New Year 2017 - Resolutions at St Agnes Beacon

New Year and it dawned bright this morning after a rain spotted and grey New Year's Day. I have resolved to begin writing my regular posts after a three year break. I started today on Jan 2 2017 with a walk around St Agnes Beacon and climb up to the Beacon, as well as around the coast. The day was stunning and welcomed a walk with its clear, winter skies and brittle cold. I parked my car on the Beacon Road, surprised at how many other people in woolly, bobbled hats and walking boots seemed to have the same idea. I imagine everyone, like me, was making the most of a day of pure sunshine and the chance to walk off the Christmas excesses.

I like this time of year as it is a time of clearing and cleansing after the over indulgence of Christmas. I parked away from the throng and climbed the path that skirted away from the main one which was getting eroded by the popularity of the walk. I am aware more than ever on my walks of this issue of erosion and just the numbers of people now living in Cornwall and walking. This, along with the fierce storms of latter years, has left an enduring mark:less space to breathe and be without the interruption of voices or other feet on the same path.

The views from the Beacon were stunning today and I could see as far up the coast as Trevose Head and along to St Austell clay pits as well as over to Carrick Roads and Carn Brea. The coast was a ribbon of headlands in a veil of misty sunlight and I found a niche below a white quartz outcrop with a wooden bench and a view nestled in the lea of the beacon, out of the wind.

View to Chapel Porth

View from the Beacon toward St Agnes and beyond

Wheal Coates in the sunlight

Low tide view to St Ives

Sentry box

People on top of Beacon

For the first time in ages I remembered I had my note book on me and managed to scribble some lines:

ST AGNES BEACON

This browed old crone in bracken cape
Glass grey eyes and peaty skin
She is a grin of quartz
Blood oxide veins run deep
Her apron of gorse spills boulders down valley
To where cattle blink in the pale light
Smoke tendrils and floats skywards to
A silhouetted panorama of sisters Brea and Marth
She is warming her cold old bones in winter's rays
Spreading heathery arms wide to clutch blue sky
Her brittle claws grasp an unexpected star
Wishing on eddies of far North Atlantic frost.

From here I picked my way on a smaller, narrower snake of a path down to one that skirts the edge of the beacon leading to the right and over a stile into a green farmer's field with a sign 'Beware of the bull.' Thankfully, there was no bull in sight and the path led into a slurry pit and then a farm yard where there is a caravan site in summer months. Across the Beacon road to the left and then off on a footpath to the coast marked Chapel Porth. I did not go as far a Chapel Porth, but walked straight ahead to the coast path and off towards the right and Wheal Coates with its magnificent coastal views down to St Ives. The tide below was out and people were walking the sands etched with running water and silhouettes. The ocean was a turquoise green, the coast bathed in a shimmer of sunlight and shadow. It looks translucent and shining like a land in old stories ancient and renewed by this sudden gift of sunlight. From Wheal Coates, I clambered upward and along the top to St Agnes Head with more stunning views up the North coast to Trevose Head, then cut inland past quarries and mine dumps to where I joined the road to the coast by an old second world war sentry box of Cameron Camp - all that remains of a training camp for the 10th Light Anti Aircraft Battery built in 1939-40 and used later by American troops prior to the D Day Landings. Then back to the road and my car...refreshed and full of New Year's resolution.