty or two in Looe, only enjoyed on edge as murderous-eyed seagulls encircle. This provides more than enough nourishment for the undulations all the way to Talland Bay, where you can stock up again on cakes or ice cream or simply refresh with a cup of tea. Tea and tranquility the antidote to salty seagull frenzy.

I thought it was a short hop, skip and jump from here to Polperro but I underestimated the climbing which turns into a bit of a wheezy slog all the way up to a memorial cross. But it is the Polperro Parish memorial cross so that is something to commemorate, despite the village still out of sight.

A view of coastline and green hills through the trees

Walking along the coast path you’d have no idea Polperro is even nearby, such is the abrupt cleft in which the ocean creeps. It is only as you are almost upon it that an entire Cornish model village reveals itself in a glare of whitewashed cottage and kaleidoscope of bunting. The soundtrack is all gull and diesel trawler, the smells seaweedy pilchard with the odd waft of tidal mud. Lobster pots are as ubiquitous as postcards. Lanes are there for getting lost.

A picturesque harbour with cottages and boats

As we pottered about gradually inching towards the top of town and a bus stop, it was pleasing to see that some evil genius had propped open the toilets with a container of kerosene. No 60p fee today, times two. Maybe this is the best budget-saving half day adventure in Cornwall after all? Just make sure you use the toilets, free or not, because it sure is a long two pound bus ride back to Plymouth.

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Bus wankers. But check this out. People in 2025 actually being friendly and talking with one another on a bus! How quaint in white lettering with a black background. This amazing experience can happen on the 35 from Ham Green to Plymouth City Centre, where every stop is bustling with old dears and yet another hopeful pram. An old geezer in a flat cap is the latest addition, greeting the blue rinse set with a healthy morning ladies in dulcet Janner tones and a twinkle in his eye.

It almost seems a shame to pick up a car, but also not a shame at all because this is offering the chance to revisit places virtually out of reach of public transport. In cool late afternoon sunshine we head to the north coast of Cornwall, where I am keen to nudge speed limits in a quest for lush green pastures and sparkling blue sea and dream-like cake. Is Boscastle Farm Shop the best place for refreshments on the South West Coast Path?

Tea and cake and clotted cream and green hills with cows and blue sea below

The happiness of life at this point in time is amplified by free parking after 4pm and a walk out to the headlands of Boscastle Harbour. It is a tad blustery and the waves are reasonably wavy, a state of affairs garnishing the dramatic beauty of what may or may not be Dragonstone. Dark slabs of rock at angles forged in the earth’s furnace mighty enough to stand up to the swelling, pulsating ocean. Cosplay Targaryens blissfully absent.

A sinewy harbour in a narrow valley

Coastal plants with a bridge and rocks in the background

A dramatic island linked to the coastline by a suspension bridge

So another travel hack is to arrive at places like this late in the day, but not so late that the farm shop has closed. Tintagel is equally as quiet, the town sleepy with an air of desperation, the headlands peaceful with an air of salt and ozone. It’s late enough for the castle to be closed and free entry to a little part of it, the mainland part of it. Good value if you are walking the coast path penniless, fabricating encounters and manipulating illness to write a book or something.

It turns out all the characters are down at Trebarwith Strand, seemingly gathering for some kind of birthday or Friday night supper in the encroaching gloam. Bodies adorn and litter the rocks and I can only imagine slow shutter speed sunset seekers tut-tutting and rolling their eyes. The beach is disappearing as quickly as the light and even quicker than any remote hope of a majestic sky.

A rugged beach with late sun and reflections from a rock pool

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Hey, have you heard of this crazy type of rain? The locals call it mizzle and you should definitely not check it out. Despite looking innocuous it soaks you to the bone and lures you towards cliff edges. There is a sea down there somewhere but you can hardly hear it because this incredible precipitation phenomenon also absorbs sound. Wow, living my best life.

Yet for its very damp bleariness there is cocoon-like comfort associated with a walk in the mizzle. From far-reaching vistas the focus shifts to the immediate and mundane; your breath and your footsteps, the infinite shades of long grass below, the teardrop of water coagulating upon the tip of a leaf. The outline of a shady Hotel Camelot and a cat on a wall. It’s not clearing, so bugger it let’s go and get a hot drink.

A misty view of cliffs with a signpost and overlooking wild seas

If Tintagel was a little downbeat the evening before, early morning was positively ghostly. There is probably a tall tale of the spectre of a headless knight roaming the streets here seeking plastic swords and a genuine pasty. Today they are reincarnate in the bus load of German tourists that have found themselves in a branch of The Cornish Bakery, ordering pasties and bitter black coffee at ten in the morning. I feel both delighted and deflated at the realisation that their lasting impression of an iconic delicacy will be that thing there.

