It is critical that you carefully time this walk around low tide and sea conditions: the crossing between beaches at Zacry's Island and several more points between here and Whipsiderry are underwater except around 2 hours either side of low tide. Also note that if there is a large surf running, waves surge in a long way over the flat sand. You can use the Newquay tide times to plan when you do the walk. Setting out whilst the tide is still falling is strongly recommended as is being prepared to turn back if the sea conditions turn out to be unsuitable. Once you reach the steps at Whipsiderry, there is no time pressure from this point on.
Watergate Bay, near Newquay, is still sometimes known by its local name "Tregurrian Beach" which is reported as once being Porth Tregoryan (meaning something along the lines of "Cove at Coryan's Farm").
The beach is two miles long and popular for surfing of all kinds including kite surfing. The beach faces west, so the best surf occurs when the wind is easterly. The surf is said to be consistent at all states of the tide.
During winter storms, starfish sometimes get washed inshore and collect in the rockpools here.
Starfish can be found in rockpools though much larger numbers of starfish occur a short way out to sea on the mussel beds of the reefs. In winter, storm waves and high tides can result in mass strandings on beaches.
Starfish are members of a bizarre family of animals with bodies that have five-fold symmetry and date back at least 450 million years. They have no brain but instead have a complex decentralised nervous system spread throughout their bodies. This connects up to sensors which can detect light, vibrations and chemicals, equivalent to eyes, ears and a nose. Starfish eat shellfish such as barnacles and mussels which they lever open with their feet and then extrude their stomach into the shell. This releases enzymes which dissolve the prey into soup which is then absorbed.
The name of Whipsiderry Beach arises from some old mining terms: whips (marker flags) and derrick (an elevated structure for haulage situated over a shaft). It is recorded that the Derrick - resembling gallows - was named after a famous hangman by that name.
A cave on the side of Porth Island was enlarged in the 1870s as part of the Porth Island Silver and Lead Mine workings. In the 1920s-30s, a harmonium was wheeled in here at low tide for candlelight concerts and consequently became known as the Concert Cavern or Banqueting Hall. It eventually became unsafe and was mostly demolished with explosives.
Another cave near this, known as Cathedral Cavern, has a pillar and a series of intersecting tunnels. This was once quarried, it is reported, for white marble. Marble is not common in Cornwall, but a bed of it was found deep in a mine fairly nearby in Perranporth so this might be related.
There are also two smaller caves on Whipsiderry Beach named according to their contents: Fern Cavern and Boulder Cavern.
As you climb the steps, the wall on your left is covered with samphire.
Rock samphire has been a popular wild food since Celtic times. It has a strong, characteristic, slightly lemony flavour and recently has become more well-known as a flavouring for gin. It was very popular as a pickle in 16th century Britain until it almost died out from over-picking in the 19th Century. Consequently, it's currently a protected plant but is now making a good comeback. In Shakespeare's time, a rope was tied to a child's ankles and he was dangled over the cliff to pick the rock samphire that grew in crevices and clefts in the rocks.
The completely unrelated but similar-looking golden samphire also grows around the North Cornish coast. The leaves look almost identical, but the daisy-like yellow flowers in summer are a giveaway, as rock samphire has tiny green-white flowers that look more like budding cow parsley. Golden samphire is edible, but is inferior in flavour to rock samphire; it is also nationally quite rare in Britain.
Also completely unrelated is marsh samphire (also known as glasswort) which looks more like micro-asparagus. This is what typically appears on restaurant menus or in supermarkets as "samphire".
The beach at St Columb Minor is known either as St Columb Porth or more commonly just "Porth" or "Porth beach", though the latter is effectively "cove beach", rivalling "Coombe valley" ("valley valley") for the place name most lost in translation.
The narrow beach, between the two parallel headlands, is consequently fairly sheltered and therefore generally better-suited to swimming than surfing. The gradient is very shallow so the tide comes in quite fast. The river running along the right-hand side of the beach is deeper and faster-flowing than you might expect: attempting to wade through in wellies may result in an unplanned swim.
Roughly 20 feet down in the sand on the beach at Porth is the remains of a prehistoric forest which is though to date from around 7,000 years ago when sea levels where much lower. This forest extended out into the bay which would have all been dry land. During the 1950s, a water pumping station was built near the Mermaid Inn which involved digging down into the sand. During the excavation, tree stumps were uncovered that were so large that a bulldozer was required to pull them out. Particularly large storms can strip away sand and cause the tree stumps to be exposed, which happened in some parts of Cornwall and Wales in 2014, allowing the age of some of the remains to be estimated using radiocarbon dating.
