Today we had a plan......................

…...........The plan was.................... take the Edinburgh girlies (who have been staying with us for the last few days) to Newquay Airport for 10am and then do two, 'I Walk Cornwall' walks. St Mawgan to St Columb and then St Mawgan to Mawgan Porth. Best laid plans and all that..................... Both were considered 'easy' walks so we thought we'd be able to do them in about 4 hours or so.

Thought we'd do the St Mawgan to St Columb walk first cos that was the longest. Set off just after 10am and had a very pleasant walk through the woods beside the river in the valley. ….....And then after half an hour of walking we heard a rumble of thunder and then it just rained and rained and rained and rained. Ann put her anorak on. I didn't have an anorak.
We literally had to walk for one and a half hours in torrential rain......................

…...........After 40 mins of walking, we came across a couple of trees that had blown down across the path. The choice was.................. abandon the walk and walk 40 mins back to where we'd come from, or climb over/under the fallen trees, (which for a human was very challenging, especially with a rucksack on her back). I was OK cos I could just squish myself under the fallen trees. It took Ann about 10 mins to navigate the fallen down trees in the rain. Yes, she will send in a report to 'I Walk Cornwall'.

Once we came out of the woods, we had to walk along lanes & fields. The fields were ridiculously overgrown. If we hadn't been following the directions on the 'I Walk Cornwall' app, we wouldn't even have known there was supposed to be a path through half of the fields that we walked through. Yes Ann will send in a report to, 'I Walk Cornwall.' It's obviously not a very popular walk.

After about an hour, Ann said, 'Trixie, I think I've got trench foot.' Seriously, she is such a drama Queen, but then I looked at her walking trainers and there was actually water oouzing out of them. And every few minutes I kept doing a 'big shake', because I was a bit water logged too. I was practically a black Collie because I go very dark when I get wet.

Oh, and the other horrible thing about this walk was................... when I was walking through the fields, there were loads of signs saying that I had to be kept on my lead. There were a few fields where there were cows and sheep but the majority of the fields had crops in them.

However, one of the worst things on this walk, was the stiles..................... They were very high and very slippy. Because I was on my lead, we had to go over the stiles together. Not an easy task in torrential rain.

Actually the stiles weren't the worst thing.................... We got chased by a herd of cows........... There we were..................... following the directions on our app, which said, 'follow the path along the right side of the hedge to the stile in the corner of the field'. ..........It didn't say anything about there being a massive load of cows in the field that thought it would be fun to chase us. I was very, very, scared and the rain was still pelting down. Ann said, 'Trixie, we just need to make it to the stile at the opposite side of the field and then they won't be able to get us.' So we walked faster & faster. ….......And then we spotted the bull. ….........Actually we don't know if he was the bull, but he had horns. He didn't have a ring through his nose though?! And then when we got to the stile, it was a massive wooden one that we had to climb over to get to a stone one. And by this time all the cows in the field were practically at the stile, evil eyeing us. Ann let go of my lead because she didn't care what was in the next field, she just wanted me to get over the stile as quickly as possible. Fortunately we both made it over the stile without the cows killing us.

The last couple of miles of the walk were along country lanes, so I still had to stay on my lead. And although the rain stopped for the last half an hour of the walk, Ann still had 'trench foot'. Lol!

We walked for about 7.5 miles, but once we got back to the car, all Ann wanted to do, was go home, so that is what we did.

We'll have to do the St Mawgan to Mawgan Porth walk another day!!!

PS – Sun is out in St Ives this evening, so we've just been chillaxing on the sun terrace and Ann has polished off half a bottle of Prosecco, that the girlies didn't finish last night, so all is good. Amazing how a couple of glasses of Prosecco can change one's perspective on life???!!!


#livingthedream