Padstow to Treyarnon Bay: South West Coast Path Day 16 Guide

jump to planning

We woke up to a misty morning, which made for plenty of atmosphere if not plenty of visibility. Luckily by the time we’d finished packing up and started stomping downhill towards the harbour, the mist had cleared, normal service had resumed, and the skies were blue once more.

It really had surprised me just how good the weather had been for the last 2.5 weeks. With very little rain and mostly warm, sunny days, the UK’s long, hot summer was showing no signs of coming to an end just yet. I knew it wouldn’t last forever, but while it did, I couldn’t have been more grateful.

After a coffee and the world’s largest breakfast bap at Ben’s Crib Box, we waddled our way back towards where we’d left the trail yesterday. You could argue that perhaps I didn’t need sausage, egg, bacon, and a hash brown in my bap, and you’d be right, but it was delicious. No regrets.

The town was much quieter this early in the morning, and was far lovelier because of it. It’s not that I don’t like people, it’s just that I’d prefer they weren’t all within earshot at the same time. This morning they weren’t, and I took a moment to appreciate that fact as we walked around the harbour and northwards out of town.

Today had looked noticeably flatter than usual in the guidebook, and so it turned out to be. Flatter doesn’t mean flat, of course, especially not on the South West Coast Path, but there were only two or three real ups and downs and even they were pretty small compared to what we’d tackled recently.

Instead of rugged cliffs and endless valleys, what we got instead was beautiful beaches. Many, many beautiful beaches, some of them hard to access and basically deserted because of it, others with a large carpark nearby and approximately a million happy sun-lovers on this bank holiday Sunday.

Thing started off with a particularly pleasant three-mile stroll up the opposite side of the River Camel estuary from the one we’d walked down the day before. The trail was paved for a while out of Padstow, past a large stone WW1 memorial and on towards the first of today’s bays at St George’s Cove.

The temptation to swim here was as high as it been anywhere on the walk, and we determined that no matter the time, no matter the temperature, we were going to get in the water at some point today. You can’t walk 630+ miles entirely along the coast and not touch the ocean, right?

Passing some beautiful old houses in Hawker’s Cove and lamenting that we couldn’t do as the name suggested at the Rest a While Teahouse because it hadn’t opened yet, we left the paved footpath behind and soon hit our first minor climb of the day at Stepper Point.

It was worth the minimal effort to get to the top, where we took a break beside the tall Day Mark lookout tower and admired the views for miles down the coast. In case we hadn’t realised that we’d left the estuary and were back beside the Atlantic again, the cold breeze reminded us as soon as we stopped moving.

Despite apparently being a popular part of the trail, there were few other people around on the headland: maybe it was still too early for the day walkers to be out, or maybe they were just more sensible than us and had gone to the beach instead.

The trail was an absolute delight underfoot on this section, switching from soft dirt to even softer grass as we turned and headed south. It’s hard to generalise about most things on the South West Coast Path just because it’s so long, but one thing I had already noticed is just how much of the underfoot surface was hard and rocky.

On the upside, that means there’s generally a lot less mud than you might expect, even after fairly heavy rain. On the downside, it gets hard on the feet, knees, and ankles after a while, a fact that was going to become painfully apparent (pun intended) the following day.

For now, however, everything was going wonderfully well. The grassy trail ambled away along the cliffs as far as we could see, with the only risk to our enjoyment a herd of extremely docile cows blocking the path.

They all seemed far more interested in dozing than whatever we were doing, so we quietly picked our way around them with nothing more than a few sideways glances from both man and beast, and carried on without incident.

Past the clear water and golden sand at Butterhole Beach we strolled, and after a brief descent at Tregudda Gorge, soon found ourselves overlooking the stunning beach at Trevone Bay. The perfect mixture of soft sand for sunbathing, gentle waves for swimming, and rocky pools for, well, rock pooling, it’s hardly surprising that it was a popular spot today.

Equally unsurprising was the price gouging on offer at the only shop at the beach. As it turned out, the same outfit ran the cafe, surf shop, car park, and even the toilets, and boy did they know how to charge for all of them. £3.50 for a slightly-cooled can of Coke is not my idea of a good time, but despite their efforts, even the local mafia couldn’t take the gloss off such a lovely place.

Thanks to the easy walking, we’d been making good time all morning, and that didn’t change at all during the afternoon. Passing a natural swimming pool in the rocks just after Trevone Bay, we rounded the next small headland and wandered into Harlyn.

