Day 14: Tintagel to Port Isaac

Weather: Mostly cloudy with very strong, cold easterly

Distance covered today: 16.5 km (10.3 mi)

Last night's B&B: Bossiney House Hotel

% Complete: Cumulative distance: 26.3%: 266.6 km

Total Ascent/Total Descent: 920 m/ 999 m

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 14 (click!)

The good news is that it has been another record day in terms of climb and yet I am not feeling too bad. During my rest day, at least half a dozen people warned me that today would be murder, because the path between Tintagel and Port Isaac has to negotiate seven very steep descents followed by very steep climbs. I made some rules for myself before departing, the most obvious of which is that I would not be competing with anyone!  As it turned out, there was hardly anyone else on the trail. Two fit youngsters in running gear ran past me and a fit woman with a dog passed me, but she was on a shorter, circular walk. I was left by myself to explore the stunning scenery and the extraordinary impact of industrial history on this environment. (By the way, the bad news is that tomorrow now promises to be an even more exacting adventure, and what is more, the weather will be awful!)

As long ago as the fifteenth century, quarrymen have been extracting the high-quality Upper Devonian slate in these cliffs, and using the products for building and roofing. During the last 500 years, at least ten quarries were worked on the coast between Tintagel and Trebarwith, just a couple of miles down the coast. The expertise of the quarrymen is evident as much in what they left behind as in what they took. There is a picture below of a pillar of inferior slate right in the middle of Lanterdan Quarry. Under most circumstances, I would decry the environmental devastation caused by these excavations, but in my opinion, these impressive mines, while altering the immediate appearance of the coastal cliffs, do not do them too much visual damage and the extraordinary human effort involved surpasses imagination.

You may well have noticed that I haven’t yet had much to say about Tintagel. Frankly, I wasn’t very impressed by a hugely tourist-orientated and rather inconsequential ruin of a castle built by Richard, Earl of Cornwall to capitalise on the myth of King Arthur. He himself was so unimpressed he didn’t bother even to live there himself for any length of time! More interesting was the archaeological history of the place which includes some ruins from the dark ages, relatively recently discovered. That said, it was a reasonably diverting activity for my rest day, especially after the drying machine in the laundromat broke down just as I had started a wash in the washing machine, and found myself draping laundry all over my room in the hotel.

My gadget told me by day’s end that I had walked half of a normal day on the trail, and I didn’t know whether to feel good or bad about that on my rest day! I did though, over a glass of Doom Bar (of which more much later!), reflect on the impact for good or ill of my gadget on my walks. It is undoubtedly very helpful in keeping me to the straight and narrow, but perhaps it does make me focus too much on the stats? It can have the effect of focusing the mind too much on the day’s objective rather than the sensual environment and I need to guard against that. While deciding I was too fascinated by the technology to change my behaviour, I did though start thinking about the technology itself.

My gadget doesn’t just use GPS to position me; it also uses GLONASS, which is the Russian equivalent of the American GPS. Used in combination, these two systems can locate a device to within a couple of metres on the Earth’s surface. (I’ve just discovered my Nexus mobile phone also uses both GPS and GLONASS!) It is simple trigonometry and statistics that allow the systems in tandem to produce better results, but it is the application of Einstein’s theories of both general and special relativity that allow the devices to work accurately at all. I’m not going to bore you with the science, except to say that time moves more slowly for someone or something moving very much faster than you, such as an orbiting satellite, and gravity curves space and time, so the satellite also has to take this into account in its atomic clock.  The result here is that we have a hugely economically significant technology that depends on Einstein’s abstract theories for its existence. In other words, they aren’t theories; they are scientific laws, just like Newton’s laws of motion.

My point is that our world today with its advanced technological infrastructure and the unprecedented improvement in global human welfare is mostly the product of the scientific achievements of the Enlightenment, but particularly of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My question is whether science is finally slowing down. I worry about this.

Many commentators argue that it is impossible to gauge scientific progress in the present, because on the one hand one simply doesn’t know what is going on, and more importantly, it is only in retrospect that one can judge its significance. Point taken.  They also point out the amazing developments in the biological sciences, in information technology and artificial intelligence.

For me though, I would like to differentiate between science and technology, the latter being the application of science, just as in GPS and AI. From my perspective there has been a slowing in the rate of breakthroughs in fundamental science, and the reason may be that we reaching the limits of our abilities to sense our environment, both physically and technologically. Many of the developments of the past, even in areas beyond our senses, have depended on our understanding of things we could sense. The electromagnetic spectrum which includes gamma rays and radio waves is just an extension of light. Lightning is electricity and gravity drops apples.

My point is that we may be moving into a sphere where there is no human sensory experience, neither direct, nor via our machines. Scientists predict dark energy and dark matter based on observations and mathematics, but they have no idea how to sense it. It only exists in theory because of our observations of the universe, but what of the universe beyond our observations?

It may be impossible to imagine reality beyond our observation in a way that we can measure it. Or, just maybe, we may happen upon it by chance. That would require huge practical and financial investments in the unknown.

I doubt we will take the risk. 

Sunset over the sea from my room in the estimable Bossiney House Hotel, best on my journey to date

A sparrow! Now a rarity in Surrey

A Cornish flag. Regrettably, nationalism is breaking out everywhere 

I couldn't help asking the residents whether they were John and Gilly, and they were!!!

Ruins of the Great Hall in Richard of Cornwall's castle

The castle walls

View from the Tintagel Island

Dark ages excavations

The beautiful old Post Office in Tintagel

St Materiana's Church, spectacularly located on a cliff near Tintagel

A lark ascending (hugely difficult to catch in a picture, but full of sound!)

I have now discovered this form of drystone walling is called "curzyway"

An extraordinary pillar of inferior quality slate left in the middle of Lanterdan Quarry

The view down to Port William beyond Trebarwith Strand

Is this natural or quarried? Hard to decide!

Looking down the coast towards Port Issac

Turquoise quiescence 

Looking back up the coast to St Materiana

Natural or man-made?

What are these guys?

They cover the coast with a lighter blue than bluebells!

A final view back towards Tintagel. Near journey's end 

Port Isaac appears