Days Of The Celtic Sun: Paddleboarding the South West Peninsula

At the beginning of the best journeys of your life, you often don’t know your final destination; you can’t really imagine the end. We’re talking about the kind of journey, in fact, when the outcome remains unknown until the very last days. This was one of these journeys.

In 2013, I began experimenting with standup paddleboarding as an alternative to both sea kayaking and whitewater kayaking as a way of exploring coasts and rivers. I was initially attracted to the concept of standing on the water rather than being confined within a tiny hull. I quickly began to realise that once you’ve mastered the various techniques, and with the required level of fitness, you can do pretty much anything you can do in a sea kayak on a standup paddleboard. It was a transformational realisation. It was this new understanding that directed me, several years ago, towards an unusual adventure: a journey around Southwest England, one of the finest stretches of coast anywhere in the world, by SUP. The concept was simple. It would not be a continuous expedition, but rather a series of shorter trips, eventually forming a complete journey around the peninsula. This was going to be a jigsaw-like, jazz improvisation of an expedition composed of separate parts, and completed over several years. This was forced by the unique demands of my chosen mode of travel as well as the necessities of fitting a long distance voyage around work and ordinary life.

When travelling significant stretches of open water using a small craft, good planning and logistics is usually critical. Long trips linking estuaries, headlands, islands and the open ocean become possible with experience. SUPs are considerably more wind-affected than sea kayaks, due to their lack of draught and the fact that your body can act as a sail. Whilst it is possible to paddle upwind, if you want to travel distances of more than fifteen or twenty kilometres in one push, it is a huge advantage to plan your journeys with the wind, the swell, and the tide in your favour. An appealing aspect of this process is the logistical planning itself, which is an art in its own right. Friday nights often must be spent carefully cross-referencing tidal current models, swell charts, and detailed wind forecasts to ensure the weekend is a success.

There can be a considerable level of commitment when launching a paddleboard downwind and with the tide running with you. In many cases, after a short period you simply can’t go back. You’re fully committed to the trip, like the ancient Polynesians were when they set out in their wakas [twin-hulled ocean canoes] on their voyages of discovery in the Pacific.

I wasn’t going to find any undiscovered islands on my journey, of course, but I was about to set forth into a world of wind, salt, and silence on a truly epic scale

A few weeks later, on a day of unreal Mediterranean conditions, I launched through turquoise water and half a metre of beach surf at New Polzeath under azure skies and a blazing sun. Was this Cornwall or Sardinia? Cutting the corner from Pentire Point across to Tintagel took me far out to sea. Rounding this epic headland, famous for its links to Arthurian legend, was the highlight of the journey, with a lively tide race running through very deep water directly under the three hundred foot cliffs at the apex of the point.

The equally impressive section between Padstow and St. Ives – passing the great headlands of Trevose, St. Agnes, and finally Godrevy – was completed a little later, over four separate days, taking me to West Penwith and the point where the Celtic Sea meets the English Channel. Rounding St. Agnes Head, under the sheer cliffs of Carn Gowla, was particularly exciting. There was a decent wind-chop, which combined with the clapotis effect [when the waves go in both directions] made the sea pretty lively. I avoided the worst of the tide race here by navigating an almost invisible channel cleaving through the cliff on the seaward apex of the headland that was at one point only just wide enough for my board.

If I were forced to choose, the final twenty-eight kilometre section from St. Ives to Sennen Cove is perhaps the finest section of the north coast of Southwest England. The wildness of the granite and greenstone cliffs, interspersed with occasional tiny bays and offshore rocks, between Cape Cornwall and Zennor Head is simply astounding. I know the crags and zawns of this coastline well as a climber, but to experience the place from the wilderness of the sea takes it to another level. Grey seals, dolphins, basking sharks, and ocean sunfish [mola mola] can often be seen here. What makes this trip really committing, particularly if there’s any swell, is the fact that there is really only one safe landing along the entire route, at Boat Cove.