The beach here was huge, which meant that there was plenty of room to spread out despite the crowds. And crowds there definitely were: the “Great Atlantic Raft Race” was about to start, and it felt like half of Cornwall had turned up to watch people attempting to drown themselves on homemade boats.

Perhaps it was the sight of all the beer tents and sunburn that distracted us, but we managed to completely miss a signpost at the end of the beach and walk up a traffic-clogged road instead: luckily the exhaust fumes soon had me double-checking the map and doing a quick about turn.

Hint: when you climb up from the beach onto the road to cross a small bridge, the proper path immediately leaves the road again, following the beach off to the right. If you walk more than about ten metres on the road, you’ve gone too far.

Leaving the mayhem behind, we continued to the end of Harlyn Bay and around to Mother Ivey’s Bay, a pretty little beach dominated by the vast holiday park that overlooks it. The walking was still a delight, though, even if it was on a narrow path squeezed between the beach and a thousand identical caravans.

From there the trail led us to a short climb up onto the scenic Trevose Headland and past the lighthouse on its tip. Apparently on a perfectly clear day you can see as far as St Ives to the south and the satellite dishes we’d passed five days ago near Bude to the north: we couldn’t see quite that far, but the views were pretty epic nonetheless.

Rounding the headland, we could see Treyarnon Bay laid out in front of us, even if it was still a solid couple of miles away. Strolling down the paved path past Booby’s Bay, we were in no particular hurry to finish, which provided all the incentive we needed for a break at Constantine Bay. It was yet another pretty, busy beach on a day that had been full of them.

The snack kiosk was rapidly running out of everything on the menu by the time we arrived, and the staff had the distinct look of people who had been rushed off their feet for the entire weekend. Given the lack of calories since breakfast, though, my slightly-warm vegetarian pasty tasted far better than it should have.

Apparently even the world’s largest breakfast bap has its limits when you’re walking all day.

After hoovering up every last crumb of food, we walked the last three-quarters of a mile into Treyarnon Bay. There were two choices of places to stay here, a YHA with camping pitches out the back, and a nearby caravan park.

We started with the YHA, but didn’t even need to go inside to realise we wouldn’t be staying there: a Scout group had booked every available tent spot, and even if they hadn’t, the noise level was off the charts. Looking it up now, it seems like pitches aren’t available for normal humans to book in July and August anyway.

Valuing the idea of sleeping that night, we continued on to the caravan park. It was much larger, dramatically quieter, had plenty of pitches available for small tents like ours, and was reasonably priced for a bank holiday weekend. Not a hard decision.

After erecting the tent and enjoying a bit of mindless chat with the friendly couple in the campervan next door, it was time to finally make good on our promise to get in the damn water today. The sun was still shining and the caravan park was maybe 100 yards from the beach, so we really were out of excuses.

In not unexpected news, the ocean was far from warm despite the hot sun: there’s nothing like going from burning your toes on the sand to not being able to feel said toes in the space of ten seconds. Still, after 16 days and 212 miles of walking, my feet were extremely happy to be in the water. At least for five minutes, when hypothermia started to set in and we headed back.

There’s a grand total of one place for dinner in Treyarnon Bay, back at the YHA. We got lucky and found a table as soon as we arrived, but thanks to the crowds, the food took 15 minutes to order and 45 minutes to arrive.

I’ve had far better fish and chips in my life–the fish looked like it been in the deep fryer since the start of summer–but there was plenty of it, and by the time it arrived I’d got to the end of my pint of cider and didn’t care as much.

Back at the campsite, I continued my conversation about nothing with the neighbours for a while, admired the dramatic sunset, and then took myself off to bed as soon as it started to get dark. Which, yes, was about 9 p.m.

That’s the good thing about walking all day and staying in a tent: you get a free pass to go to bed the same time as your nan.

Planning

Started at: Padstow Campsite (0.9 miles/1.4km off-trail) 

Finished at: Treyarnon Bay Caravan Park (0.1 miles/0.2km off-trail)

Given that we’re not usually ones for large caravan parks, we enjoyed our stay at Treyarnon Bay far more than we might have expected.

That’s very much helped by the location, essentially right on the path and directly alongside the beach. Like any site that close to the coast in Cornwall, there’s always a chance of wind (and we got a fair amount of it overnight), but the upsides more than outweighed that downside.

The staff were friendly and accommodating of two random walkers showing up mid-afternoon with no booking on a bank holiday weekend, and we paid £12.50 per person for one of the more sheltered spots on the site, beside a hedge at the back.