On Trevelgue Head, alongside the beach at Porth, are the remains of an Iron Age cliff castle. The site was excavated in 1939 but due to the outbreak of the Second World War, the project was never finished and the results never published until nearly 70 years later in 2007. The fort was surrounded by a series of large earth and stone ramparts, and the settlement in the centre included a large roundhouse and even a protected field system. Estimates of when the fort was in use vary, but certainly from before Roman Times. It's likely to have been built somewhere between 3-6 centuries BC, and then been in use for a number of centuries.
There are barrows on the headland, dating back further, to the Bronze Age. Archaeologists have also found remains of a bronze foundry and hut circles from this period. However some remains of settlements on the headland date back even further still, to Stone Age times: flint tools have been found that are estimated to be 6000 years old, from the Mesolithic period.
Barrows are megalithic tombs constructed with stone supports and covered with a mound of earth. Archaeology has revealed that the ancient tribes of Cornwall practised burial of their dead. Important individuals, such as kings or tribal chiefs, were often buried in monumental tombs to indicate their significance. Valuable items such as weapons and jewellery were often buried along with the dead. However, many barrows have been subject to grave robbers over the ages, meaning much of this treasure has been lost.
There is a blowhole in the gully at the end of Porth Island, located on the longer right-hand side, opposite where the shorter side ends. At mid-tide, when there is a swell, the waves washing into the cave, compress the air and force a jet of water and compressed air through the blowhole with a roar.
Blowholes form when waves enter a cave, and the air they compress weakens the roof of the cave and enlarges the chamber. Often the blowhole eventually breaks through to the surface, forming a collapsed cave which ultimately results in a rock stack being severed from the land.
Promontory forts are only found in the South West of England and are thought to be introduced from Brittany due to the strong links between the Celtic communities. Although many do contain the foundations of Iron-Age roundhouses, it is thought unlikely that the wind-beaten areas on clifftops were permanent residences. Although the initial assumption was that the ramparts were purely functional and for defence, another possibility is that the ramparts were used as a status symbol, making a statement about the power and importance of the owners. If this were the case, the locations could have been used for a range of functions including religious, social, or trade.
As a wave approaches the beach, the bottom of the wave (which extends as far below the water as the crest does above the surface) starts to get close to the seabed and this begins to slow the wave down. As it slows down, its energy is transferred into increased height and the result is more closely-spaced, taller waves. The bottom of the wave now extends even closer to the seabed and is slowed even more. Eventually, the top of the wave outruns the bottom and the wave breaks. More sudden changes to depth allow the wave to get taller and steeper before it has time to break which is why "reef breaks" attract surfers.
During the Iron Age and even during Roman times, bronze was still used particularly for items such as jewellery. There were two reasons for this: unlike iron, bronze does not quickly corrode in air and water and the colour and lustre of polished bronze was more attractive than rusty iron.
In Cornwall, cliffs erode at an average rate of between roughly 3cm - 30cm per year depending on the hardness of the rocks and location. In reality this often happens in infrequent sudden collapses rather than as a steady, gradual process. It was found that one massive storm in 2014 caused around 100 times the average amount of erosion. There are obvious implications from climate change leading to more frequent or more intense storms.
The island on Whipsiderry beach is known as Flory Island or Black Humphrey Rock. Books from the 19th and early 20th Century record tales of a wrecker called Black Humphrey who was said to live in the old mine-workings. So much of the mine workings on the beach and the island have since been eroded that it's hard to imagine how it would have looked hundreds of years ago. A verse is recorded about Black Humphrey based on ships being wrecked by the westerly gales:
When the wind is from the west Pray for me among the rest; When the wind is from the east I’ll to church as soon as Priest;
The alternative name Flory is thought to be a corruption of Phillory, but the significance of the name has been lost.
The two large mounds alongside the coast path between Watergate Bay and Whipsiderry are Bronze Age barrows. A stone axe hammer from the Bronze Age was found in a burial cist next to one of the mounds.
Heathers and heaths are members of the Ericaceae family. The formal definition of a heather is a member of the Calluna genus within this family whereas heaths are members of the Erica genus. Bell heather is actually an Erica and therefore technically not a heather but a heath.
