Day 21: Hayle to St Ives

Weather: Partly cloudy with a cool breeze
Distance covered today: 15.9km (9.9mi)
Last night's B&B: Travelodge
% Complete: Cumulative distance: 39.3%:  398.7 km
Total Ascent/Total Descent: 394m/ 397m
GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 21(click!)

Given the route I had planned for today, I was expecting a relatively routine and easy stretch, first through Hayle and its suburbs and then along the beach to St Ives. The Hayle bit went as planned, but the coastal path took me through the dunes to Carbis Bay. This involved a bit of up and down dune and cliff walking, which, as I have discovered, is taxing. I think also that the prospect of meeting Veronica at the end of today’s trail had the predictable effect of making me rush it a bit. I would have preferred to walk along the beach, but a rocky promontory before Carbis Bay called Carrack Gladden looked impassable on the seaward side and rather than run the risk of having to retrace my steps all the way to the Hayle Estuary, I let caution rule and just got on with it. The lovely views from the cliffs back across St Ives Bay along that phenomenal beach all the way to Godrevy Point soon had me thinking about beaches in general and my relationship with them in particular.

As a youth, I was obsessed with the beach. Of course living in the environs of Cape Town meant that I had access to some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, though, that said, I had no idea how close Cornwall would run them! The majesty of Table Mountain, the Twelve Apostles and all the other mountains of that magnificent peninsula notwithstanding, it was life on the beaches that formed the cornerstone of my developing sense of self. The Beach Boys were singing yearning songs of life and love on the beach and Joanie Mitchell was having difficulty leaving her lovers on the beaches of Spain, but aching to return to California. More importantly for me was the sense of complete freedom on those deserted beaches, a thought which in the context of South Africa at the time has its own resonance.

As I walked through the dunes, looking down on the beach, I got to thinking about those times. Incidentally, the beach in question doesn’t seem to have a name! Even Ordnance Survey is silent on the issue. The OS 1:25,000 Explorer map records the names of every rocky outcrop that occurs along the beach, but the beach itself remains nameless. The local publicity map names many parts of the beach by different names; essentially and predictably using  the names of the trailer parks adjacent to the dunes, but the beach as whole remains nameless; something which in Cornwall, with its penchant for naming everything twice, seems  to me very strange indeed!

Anyway, I digress. Walking along that beach two days ago, I noticed the familiar pattern of ridges that forms in the sand as the tide ebbs and flows, and I’ve pictured an example below. This always produces a warm frisson because it combines academic knowledge with happy memory. An important subject in my engineering degree went by the simple name of Mass Transport, and had nothing at all to do with vehicle systems. Rather, it explored the mathematical models of how different phases of material (solids, liquids and gases) behaved in motion with each other and used partial differential equations to reach solutions. Like all models, these were approximations of reality, but they did predict with remarkable precision how a turbulent flow of a liquid over a granular solid would inevitably produce a series of solid waves in a completely random pattern (seawater and sand). The same was true of solids and gases (sand dunes under the influence of wind). In chemical engineering, this was important in order to predict how solid catalysts would behave in liquid or vapour filled reactors.

I thought I would never ever apply this technology, yet in the event, it was about the only technology I did use! After Richard and I failed to find any diamonds in our Namibian adventure, we both returned to Cape Town and we found jobs working for the university’s Oceanographic Institute. The national power company was planning to build a nuclear power station on the beach north of Cape Town and the Institute was performing various environmental and feasibility studies on the project. The winds in that isolated peninsula are rightly famous for their ferocity and there was some concern about the effect of constructing a massive plant on a beach where the sand had been blown longitudinally backwards and forwards for millennia.

It was a project right up my street! It involved taking measurements many times a day of wind velocities, rainfall, sand moisture content, particle size distribution, sand deposit levels and many other variables. It also mostly involved sitting on the beach talking to friends and having a whale of a time while being paid (a little) to do it. There was great excitement in that we would have to travel out in a powered inflatable dinghy to a rigid platform on the sea bed, whose instruments required daily maintenance. This was fine in calm sea, but in the middle of a howling gale, along with huge Atlantic rollers in excess of 20ft in height, the business of jumping from a dinghy onto a solid and immovable platform was a scary and exciting task. The key was to jump at the apex of the wave; anything else would lead to a severe dunking as the next wave rushed by! The Atlantic in those parts is very cold….