As I say, we still got plenty of wind overnight, but most other people were getting more: random items of clothing were strewn all around the site the following morning! The showers were a bit of a walk from where we’d pitched the tent and I’d have preferred not to be paying £1 to use them, but they were clean and had plenty of hot water.

There were also washing machines and dryers available (as usual we just hand-washed our clothes and let the wind deal with the drying side of things), and some sort of pay-per-use charging outlets that I took one look at and decided to just use my power bank instead.

There are a couple of food vans that set up nearby during the day in summer, but they’ll likely be gone by dinner time: at that point, the YHA next door is the only option. It had plenty of outside tables, which were pretty much all taken the night we were there, but presumably that’s not the norm.

Transport and Parking

The number 56 bus runs in both directions between Padstow and the town of Constantine Bay, a bit under a mile from the path at Treyarnon Bay. The route operates every day, about once an hour on weekdays and once every couple of hours at weekends. It stops in Harlyn Bay along the way, making it easy to have a shorter day if you’d prefer that.

There’s no free parking around the harbour in Padstow, but if you’re happy to walk further to or from the trail, you may find something in a residential street away from the action. There are also several paid carparks closer to the harbour, although none of them are particularly cheap.

There’s not really anywhere to park for free at Treyarnon Bay, but there’s a good-sized paid carpark with reasonable long-stay pricing right beside the trail. If you’re taking the bus one way, you may also be able to find free on-street parking near the bus stop in Constantine Bay.

There’s a paid carpark at Harlyn Bay with terrible reviews for scams and overcharging, so I’d recommend avoiding it. With narrow lanes and very few alternatives, I’d suggest leaving your car in either Padstow or Treyarnon Bay instead.

Waymarking and Navigation

As mentioned, we managed to miss a sign at Harlyn Bay, but fortunately we figured out we’d gone wrong pretty quickly so it didn’t make much difference. Other than that the path was fairly obvious, especially for the first section from Padstow to Stepper Point.

I used AllTrails as my main navigation app for the entire South West Coast Path, and it worked well throughout. You can find the Padstow to Treyarnon Bay route here: it’s free to use, although I pay a couple of pounds a month for a subscription so I can download maps to my phone in advance.

Phone Service

I had good service with O2 today: the path stayed close to towns and villages for much of the day, and because it was noticeably flatter than usual, I didn’t have the usual problem of losing service in the valleys. There were still dead spots, especially out towards the Trevose headland, but in general there was quite a bit more signal than usual.

As a backup, I’d also paid a few pounds for a data eSIM from Instabridge that let me swap between all three UK networks, EE, O2, and Vodafone/Three. It worked really well as a fallback option throughout my time on the Coast Path: whenever I needed data service but couldn’t get it on my usual SIM, I’d switch to the eSIM and choose a different network.

Facilities

For a relatively short section of the Coast Path, there are plenty of places to eat and drink along the way. Obviously Padstow has many cafe and restaurant options for breakfast: there’s also a Spar close to the harbour area, and a large Tesco beside the campsite if you’re staying there.

If you’re starting out later in the day than we did, you might be able to stop at Rest a While Teahouse just off the path at Hawker’s Cove. It doesn’t open until 11:00 a.m., which was too late for us, but it looked appealing from the outside!

After that, you’ve got the overpriced cafe at Trevone Bay and a pub half a mile off the trail, a cafe and pub basically on the trail at Harlyn Bay, and a coffee van and cafe at Constantine Bay, before you get to Treyarnon Bay. Basically what I’m saying is that you shouldn’t starve to death on this section.

Accommodation

If you’re planning to camp tonight, there are plenty of places to do it. Let’s start with Trevose View Farm, a new site a bit under a mile off-trail behind Trevone Bay. It’s only open 60 days a year, though, so you’ll need to get lucky with your dates.

After that, Higher Harlyn Park is about a mile off the path behind Harlyn Bay, while the huge holiday park at Mother Ivey’s Bay has camping fields right on the trail. Finally, there’s the YHA at Treyarnon Bay that we didn’t stay at, and Treyarnon Bay Caravan Park that we did. Note that the YHA doesn’t seem to take individual tent site bookings in July and August, at least not online.

If you’re not camping, there’s an unusual lack of options on this part of the Coast Path. The YHA has shared and private rooms, and there’s a great-looking B&B just off the path in Trevone, but not much else that’s affordable and takes single-night bookings.

If you’re struggling to find somewhere to stay near the trail, I’d suggest just taking the bus back to Padstow for the night instead, which has several good places. I’d start with either Tidal Heights or Harbour Hotel.