Surfing in Sennen and hike to Cape Cornwall

Posted on August 7, 2007
Filed Under - adventures |

Just got back from a long weekend in Sennen, a coastal village between Land’s End and Cape Cornwall which has excellent rock climbing and one of the best surfing breaks in the area. It was supposed to be a climbing trip but it turned into more of a surfing trip! I went down on Friday with a bunch of my fellow climbers but when we got up on Saturday morning the weather was pretty dismal. It can be dangerous to climb on the sea cliffs when the weather is bad. My climbing pals - rather disappointingly - decided not to sit the bad weather out and headed off, but I wanted to stay on for the weekend. There was a swell on and I thought I could get some surfing in and explore the area. Sennen Cove is a beautiful place and there is great walking all around the coast.

In fact, the weather did clear up and for much of the weekend was sunny and beautiful. I went for a very mellow and enjoyable afternoon’s hike up towards Cape Cornwall. Cliffs near Sennen CoveI love the wild flowers in this part of the world and I took loads of pictures so that I could identify them later. Wow, I am becoming a real plant geek! This coastal area is somewhat different from my area near Newquay. The cliffs are granite but have crumbled in places so there are boulders strewn about. In between are vast carpets of purple heather that look soft enough to sit on. I reckon this is some of the best walking in the country. I also had the fun of camping solo, even though I was in a campsite and not out in the wild. I must have looked pretty odd with my little tent and basic stove in the middle of the peak season mélange of caravans, marquees and SUVs.

Surfers at Sennen Cove

Lew and Bert, surf instructorsAfter my friends left, I decided to have a surf lesson. I wandered along the beach front and stopped at the first surf school I saw. This was Smart Surf, run by Sam Smart with help from his brother Lew and their sidekick Bert. Little bro Seb, who’s in his mid-teens is the most talented of the lot and has the potential to be the “next big thing” in British surfing. Sam seems very proud of him! The lesson turned out to be a very good idea for me because I got the opportunity to work on some of the things that haven’t been going right recently, like the position of my front foot and getting properly centred on the board for paddling into waves. I was so stoked I wanted to go back the next day but unfortunately the lifeguards closed the beach due to dangerous rip currents so I had to wait until the day after. That second session was so good; I really felt I was getting somewhere. The sun was out and the water looked gorgeous, a blue and white heaven. Sam was surfing in a comp at Fistral so we had the gruesome twosome, Lew and Bert to entertain us. That’s them in the picture, which I nicked off their website – I hope they don’t mind. After the two-hour lesson was up, I stayed out for another hour just practising. I was even more stoked than the day before!

I had such a mellow time at Sennen. Even though I was on my own most of the time, I felt happy and relaxed, just living in the moment and going with the flow. There’s a clip on YouTube which captures my Sennen experience almost as if I had shot it myself. It looks so much like the weekend I was there – the local rippers out surfing in the swell, the beautiful flora and fauna, the sun on the water. Watch it and you’ll get an idea of what it’s like to be there. And make sure you’ve got the sound turned on, it’s got a great backing track.

Stumble it!

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