Cornwall Walk 2: The Lizard Circular

Date: Monday 21st March
Distance: 6.5 miles
Route: From Lizard Village to Kynance Cove, along the coastal path past Lizard Point to Church Cove and back to the village

If Sunday was all about going west, Monday was all about going south - to the most southerly part of mainland Britain, Lizard Point. This is reckoned to be one of the most walked bits of the coastal path, which is wholly understandable, given how beautiful it is and how easy the coastal path is to follow here.

This walk comes from the AA 1001 Walks in Britain book - a massive folder full of walks that lets you pull out a relevant page and stick it in the helpfully supplied plastic folder, so you don't have to lug a big book around with you. If you're going to a different bit of the country but don't necessarily want to buy a walk book specific to that area, this always come in handy and the walks are usually very easy to follow. It's often available cheaply from the Book People too.

We did this walk before, a couple of years ago, and it was so good we wanted to do it again. Monday dawned foggy (something you are very aware of if your bedroom window is 10 feet away from a foghorn), so a drive down to the Lizard was an oppportunity to see if the weather was any better on the South Coast (it wasn't much different, to be honest, which is why the photos are a bit cloudy).

The walk starts off on a footpath from The Lizard village down to Kynance Cove - even if you don't fancy the whole six and a half miles, this bit alone is well worth the effort and you can even park at the Cove if you feel so inclined. Kynance Cove is spectacular - a vast sandy beach littered with ridiculously large rocks and fringed by an impossibly bright turquoise sea. Once you have clambered around a bit there is also a National Trust cafe (complete with very impressive solar-tiled roof), from which you can drink in both the outstanding scenery and copious amounts of tea.

Suitably refreshed, you go back to the coastal path, climbing steeply up the hill for yet another great view of Kynance Cove, before turning your back on it to walk along the path for another mile and a quarter - and another cup of tea at Lizard Point (bit of a recurring theme here). The path becomes tarmac for a while (and a lot busier on the route between the Point and the car park) but the crowds thin out as you carry on past the lighthouse, the fantastically situated Housel Bay Hotel (with its tempting "refreshing beer" signs), an old Marconi Wireless station, Lloyds Signal Station and coastguard's lookout point. Once you get around to the lifeboat station (currently in the process of getting itself a new ramp built), you turn back inland.

Six and a half miles doesn't sound that far - particularly when we will often walk 10 or 12 miles in the Chilterns - but the constant climbing and descending mean that at the end of this walk you will definitely feel you have earned yourself another pot of tea - or a pasty - or maybe some nice Cornish ice cream...