We decided to do a different bus journey and walk today, and caught a local bus to Wadebridge and then a First Kernow bus to Polzeath. Whilst waiting at Wadebridge we had time to pop into the John Betjeman Centre based in the old railway station, a very attractive building (according to the lady there the centre of activity in the town…she also said Wadebridge was the friendliest small town and everyone had a smile for you). The Betjeman stuff was arranged in quite an informal not to say amateurish way and was moderately interesting. Betjeman himself described the railway journey from here to Padstow as the most beautiful train journey he knew, so it’s a great pity it no longer exists…the compensation is that you can now walk it as the Camel Trail all along the estuary.

Anyway the bus journey took us through some pretty countryside and we got off at our destination of Polzeath. There we had lunch on a nice balcony overlooking the beach and took in all the activity. Lots of families were having a typical English seaside holiday with tents and windbreaks on the beach and buckets and spades and picnics. And there was a terrific number of surfers taking advantage of the conditions. After a wander around the little town and beach, we then made for the Coastal path and climbed to the top of the cliffs where we saw one of the several lifeguards on duty scanning for anything untoward…they really do an incomparable job.

We proceeded along the path towards our destination of Rock (occasionally referred to as ‘Chelsea-on-Sea’, Rock is reputed to be the home of more millionaires than anywhere else in Cornwall with exclusive villas and apartments discretely hidden amongst the trees).

There were a large number of secret coves as we made our way to Daymer beach and we stopped often to admire the view….although cloudy it was warm and eventually the clouds gave way to blue skies and sunburn

Daymer beach is at low tide an enormous stretch of sand and as we were nearing Rock we had to move more quickly (not easy on the sands!) in order to make our bus back. This entailed walking uphill the whole length of Rock which was a much bigger place than we had realised. Every house we passed was of a high order…probably justifying its moniker of Chelsea-on-sea. And the view across the bay to Padstow with all the little boats bobbing in the estuary was great.

At Wadebridge we had time for a tea and pasty and a look around the shopping area which was delightful. It was wonderful to see three very good bread shops, a first-class greengrocer, and two good butchers…pity there are not more towns like Wadebridge with its plethora of independent shops… a good day with an enjoyable walk of about 4 miles.