The End of England
Minimus was still up near Tintagel with their friends. Wednesday’s drop-off was an overnight stay, and I anticipated they wouldn’t be back until at least mid-afternoon. That left Thursday free, and the original plan — a day of caching in Truro or Falmouth — fell apart when I thought about it properly. I wasn’t going to get both done in a day, and I’d made a vow not to be a massive cache-hacker on this trip. SoI refocused on Land’s End for a day of touristy-with-occasional-caches. Land’s End is a place I may have visited once, at an age where I’d remember nothing about it. It was definitely not on our roster when we came to Cornwall in 2005.
Land’s End is about half an hour from Marazion. The weather was much as it had been all week — cool, breezy, a stiff wind off the Atlantic. Maybe marginally more sun today.
Getting There
On the drive over I stopped briefly in Sennen — a small village a mile or so north of Land’s End — to gather information for three stages of a lab cache series. Sennen Cove itself is one of the most westerly communities in England, and its beach is popular with surfers year-round. The stop was quick. I parked behind the “First and Last Inn” before moving on to the end of the country.
A popular misconception is worth correcting here. Land’s End is not the most southerly point of the British mainland. That distinction belongs to Lizard Point, a few miles to the southeast. What Land’s End actually is — and the clue is in the name, sort of — is the most westerly point of mainland England. It sits at the tip of the Penwith Peninsula, facing the open Atlantic, with the Isles of Scilly around 28 miles to the southwest on a clear day.
Tourist Central
It is also, to be straightforward about it, a tourist magnet. The car park is enormous — and several surrounding fields are set out as overflow capacity for busy days. Today wasn’t one of those days. Late morning on a Thursday in May and it was pretty quiet.
The attractions on offer were mainly of the tacky-tourist-tat variety. I say that without judgment — there has to be a gift shop, and here there are several. The famous Land’s End signpost, where visitors pose for photographs showing distances to faraway places, has been a fixture since the 1950s. But I was here mainly for caching, which seemed just as well.
The Signal Problem
My first stop was an earthcache down at End Rock Cove, a small headland to the south. This is where I discovered the central problem of the day. Every time I dipped below the horizon of the main site, phone signal vanished. This was going to make for complicated geocaching. I was working online, I hadn’t downloaded any nearby caches for offline use, and you cannot do Adventure Labs without a live signal. A lesson, not for the first time, that a second phone on a different network would be a sound investment.
There was also a puzzle cache in the area. On closer inspection, it turned out to be entirely in German. The coordinates I’d saved pointed squarely at Land’s End — the result of picking up someone else’s incorrect solution from somewhere. One fewer cache on the list then.
Working With What You’ve Got
From the headland I worked north towards the Land’s End buildings, picking up an earthcache and attempting a lab series running up towards Sennen Cove Lookout. I got the one next to the buildings and the second at the First and Last House — a building that claims, depending on your direction of travel, to be either the first or the last in England — and then signal dropped out completely.
I walked back to the main site feeling grumpy. The saving grace was a wifi connection, which let me download local copies of all the nearby physical caches. I could at least walk up to Sennen Cove Lookout and find those on the way. I also, to be honest, walked past each of the lab cache locations to see whether the answers were obvious from the information boards. They were. I photographed everything and resolved to log the finds from the PC later, using a spoofed GPS position. I don’t normally do that. But I reserve it for places where I’ve genuinely been and found the information, but couldn’t log it on the spot. This qualified.
Lunch and Consequences
It was a decent walk. When I got back to tourist central I decided I’d earned lunch, and sat outside with a half-decent Cornish pasty — becoming something of a daily habit. The seagulls were watchful. I remained vigilant. 100% pasty completion was attained.
The weather was alternating between foggy and sunny. The wind was still stiff. And somewhere around this point I became aware of a burning sensation on the top of my head. The jumper had been on all week, and I hadn’t used any suncream. I assumed today would be much the same. This was, in retrospect, a mistake of epic proportions. The head was burnt. Nothing else, because the jumper had been on all day. But the head was definitely burnt.
Time to go home.
The Road Back
I took the long way, finishing the lab series at Sennen and stopping for four traditional caches along the A30 between Land’s End and Penzance. That pushed the numbers up a bit. I also called into Sainsbury’s in Penzance for bread and milk, because we still had a couple of breakfasts to fulfil before going home.
Back in Marazion, there was no sign of Minimus. There was, however, one remaining cache in the village that I’d had my eye on — a multi where the key information was collected over on St Michael’s Mount. Regular readers may recall a previous mention of Queen Victoria’s unexpected visit to the Mount. Same cache. Out to the west of the village, within 500 metres of home. I applied suncream to the damaged head and went and found it.
The Return of the Prodigal Child
I phoned to check on progress. It turned out that Minimus and friends had been up most of the night doing what young people in groups tend to do, and had not fully surfaced until well into the afternoon. They were just off to make a quick trip to the beach (in Tintagel) before driving down. I did the maths. That was going to get them back to Marazion with very little margin before our 7pm dinner reservation.
Showering was painful. A lie-down seemed like the sensible option. Minimus arrived in time for dinner. Just. Not in time to shower first. We went back to the Kings Arms in Marazion — excellent again, as it had been earlier in the week. It was quiz night, which I assumed would mean noise. It turned out to be a paper quiz, which meant teams sitting in thoughtful silence filling in answer sheets. Perfectly civilised.
Another good day. Caught some sun — perhaps a little too effectively. Saw somewhere that everyone who visits Cornwall should see at least once. Did a few caches. Had a lovely dinner. Can’t be bad.