On another vintage Cornish day in summer 2018, I launched from the slipway at Sennen Cove just after low water. My destination, the small harbour of Mousehole, lay beyond Land’s End, where the different tidal streams of the Celtic Sea to the north and the English Channel to the south converge, creating lots of complicated inshore and offshore currents: this is the very edge of mainland Britain. Without much swell to worry about, I navigated close to the cliffs, through granite arches and spooky zawns filled with the boom of the sea. Tidal rapids often form along here in the narrow channels between the headlands and the jagged reefs that surround them; perfect for a bit of whitewater action. To say the paddling here is world-class is something of an understatement. About half a mile offshore, somewhere between Land’s End and Chair Ladder, the rudder-like dorsal fin of an ocean sunfish flapped lazily for a while against the side of my board before it plunged back into the deep.

Rounding Chair Ladder and passing the coastguard lookout on Hella Point, I’d crossed the official threshold of the Celtic Sea and entered the English Channel. The groundswell dropped back as I turned north, and a fresh westerly tailwind whipped across the deep blue water.

Tidal rapids form in the channels between the headlands and the jagged reefs surrounding them

St. Mawes, just east of Falmouth, is like an artist’s impression of a Cornish fishing port. It oozes an old fashioned seaside glamour; a hint of what summers used to be like – or what we’d like to imagine they were like – before package holidays to Benidorm. I set out alone from the quay at quarter to eight on an azure July morning in the summer of 2020, heading northeast for Mevagissey, a full twenty eight kilometres northeast.

I turned northeast at St. Anthony’s lighthouse on Zone Point, exiting Carrick Roads and entering the open sea, and the brooding prow of Dodman Point appeared dead ahead on the horizon. Dodman, the highest headland in South Cornwall, was often the first land sailors in the past would have sighted when entering the English Channel. It’s a stirring thought to think of those men on the creaking decks of sailing ships glimpsing it on the horizon, as they returned from months or years at sea.

Pausing for a break close to the offshore island known as Gull Rock, off Nare Head, I took in the scene. The sky was an unbroken, impossible blue. The faint breath of a northeast wind ruffled the sea from time to time, broken only by the distant cry of gulls from the cliffs. I could think of no better place in the world to be on a Sunday morning in early July than out here, half a mile off Cornwall’s Roseland Coast. It was like one of those dreamlike days from a childhood summer: a moment held still in time. Two hours later I landed on the fish dock at Mevagissey in a state of Zen-like calm and rapture, my spirits lifted by the freedom of the sea.

The section of coast between Mevagissey and Fowey is dominated by the huge bight of St. Austell bay. This can be made into a superb trip by launching from Lostwithiel, a few miles inland, at high water; you head down the Fowey river on the outgoing tide, enter the sea, then cross the bay itself. When we did it in the late summer of 2019, a brisk east wind helped our progress west-south-west.

Once we were into the wind-line we were immediately doing seven knots with a steady following swell

Downwind standup paddling on a following swell is a real delight, once you’ve mastered the strange art of ‘catching the bumps’ as the technique is known; essentially it means SUP-surfing a wind-generated wave that isn’t fully breaking.

Much of the southeast Cornish coast between Plymouth Sound and Fowey was completed this way. Rounding Rams Head, the big, blunt headland west of Plymouth Sound, was a highlight. Once we got out from the shelter of the Sound and into the wind-line, we cruised across to Downderry at a steady seven knots, with a following swell and a fresh southeasterly powering us along. Who needs the Molokai Channel when you’ve got the English Channel? The coast east of Plymouth is dominated by the dramatic sweep of Bigbury Bay. Here, on another day of exciting following seas, we sped downwind from Wembury to Hope Cove. The more spectacular section to the east then leads around Bolt Head, Prawle Point and Start Point, the latter defining the western extremity of the vast ‘lee shore’ that is Lyme Bay. In the days of sailing ships, this was a trap in strong southwest winds, driving many vessels to their fate on the mighty shingle reef of Dorset’s Chesil Beach.

Whilst the fast tide races off Bolt and Prawle are fun in their own right, rounding Start Point is particularly exciting. When approaching from the west, the flood tide pulls you straight down towards a pair of huge, flat-topped rocks that lie just offshore beyond the lighthouse. The idea is to keep as direct a course as possible through the narrow gap between the rocks as you rise and dive through the overfalls.

After Start Point, the rest of the South Devon coast is less dramatic and more benign, although the section between Blackpool Sands and Brixham is idyllic. North of Dartmouth, the English Riviera’s Air Show made things more interesting. As we negotiated the offshore Mew Stone rock, the bassy drone of an Avro Lancaster’s V12 Merlin engines seemed to make the sea simmer as the plane banked south overhead.