Some weird and wonderful types of barnacle can sometimes wash ashore on the Atlantic currents.
Goose barnacles are alien-looking creatures, usually found on flotsam such as driftwood that has been at sea for a while. In mediaeval times, before it was realised that birds migrate, it was believed that goose barnacles hatched into geese just before the winter. The association is thought to be based on similarities in the colour and the long necks of the barnacles. Since there were no plastic bottles or wellies floating in the sea back then, they were only ever seen on driftwood and it was assumed that the wood was already covered in the barnacles, laid by geese, before it fell into the sea. This elaborate lifecycle was also exploited as a "loophole" in religious doctrine which forbade the eating of meat on certain days. As geese were deemed "neither flesh, nor born of flesh", they were exempt and could be eaten.
The buoy barnacle is a strange-looking blue creature that sometimes washes up on the shore in groups of a few at a time. It is a kind of goose barnacle but it excretes a substance which resembles expanding foam to create its own float. Several barnacles may latch on to the same float, each adding a bit of extra foam to it if they weigh it down too much.
Surfing in the UK became popular in the 1960s, driven by the music of The Beach Boys and the Hawaiian influence in California. However there were pioneer surfers in Cornwall and the Channel Islands shortly after the First World War. In the 1920s, the young men of Perranporth were provided with coffin lids by the local undertaker for use as surfboards.
The corn bunting is a small brown bird and as its name suggests, it has a preference for cereals. Consequently it has been living alongside humans since Neolithic times when our ancestors started to domesticate cereal crops. Its common name "fat bird of the barley" gives away its appearance, resembling a very portly skylark that looks like it would have trouble getting off the ground, let alone hovering. Its call is equally unglamorous, described as the shaking of a bunch of keys. Sadly, the once common and familiar bird has vanished from many areas and is now endangered. The rapid decline is thought to be due to industrialisation of arable farming methods. In Cornwall, the coastal land management provides an important habitat in which the birds thrive.
Kelp is the name given to a group of seaweed species. The most common in Cornwall is Oarweed - a leathery brown seaweed with finger-like strands. It grows at an impressive rate of around 5% per day, doubling in length in about 2 weeks and can reach up to 4 metres in length.
Kelp is high in sodium carbonate and was burned during Victorian times to harvest the alkaline ash which could be used in soap and glass production. Kelp also contains significant amounts of iodine and was used as a source for this too. In 2010, researchers found in laboratory trials that alginate, the soluble fibre substance in kelp, was better at preventing fat absorption than most over-the-counter slimming aids.
Jellyfish are the oldest multi-organ animal. They have been around over 500 million years (more than twice as long ago as when the first dinosaurs appeared). They eat plankton which is most available during the late spring and summer. Consequently they are most often seen in large numbers when beaches are at their most busy.
The collective noun for jellyfish can either be a "swarm", "bloom" or "smack". When jellyfish rapidly multiply (due to plankton availability), "bloom" is typically used. When jellyfish actively swim to stay together (not all species do) then "swarm" tends to be preferred. "Smack" is a word play on being stung which is frowned-on by scientists.
Two of the most common jellyfish you're likely to see in Cornwall don't have a sting that is noticeable by humans:
Two to watch out for which are common and sting are:
Much less common, but also noteworthy for its nasty sting, is the Lion's Mane Jellyfish which is large (around 50cm across), reddish brown with thick frilled arms and a mass of hair-like tentacles. Also, if you see something that looks like a purple-and-pink inflatable pasty, it's a Portuguese Man o' War which is technically not a jellyfish but nevertheless has a very nasty sting.
If you are unlucky enough to be stung by a jellyfish, scrape off any stinging sacs stuck to the skin (e.g. with a shell or credit card) and apply ice and take some painkillers. There are old wives tales about urine, alcohol and baking soda being cures; avoid all of these as they are ineffective and likely to make the pain worse. Although vinegar does work in some situations, in others it can activate any unfired stinging cells; NHS advice is therefore to avoid it.
The Portuguese man o' war resembles a jellyfish but is actually a colony of polyps, specialised into four different roles. Some provide the float and others make up the stinging tentacles which can stretch over 160ft long and catch 100 fish in one day.
