Day 2

View from Westcliff accommodation

What a beautiful view to wake up to! The sun was out, it was deadly quiet, other than the odd seagull and those views that we wanted to see… we could now see from our garden!

Today was a kind of chilled day and after scrambling our way through 8 eggs (not each!), we popped down to the Lizard Village (most southerly point in the UK) for a short coastal walk.

Walk Around The Lizard

From the Lizard village, we aimed for the road between two ice cream/gift shops (The Lizard - Real Cornish Ice Cream and Steps Mini Market) and made our way over to Bass Point (not Drum & Bass point unfortunately, rather the fish) via a public Bridleway. Concerns were raised as we had to make our way through a gate with signs such as "Enter at your own risk, livestock and bulls roam these lands" (or words to that effect) but thankfully, our path was clear!

The risk was worth it though as the sea, landscape and views opened up when we started walking down the hill and joined the South West coast path. Taking a right to head back to Lizard Village, we passed the National Coastwatch Institution, which is run by volunteers keeping an eye out on the area of sea off the Lizard. They make sure that merchant and commercial vessels are navigating the routes safely. It was re-opened in 1994 following a serious and tragic accident where 2 local fishing boat crew died, having been previously closed in 1992.

If we had taken a left up the coastal path to head away from the Lizard, we'd have ended up in the Lizard RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution), another charity organisation run by mainly volunteers that help rescue stranded ships, overboard crew members or another other sea issue that requires saving lives.

Going left up this path would have lead us to the RNLI

Anyway, we continued our journey and stopped to read a sign about the Lizard Wireless Station. No, this wasn't a place to get Wi-Fi, although on further inspection, it did appear that this building played a key part in the development of the way we communicate today. As we were reading the sign, a friendly National Trust volunteer spotted us and wooed us in with a free history lesson about an Italian inventor called Marconi. Marconi developed a brand new way of communicating in 1900/1901 after believing that telegrams and cables are too time consuming and costly to reliably communicate important messages to ship's crew. So he conducted tests using a wireless transmitter (effectively radio) to send and receive important messages from ships out at sea (and eventually other wireless transmission stations). This had a huge knock on effect in the world of communication so absolutely well worth a visit to discover this incredible invention.

Following our tour, we then passed Housel Bay (and Housel Bay Hotel where Marconi stayed in), passed the Lizard Lighthouse and ended up in the Lizard Point, where we can safely say, we were at the most southerly point in the UK! Hurray!

The view from Housel Bay with the Lizard Lighthouse on the cliff top

View looking back on the coastal path at the most southerly point in the UK

Vortex Misery

Once we were back to the Lizard Village, we treated ourselves to those ice creams that so tempted us before we set off for the walk, got some scones for later and also got one of those "Vortex missiles" (the things that make a whistle sound as you throw it through the air), mainly because we were reserving it for our trip to the beach later in the week. As we got back to our accommodation, we got the Vortex out to "test it" and thought "this would be quite good fun"… until 20 minutes later when the tail came off and left us with a rather ineffective American Football shaped piece of foam… that didn't even whistle! Back to the shop we go…

Catch you tomorrow!

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