Off the steep street from the ferry, Hall Walk lives up to Richard Carew’s description in 1602 as a place of “diversified pleasings”. Sheltered from the blustering wind, the path of silvery slate is traced with tree shadows; warm sunshine entices a bumble bee to dandelions, intensifies the faint perfume of primrose, the brassiness of open celandines and the blue of the Fowey estuary below.
This walk was first recorded in 1585 as an ornamental promenade that zigzagged downhill towards the river. It was also a placement for ordnance and, in 1644 during the civil war, Charles I just escaped being shot here while he was staying with the Mohuns of Hall Manor.
Around Penleath Point and beneath the granite memorial to the writer Arthur Quiller-Couch, the incoming tide winds inland, through shadowy woodland, up Pont Pill, towards old quays overlooked by the pinnacles of Lanteglos church tower. At the head of the creek, near a derelict lime kiln, Princep daffodils and Devon violets survive in the undergrowth; beside the mossy path to the churchyard, on the opposite shady bank, tall snowdrops merge with ramsons, ivy and withered ferns.
Outside the church porch, the medieval lantern cross is encrusted with lichen, so the figures of St Peter, St Paul, the madonna and the crucifixion appear coated in grey hair.
Southward and over the hill that shields this ancient site from gales is Lantic Bay; off the isolated and deserted sandy beach, the expanse of turquoise water is calm, protected from the northerly offshore wind by cliffs and steep pastures.
Violets speckle turf by the coastal path and robins sing in the blackthorn scrub; Eddystone lighthouse is visible on the skyline and up the coast is Rame Head. The path continues west, out of the wind until Furze Park and the outskirts of Polruan.
Then dark clouds and blasts of cold rain encroach from inland; a rainbow dips into the choppy estuary with its vacant mooring buoys awaiting summer boats. Clouds disperse seawards, past the blockhouses that guard the entrance to the harbour and towards sunlit haze off the Dodman.