Anyway, the result of my epic research project was that the power station would have to employ a bulldozer to move the blown sand around its structure from time to time – not exactly rocket science and you would be forgiven for thinking that common sense might have reached the same conclusion! For me though, the fascination was in being able to predict the size and shape of the ridges in the sand, if not their precise pattern and location. Certainly the project as a whole produced useful environmental data.

As I walked along the unnamed beach two days ago, those same ridges and patterns took me back almost forty five years. Of course, the equations are long forgotten, but the beauty of the patterns lives on.

Veronica and I had a joyful reunion in the heart of busy St Ives this afternoon. We had a brief walk together round the promontory that sticks out to sea beyond St Ives. I was intrigued to find that, in true Cornish fashion, it has two names: The Island or St Ives Head!  We will perform an intricate dance together as I complete my journey round the end of the peninsula over the next few days. We are staying in the same B&B for the duration, so she will drop me off and collect me on a daily basis. We will have to synchronise our logistics very precisely.

I will be like a sand particle moving in a liquid and she will be trying to predict its future location! Good luck with the differential equations!

Sand patterns and partial differential equations!

I asked someone whether this viaduct outside Hayle was a disused line to St Ives. "No!",she said "It is the main line from Paddington to Penzance!". Another case of walker's myopia. (Or, more accurately, Kevin's myopia!)

I saw this sign on a bakery and couldn't help asking for the story

Here it is!

I asked her if she was Miss Harvey and she was amused and delighted!

Finally a decent picture of a seal. (OK I'll fess up. It's a picture of a picture... A lot easier than waiting for the real thing!)

Strange people, these Cornish. Would you want to stay in a bucket of blood?

The oldest swing bridge complete with its machinery left in Britain. Not that it can still swing, but still....

Quote from Wikipedia: "Cyril Richard "Rick" Rescorla (May 27, 1939 – September 11, 2001) was a United States Army officer and private security officer of British origin who served in Northern Rhodesia as a member of the Northern Rhodesia Police (NRP) and as a commissioned officer in the Vietnam War, where he was a second lieutenant in the United States Army. As the director of security for the financial services firm Morgan Stanley at the World Trade Center, Rescorla anticipated attacks on the towers and implemented evacuation procedures credited with saving many lives. He died during the attacks of September 11, 2001, while leading evacuees from the South Tower.

Rescorla had boosted morale among his men in Vietnam by singing Cornish songs from his youth, and now he did the same in the stairwell, singing songs like one based on the Welsh song "Men of Harlech":

"Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming, Can’t you see their spearpoints gleaming?,

See their warriors’ pennants streaming, To this battlefield.

Men of Cornwall stand ye steady, It cannot be ever said ye for the battle were not ready

Stand and never yield!"

Between songs, Rescorla called his wife, telling her, "Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You made my life." After successfully evacuating most of Morgan Stanley's 2,687 employees, he went back into the building. When one of his colleagues told him he too had to evacuate the World Trade Center, Rescorla replied, "As soon as I make sure everyone else is out". He was last seen on the 10th floor, heading upward, shortly before the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 A.M. His remains were never found."

I remember reading about him at the time. 

Beautiful gardens in Lelant Saltings

St Uny's Church in Lelant. Medieval in origin

The phenomenal beach, looking towards St Ives in the distance

The cliff path; up and down with abandon!

Looking back along the beach towards Godrevy Point some 10km of beach away

  

Carbis Bay. (England or the Caribbean?)

Sculpted gardens for the super-affluent between Carbis Bay and St Ives, all with a clear view of the sea, but hidden from prying eyes like mine!

The curious ochre colour of St Ives and its translucent sea

Party-time on the beach

Hordes of trippers in town

The impressive Tate St Ives Gallery

Veronica arrives!! (appropriately with a life-preserver at hand!)

An attractive alleyway garden in St Ives. Veronica liked it