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Coverack harbour was built in 1724. The remains of an old slipway, which pre-dates the harbour, can still be seen between the lifeboat station slipway and the harbour wall.
Some of the buildings around the harbour, such as the gift shop, are former fish cellars or net lofts. There were originally more cellars: the Paris Hotel and its car park are on the sites of two, and one also existed in the area at the top of the harbour where the boats are now kept.
In May 1899, The American ocean liner SS Paris was offcourse and would have hit the Manacles if a pilot boat had not been nearby and warned the ship to take evasive action. Instead, the Paris ran aground at Lowland Point. The collision was described by an off-duty captain amongst the passengers: "I heard a tremendous crash, and, as a steamboat man, I knew we were on the bottom and that if she slipped from the rock we would be in Queer street."
Fortunately, the sea was calm and no-one aboard was hurt. After the call for "All hands on deck", a passenger recalled: "Many came on deck in their night clothing. One man wore his drawers and his wife's fur cape, but his appearance caused so much smiling that his wife sent him down to dress, which he did in the music room, to the equal amusement of all."
The passengers were all safely rescued from the ship which was lodged upright on the flat rocks. If it weren't for the warning from the pilot boat and the ship had hit the offshore rocks of The Manacles, it is likely that she would have sunk with great loss of life.
Attempts were made to refloat the liner, using six powerful tugs to pull the ship off the rocks, but these were unsuccessful. Finally, a German firm successfully refloated the ship for a fee of a quarter of a million pounds, which would be in excess of £25 million in today's money.
In 2007, builders discovered a secret compartment in Coverack between Gloster Cottage and the house beside (Hillside), thought to be used for smuggling. The structure was built of cob and stone and within it were some remains from the 19th Century including a glass bottle, a bone-handled knife and the remains of glazed pots.
In 1807, the Norwegian ship Veritas was on its way from Gothenburg to Bristol with a cargo of pit props when it collided with another vessel in the English Channel. It underwent repairs in Portsmouth and continued its voyage but started leaking badly as it passed along the Cornish coast. The rising seawater put out the fires in the boilers, so the crew abandoned ship and rowed into Coverack. Tugs were sent from Falmouth to rescue the vessel but whilst under tow in Coverack bay, the bow tilted downwards and all the water inside rushed forwards, causing the vessel to nosedive into the seabed. It stood on end, with the stern at the surface, for two days until it finally sank, landing upside down.
Serpentine rocks are well-known for being slippery. The reason is that the serpentization process produces soft minerals such as talc. These minerals have a plate-like structure that have strong chemical bonds within a layer, but the bonds between layers are weak so that the layers glide over each other. Rocks composed almost entirely of talc are known as "soapstone" as they are so slippery. Also, because the minerals are quite soft, foot traffic causes the surface of the rocks to become polished.
In February 1912, the 2512 ton steel-hulled German sailing ship, Pindos, was near the end of her voyage from South America with a cargo of nitrates. The ship had stopped in Falmouth but had become trapped by a strong southeasterly wind. The shipping company sent a tug to tow the ship back across the channel to Hamburg. However when they cleared Falmouth, the tug's captain found it was unable to make headway against the strong wind and both ships were being blown down the Channel. The tug had to release the tow to get to safety, but the heavy towing hawser left dragging in the water made it impossible for the Pindos to steer. The ship ran aground on the Guthens rocks and the crew were rescued by the Coastguard and Coverack lifeboat. After a couple of days, a storm broke up the ship, and the wreckage is still strewn over the reef around the rocks.
At the crossing, the path to the right from the crossing leads to Chynhalls, which is a typically functional Cornish placename, the gist of which is "house on the cliff". The path to the left leads out onto the headland - Chynhalls Point.
There are remains of a cliff castle on Chynhalls Point. The headland is defended via a pair of earth ramparts across the neck of the promontory with a ditch between them, thought to have been constructed around 2500 years ago. On the far side of the rock outcrop, the point slopes quite gently down to a flat area beside the sea, sheltered from westerly winds by the rocks above, which makes a rather nice picnic spot. However, no evidence of any kind of settlement has so far been found on the point.
The path ahead from the waymark leads onto the beach ahead - Porthbeer. At high tide the beach is stony but as the tide goes out, a sandy beach is revealed.
The purple flowers resembling a miniature pansy that you see along the footpaths from March to May are almost certainly dog violets, so-called because they are unscented (rather than scented of dog) to distinguish them from the sweet violet. The plants are able to thrive both in shade and full sun, so are found in grassland and hedgerows as well as woodland. Sweet violets prefer shade, so if you do encounter these it will most likely be in woodland, but the dog violets are more common even in this habitat.
The cattle breeds known as Devon were also the traditional breeds used in Cornwall until recent years. The South Devon breed, affectionately known as "Orange Elephant" or "Gentle Giant", is the largest of the British native breeds: the largest recorded bull weighed 2 tonnes. They are thought to have descended from the large red cattle of Normandy, which were imported during the Norman invasion of England. The other breed, known as "Devon Ruby" or "Red Ruby" (due to their less orange colouration), is one of the oldest breeds in existence, with origins thought to be from pre-Roman Celtic Britain.