The man o' war is easily recognised by the pasty-shaped float with pink and purple colouring. They are normally found in the open ocean but big Atlantic storms with strong winds can very occasionally drive them onto the Cornish coast.
It is named after a heavily-armed 18th Century warship as a sting is extremely painful and in rare cases can be fatal.
By-the-wind sailors consist of a ring of blue jellyfish-like material around a central plastic-like sail and can sometimes be found blown onto beaches. Like jellyfish, they catch prey using stinging cells (not perceptible by humans although some people can get a rash).
The direction of the sail along the float determines which way they travel. Those with a sail running top-left to bottom-right drift left of the wind, whereas those with top-right to bottom-left drift to the right of the prevailing wind direction.
They are not a single organism, but a whole colony of coral-like polyps that are interconnected with a canal system to distribute the food caught in the tentacles. However each colony is all of a single gender. If that wasn't complicated enough, alternate generations are singular planktonic jellyfish-like creatures that don't even form a by-the-wind sailor, but their offspring do!
During hot weather, weever fish migrate to Britain from the Mediterranean. They bury themselves in the sand where they are camouflaged, and ambush small fish in shallow water. To protect against predators, they have spines that inject a nerve toxin; if trodden on, this can be very painful. It's therefore a good idea either to wear some form of footwear in the sea or to shuffle your feet through the sand which is more likely to scare away any fish. If you are unlucky enough to tread on a weever, get your foot into hot water as soon as possible as this denatures the venom. Most lifeguards have a kettle on standby (and although its primary purpose might be cups of tea rather than weever stings, they will forego a cuppa in the interests of pain relief).
Seaweeds are algae and rely on sunlight to produce energy via photosynthesis in the way terrestrial plants do; they therefore thrive in shallow water where the sunlight penetrates. On the shoreline, you're likely to see brown bladderwrack and red dulse on exposed rocks; within rockpools, green sea lettuces and red coral-like seaweeds. At very low tides, or if you wade into the water beside rocks, brown ribbon-like kelp is common, which is a favourite hiding place for many fish such as bass, pollack and wrasse.
No seaweeds are known to be poisonous and several are eaten raw, cooked or dried. Seaweed is quite rich in iodine which is an essential mineral, but in very large doses is toxic, so excessive consumption are not recommended. A number of food additives such as alginates, agar and carrageenan are produced from seaweed and used as gelling agents and emulsifiers in many processed foods.
Limpets wander around grazing on algae when the tide is in, but always return to the same parking spot as the tide recedes, gradually creating a depression in the rock at this point. In coastal communities it was traditional to gather limpets, mussels and winkles before Lent. The practice was known as "goin' a triggin'" and the gathered shellfish was known as "Trigg meat". The shells of limpets were known as "Croggans".
Thrift is a tough evergreen plant which grows on sea cliffs and consequently it's the county flower of the Scilly Isles. To survive in this environment it needs to be able to withstand drought and salt-laden winds. Its long, thin leaves and hairy flower stems have evolved to minimise water loss.
The name "thrift" has been suggested to arise from the plant's tufted leaves being economical with water in the windy locations where it is found. It's common all along the Cornish coast and in April-June produces pale pink flowers, hence its other common name: "Sea Pink". The plant grows in dense circular mats which together with its covering of pink flowers gives rise to another less common name: "Ladies' Cushions".
Thrift is tolerant of metals such as lead and particularly copper in soil so it is able to colonise coastal mine tips. It has been suggested that the heavy metal tolerance may be partly down to not transporting much dissolved metal up the shoot of the plant (since thrift grows in a desiccating salty environment, there is less water to transport it than in many other plants). However thrift also has mechanisms to sequester metals and excrete them through its roots and leaves.
Thrift is known as a "hyperaccumulator" of copper: it can concentrate copper by over 1000 times more than other neighbouring plants. This makes it potentially useful to clean up contaminated land but this be done over many years. In principle it's even possible to mine for minerals by concentrating them in plants and then extracting them (known as "phytomining"). It's currently far from economical to do so for copper but for rarer high-value metals it may become economical, possibly in conjunction with chemical soil additives to increase bio-availability.
Tamarisks, also known as salt cedars, are able to withstand drought, soil salinity, and salt-water spray and therefore thrive in mild coastal areas such as the Cornish coastline. Their ability to accumulate salt and then excrete this through glands in their leaves prevents less salt-tolerant plants from growing around their base.
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