Day 38: Looe to Portwrinkle

Weather: Mostly sunny with a withering westerly
Distance covered today: 14.1km (8.8mi)
Last night's B&B: Silver Birch
% Complete: Cumulative distance: 65.8%:  700.7km
Total Ascent/Total Descent: 565m/ 566m
GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 38(click!)

The more pernickety of readers will have noticed that despite my steady, if painful, progress on this trip, there has been a significant abnormality in the data. After 34 days, I was 62.3% of the way to Poole Harbour, whereas after a further 19.2km , I was only 61.1% of the way! The reason is of course that as a result of path diversions, mistakes, and intentional deviations from the straight and narrow, I have covered a greater distance than the official route would suggest. Thus, from time to time I have to recalibrate the distance still to be walked and the data necessarily suggests I’m walking backwards!

All of which brings me on to two subjects I haven’t covered on this trip; my perfect grandson and artificial intelligence. I had my knuckles soundly rapped last year for comparing him shortly after birth to a driverless car in a discussion on consciousness, but that hasn’t prevented me from further exploring these ideas!  His development over the last year has been nothing short of phenomenal. Almost every week, we have observed small but noticeable changes as his brain develops, and he is clearly exceptionally intelligent and has an amiable and well-adjusted personality. He has however declined to learn to walk. I am assured that this is not unusual as babies learn these skills at different ages with no longer term implications. My feeling is that he simply prefers motoring around on all fours, much the same as his grandpa, who does the same with his walking poles.

The serious point though is that these fine motor skills are incredibly complicated. I read an article in The Economist recently reporting that some researchers in Singapore have finally managed to get a robot to assemble a very simple IKEA flat-pack chair. In Artificial Intelligence circles, this achievement was rightly hailed as a significant moment, even though a human would have done the job in a fraction of the time. The point made in the article is that learning dextrous movements is something that has an evolutionary heritage going back millions of years (you may remember that my Neanderthalic ancestors had no problem running slowly after the poor tiring Impala who became dinner). On the other hand chess is only a couple of 1,000 years old, and we are almost as new to it as computers. No wonder they are already beating us at it!

The real impact of these developments on the economic architecture of the near future is that there will undoubtedly be a comprehensive reordering of the value of human skills in the workplace. Already, suitably programmed computers, using AI, are outperforming highly trained consultants in the detection and analysis of disease using the data from medical scans, but there is no way in the near future that a computer will be able to look after an old person in bed in hospital. The same is true of a comparison between investment analysts and centre forwards in soccer teams. So we are looking at a world where a nurse is more valuable than a radiologist and, a soccer player is richer than a banker (actually that may already have happened!!).

I have absolutely no doubt that the learning algorithms of ever more powerful artificial intelligence will master these fine motor skills in time, but we are talking decades, rather than years. In the meantime, I suggest that my grandson should recognise the importance of his fine motor skills and start walking!

Today was a shorter day than usual and, probably because I was anticipating this and I was also focusing on the toe-crushers, it seemed to take an age. In fact I climbed only a little more than half of yesterday’s marathon (though the lumpiness quotient was similar!), but interestingly, today’s route was initially almost entirely on roads, which is exceptional on the Coast Path. I also passed through the village of Derrydown, which is the first example of coastal strip development that I have encountered anywhere on the Coast Path, or indeed the Pembrokeshire coast path before. No doubt there are good historical reasons for this, but I have yet to unearth them.

Tonight I am staying in what can only be described as a grand, old hotel from an earlier age, the Whitsand Bay Hotel in Finnygook Lane.

The geek in me is delighted!

(No blog tomorrow – rest day!)

My delightful, though rather inexperienced hosts at last night's B&B. Like Polperro before it, Looe is a surprisingly delightful town. Certainly a place to which I will return!

Looe Beach with Rame Head, the early objective of my next day's walk, ominously on a distant horizon

Looking back at Hannafore with Looe Island (or St. George's Island) out at sea

A different, tarred path up to the heights

Black Rock with a skull and crossbones and a Cornish Flag

I met a sleeping pirate. The placard offered free, pick-your-own, weeds

Who knew! A monkey sanctuary in Cornwall!

Is this a portent of things to come? Derry or Londonderry is at the centre of Northern Island's issues. Will Brexit lead Derry down to No Man's Land??

"A Portrait of your Correspondent as an Old Man"

Typical Cornwall! Even a simple name has a different pronunciation!

Entering Seythin and there is a genuine 1966 Thunderbird. Hard to believe I was in the US in 1968 and riding around in these cars! Makes me feel old!

I met this lovely Staff called Milly. She was very friendly, but suspicious of the camera!

This was classic. As I took this picture, the man in the van right next to me said "Awl'rite mate. M' mate did 't. 'E was choppin' down a tree an' 'e 'ad to take down the sign. 'E put it up again an' got it upside down. E's an idiot!" Then he caught my accent and said, "Yu're from down under. 'E did it for you, so's you can understand!"

Further on, I was delighted to be addressed directly by Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Duke of the Duchy of Cornwall, giving me very specific instructions about how he isn't responsible for my mishaps on his land

Oh Dear! Rame Head looks very far away and is my intermediate destination on my next walking day!

At extreme 50X zoom, full optical and digital, that's my hotel for tonight, many kilometres away!

Meanwhile, a lovely coast to be negotiated

Stand-off! These goats were caught between us. Extreme confusion and much leaping!

They are amazing! Completely at home on shear cliffs!

Looking back towards Looe

Portwrinkle ahead

And here she is. The old lady that is my hostess for the next two nights. The Whitsand Bay Hotel