A coastal loop at Portloe

The tiny coastal village of Portloe, on the Roseland Peninsula, is where you really step back in Cornish time. This is a remote part of Cornwall into which the modern world has not managed to bulldoze its way. The narrow lanes that eventually make their way here have little sympathy for large vehicles, so that Portloe has been spared too much focus as a tourist destination. The coast to either side of the village continues sense of a delightfully detached world where nothing matters so much as the wild beauty of the landscape.

Unspoiled village

The poet John Betjeman thought Portloe was one of the most unspoiled villages in Cornwall, and would be delighted to see that it remains so to this day. A century ago, more than fifty fishing boats worked from this sheltered cove. Today there's only a handful, but they keep a powerful tradition of great seamanship and local knowledge alive.

Portloe does not go unnoticed however. With its lovely traditional houses and compelling location within a niche in the cliffs, the village is a favourite with filmmakers. Walt Disney shot scenes for the 1949 version of Treasure Island, here while the television dramatisation of the novel The Camomile Lawn (1992) was shot nearby. Portloe has even doubled for Ireland in a feature film, and appeared in several other productions.

Cheerful meander

The first section of the coast path that you follow out of Portloe is a cheerful meander up and down steps and around quaint cottages and even across the slipway of the old Portloe lifeboathouse. The path climbs to what must be one of the National Trust’s tiniest properties, The Flagstaff, a small walled-in patch of land where a revenue lookout was established during the heyday of Cornish smuggling – for which Portloe had a certain reputation. Beyond here is a later coastguard building, now disused.

Leave the car park and turn right and downhill towards Portloe. Go left through a gapway by a public footpath sign, just round a bend in the road, and descend some rock steps and then steeper concrete steps.

Turn left at a junction with the coast path. Descend steps and step awkwardly across a little stream. Bear left across the slipway of the former lifeboat station, and then go up very steep steps. Turn left up more steps and then turn right up a railed walkway. Bear round right in front of a row of cottages and then up steep steps.

Pass The Flagstaff, then pass a disused coastguard lookout and continue along the coast path through a number of steep sections to reach Caragloose Point. Continue to the National Trust property of Tregenna.

Climb more steep steps and then a very steep section. Go through a wooden kissing gate (dogs on lead here). Continue along a level path high above the sea, with an open field inland. Pass a section of windswept blackthorns and sycamores.

A few paces before a wooden kissing gate, go sharply left up an earthy path into the open field above. Follow a faint, grassy path slightly leftwards across the field. This is a National Trust permissive path. Go through a wooden kissing gate and along the left edge of a field to another kissing gate, and then follow a muddy track towards houses at Tregenna.

Just before reaching buildings at Tregenna, turn sharply left along the field-edge to reach a stile. Go over the stile and head for the far right-hand corner of the field ahead. Go over a wooden barrier with a V-shaped slot, climb over a high slate stile and turn left along a field-edge to a metal gate.

There is a very steep stile on the left – it is easier to go through the gate. Go straight ahead down the concrete farm track and follow it as it bears left through Cruggan farm and then bends to the right down a hedged-in lane.

Go through a gateway (or over a stile to its right), and bear slightly right across the middle of a field towards a bungalow. Go through a metal kissing gate onto a public road and turn left to return to the car park at Portloe.