Lizards are cold-blooded so they need to bask in the sun to warm up to their "operating temperature" which is around 30 Celcius. They usually do so with an area of cover nearby which forms an escape route from predators. You're therefore likely to encounter them in sunny spots on footpaths and footbridges. Once they spot you, they will usually make a hasty escape - they can move pretty quickly once they are warmed-up. During winter they hibernate as in cold temperatures they are too slow to catch any food (insects, spiders etc. which are also less numerous over the winter).
A lookout was built on The Lizard's Black Head during the Napoleonic Wars to spot invading French vessels but by the end of the 19th century this had fallen into ruin. During the First World War, a new lookout was built. The first version, known as "Hotel Cecil" was somewhat improvised out of driftwood, rocks and turf with a galvanised iron roof. In 1915, this was replaced with the present structure which remained in use until 1987. It is now owned by the National Trust and is open to the public. Inside there is information not just about the lookout itself but also the local wildlife and geology.
The 1500 ton steel sailing ship, Gunvor, was on its way back from Chile in April 1912 when it ran into fog off the Cornish coast. The vessel ran head-on into the cliffs of Black Head with such force that the steel masts bent over and the whole ship swung in against the rocks, ending up parallel to the cliffs. Where the ship came to rest, the bowsprit extended over an area of dry rock so the crew were able to escape along it and use a rope ladder to get to the shore. The remains of the wreck lie under the cliffs but have been broken up to a large degree by the sea.
In 1917, the Camarthen - a steamship of over 4,000 tons - was entering the Channel on a return journey from Genoa when it was holed by a torpedo from a U-boat. A trawler attempted to tow the sinking vessel to the shore but the Camarthen grounded off Beagles Point (recorded elsewhere as "Eagle Cove") to the west of Black Head and was lost.
Two of the narrow inlets in the bay are named "Zawn Carve" and "Zawn Vinoc".
According to "The Z to Z of Great Britain", there are just over 40 place names in Britain that begin with the letter Z; over three-quarters of them are in Cornwall. One of the main reasons for this is that the Cornish word for "coastal inlet" is zawn, and coastline is something that Cornwall has rather a lot of.
Lankidden Point is a dyke of hard, grey gabbro rock which protrudes through the surrounding blacker serpentine rocks. The rock stack on the end is called Carrick Lûz, which is Cornish for "grey rock".
At high water the beach consists of serpentine boulders, but as the tide goes out a sandy beach is revealed with numerous rockpools along the edges.
The underwater landscape between Downas Cove and Lankidden Point has been described as one of the best snorkelling locations in Cornwall both due to the marine life and the underwater serpentine rock formations.
The path to Lankidden Cove departs from the left after the coast path passes through a blackthorn hedge, and just before the coast path descends into a dip.
Lankidden Cove is almost covered at high tide; as the tide goes out, a white, sandy beach is revealed. The beach is sheltered by the point and high cliffs and faces south, making it a sun-trap. Access is from a steep path that ends with a climb down rocks using a rope.
Just before you turn right to go up the track, Lankidden cliff castle and point is at the end of the field on your left. There is a grassy area at the end of the point overlooking Carrick Luz that is a nice spot for picnics on a calm, sunny day.
On Lankidden point are the remains of a cliff castle in the form of a single well-preserved bank and ditch across the headland. The structure dates from the Iron Age and isolates an area of approximately one hectare on the end of the headland.
The settlement of Arrowan was first recorded in 1312. The name is thought to be based on a Cornish word, although exactly which is uncertain. One possibility is harow which is similar to the English word (i.e. farming implement to break up soil).
Ponsongath was formerly Ponsangath and there are still some road signs with the old spelling. The name is from the Cornish words pons - "bridge", an - "the", and kath - "cat" (which mutates to gath when placed after an). The gist is "pussycat bridge".
The name Coverack is from the Cornish word gover for "stream".
In English we often add a -y ending to a noun to turn it into an adjective; for example "rock" becomes "rocky". For many of the nouns imported from French, we add -ic (acidic, magnetic, artistic...). The equivalent in Cornish is to add -ack or -ek to the end of the word. Thus meynek is "stony" (men is stone), stennack means "tinny" (sten is tin).
375 million years ago, the rocks on Coverack beach were a molten state around 10 kilometres below the seabed; they were pushed to the surface by the huge pressure created by two colliding continents. The rocks on the beach include the actual junction between the Earth's crust and mantle, known as the "Moho discontinuity". To the left of this, in the direction of Lowland Point, the rocks are gabbro, formed in the oceanic crust. To the right, towards the harbour, the darker rocks are serpentine and originated in the earth's mantle. At the junction between the two, there are boulders with bands of one rock type forced through the other.
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