I just hope their cream tea experience proves more impressive. Mine certainly does. It’s a scene almost worth filming and sharing a smartarse clip where you break open the scones and zoom in on the jam and slather the cream all over a camera lens and then stroll beside the sunny cottages decorated with bright flowers hand in hand. But I don’t want to influence you or, frankly, encourage you. It is all mine to remember. Or mostly mine, for there is nothing finer than seeing your new wife embrace this experience with gusto. Totally under the influence.

Food & Drink Great Britain Green Bogey Photography Walking
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English salad

The glow of the sun kissed my face, smoothing weary creases and tired eyes. I stretched my legs free, unfurled my arms and breathed in air unguarded. A salty, doughy morsel touched my lips, comforting and contented, filling a roiling void somewhere in my stomach. And then I took a sup on a coffee from Pret and came down to earth. With a bump.

Not for the first time today, meeting Great British tarmac at Heathrow Airport. A concrete scene which diminishes with miles, through the leafiness of Surrey, the crops and commuter towns of Hampshire, the river valleys and chalky plains of Wiltshire. The proportion of sunshine to concrete proves related, as cool, cloudy skies greet me in Salisbury, alongside Dad.

To leave Australia at this point in time seems fortuitous given the dreadful weather before I left. And here we have a UK bathing in the after effects of a jubilee, a promise of summer to clutch on to as you avert your eyes from the petrol pump. A summer of pretending a pandemic has gone, crowds feasting on fresh salads with iceberg cheap and plentiful. Not that I’ll be overdosing on salad.

Every return I make I am struck by the burgeoning salad of the English countryside, even though this time I left an oddly verdant Australia. Wiltshire presents the kind of gentle introduction I need, an ease in to a Britain that is still to be treasured for its tranquil waterways, butterflied meadows and rolling downs. A Britain of bunting and thatch and country piles interspersed with the odd pocket of chaviness. This Country indeed.

Ably guided by Dad it is splendid what you can simply embrace within a small radius of Durrington. The River Avon never seems far away and a small stretch is but a mere five minutes walk from home. The background buzz of mowers competes with the chirping of the bird life. Around each corner lies the possibility of catching a kingfisher in flight or an amorous couple in fright, each as frisky as the other. A melange of nettles, weeds and grasses rise to a height in which other things no doubt hide. But blessedly not so many snakes.

A greater danger around here seems to be the prospect of emerging from the long grass to face a head-on confrontation with a tank. The armed forces war-gaming upon Salisbury Plain makes walking a slightly more interesting proposition. For centuries these have been venues of military endeavour, evident in the many iron-age hill forts punctuating the landscape. Obvious staging posts with expansive views out to marauding invaders.

Today Sidbury Hill is a quieter affair, though two men in combats linger beside a Land Rover near the top. I can’t decide if they were discussing the strategic ramifications of ground assault in Donbas or eating lunch. Dad and I ate lunch, looking out for butterflies.

The plain isn’t all that plain, and an impromptu detour on the way down the hill takes us through a patch of woodland. Fresh off a plane I remind myself to look up into the canopy at the shapes of the leaves, broad and green, forming into layers which intertwine their way towards the sky. Leaving hobbit-like tunnels and corridors of natural art through which to stroll.

There is little strolling for the squaddies however. We encounter backpack-laden platoons traversing water and nettles and unbearable banter during another walk over the plain and down alongside the Avon. It is, almost, tolerable shorts weather but I’m glad I didn’t succumb given the undergrowth to navigate. Not quite squaddie style, but a little track-hunting through the long grass nonetheless.

Nature infiltrates everything here but so too is it tamed. That could be a slogan for Wiltshire, the taming often coming in the form of genteel cottages clustered together in the midst of industrious fields. It frequently makes you feel as though you are in Escape To The Country, only without the two million quid on which to prevaricate.

Our own escape in the country culminated with a flurry of thatch in the small hamlet of Ablington. Here it was as if everything had been deliberately arranged for my convenience. Under sunny skies dotted with cotton wool clouds, a row of whitewashed cottages sit higgledy-piggledy along the lane. Gardens and window boxes pop with colour, hedgerows hum with insects, and glimpses of perfectly manicured lawn conjure images of scones and jam on a latticework table. A Union Jack waves proud, and underneath a Mini in racing green. And everywhere, rambling, decadent, undeniable English salad.

Great Britain Green Bogey Walking