"You haven’t earnt that yet!” The exclamation comes from a jovial lady behind the till at a bijou health food shop in the Cornish village of Millbrook. The ‘that’ in question is a cheeky bar of vegan salted caramel chocolate that I’ve slipped in with my other, more dentist-friendly purchases.
She’s right too. I’ve walked less than three miles from my starting point at Edgcumbe Park. However, when I tell her I have another 84 miles to go, she relents. “Well maybe a couple of squares then, just to keep you going.”
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The long-distance footpath I’ve just set out on is the 87-mile Tamara Coast to Coast Way (Hyns Tamara Arvor dh’ Arvor in Cornish). Opened in 2023, it broadly follows the River Tamar, which has traditionally served as a rough Cornwall/Devon border. Heading out from the Tamar’s broad estuary to the trickle at its source, it pushes onwards to the coast, joining the South West Coast Path to complete a 387-mile waymarked circuit of Cornwall.
I begin my journey by blundering off the sleeper train at Plymouth as dawn breaks, in plenty of time to wander the still quiet streets down to Stonehouse and the first ferry of the day to Edgcumbe. From Norman times up until the early 1800s, this ferry crossing over the Tamar was the way for travellers to enter Cornwall, albeit a somewhat hazardous one upon often choppy waters. Once over, I find I’m far too early to visit the 16th-century mansion at Mount Edgcumbe Country Park so content myself with wandering about a succession of formal gardens before setting off on a footpath around the coast in search of ill-deserved chocolate.
Just a few hours later, I’m heading back over the Tamar to Devonport on the Torpoint chain ferry, a sort of shuttling bridge. I confess, given my time over again, I’d take a bus from Devonport to the Royal Albert Bridge and avoid walking beside Plymouth’s busy roads and seemingly endless military installations. However, Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s awe-inspiring railway bridge makes it all worthwhile. Standing almost underneath it, I get an idea of the colossal scale of the enterprise. Completed in 1859, it’s good to learn that an ailing Brunel clung on to life just long enough to cross it himself.
The following morning, I visit the Tamar Bridge Visitor Centre and play with the exhibits (it’s all right – you’re allowed to) which seek to explain the bewildering engineering behind both Brunel’s bridge and the Tamar Bridge, the 20th-century road bridge that now keeps it company.
River crossings
This second day of my journey – spent largely in blissful solitude on riverine paths and silent country lanes – is dominated by the need to effect two further river crossings. It makes me feel like I’m back in the Middle Ages, when bridges were scarce and the course a traveller took was determined by the fords and ferries that allowed any rivers in the way to be negotiated.
A couple of hours of pleasant rural rambling takes me into the Tamar Valley National Landscape with its woods and fields and marshes, and thence to Lopwell Dam, built across a tributary called the Tavey. The stepping stones immediately below the dam allow for safe passage across the river at low tide. I say safe but the stones are somewhat uneven and thrillingly slippery.
I now have to traverse the Tamar, which turns east below the village of Calstock. The ferry stopped sailing here a number of years ago. However, I’d discovered just before setting out that a trial re-opening of the service had just been launched. I duly entered into an enthusiastic correspondence with its skipper, Julian. He was excited about plans for a boat that can run on electricity from off-grid solar panels “making us totally self-sufficient for energy, with zero emissions… a first for a regular ferry service in the UK”.
Unfortunately, having had to wait for the tide to ebb at Lopwell Dam, by the time I arrive at the Tamar crossing point – about eight miles later – the water is too low for the ferry to sail. (If you fancy catching it yourself, make sure to cross at Lopwell before high tide.) Thankfully, there’s another, slightly unconventional means of crossing the river. And as a pleasant misty drizzle blossoms into diluvial downpour, I head steeply uphill through a sheltering wood to Bere Alston station for the seven-minute ride to Calstock via a glorious viaduct I’ve just walked beneath.
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A port was established at Calstock in the 14th century to serve local silver mines. Boats filled with copper, lead and granite sailed down the Tamar until the early 1900s when the last mines in the district closed. Today, the attractive village’s 11 pubs have been reduced to just two. And tempted though I am to lounge a while with an early evening pint, I set my wearying legs on course for Gunnislake, a few more circuitous miles up the river.
Historical landmarks
It is from this point that I notice a change in the character of the trail. The Tamar becomes a lot less visible. Henceforth I merely glimpse it here and there, such as when I cross back into Devon over the Horse Bridge – at nearly 600 years old, the river’s most venerable crossing. And despite passing through the occasional village – Milton Abbot with its array of Edwin Lutyens Arts and Crafts houses is a highlight – my surroundings become increasingly remote. As I look out from a high field on the way to Lifton, the surrounding countryside is almost empty of buildings, save a distant smudge amidst the greens that my map tells me must be Launceston.
The August sun returns too, and I’m more than happy to seek out the damp coolness of churches that smell reassuringly of old hymn books and the dusty exhalations of muttered liturgy. St Swithin’s at Launcells is particularly memorable. Hidden away in a valley, it’s adorned with fragments of a Tudor wall painting featuring an anomalous man in Dutch clothing and fully lives up to Sir John Betjeman’s appraisal of it as “the least spoilt church in Cornwall”.
I then meet the Bude Canal. Or at least the abandoned remains of it. Completed in 1823 to move lime-rich sand from beaches to the rural hinterland for use as fertiliser, its 35-mile network includes a long arm that heads south alongside the Tamar. Its pioneering design all but did away with locks. Instead, specially-made barges with wheels were raised and lowered on inclined planes by a water-powered system of chains. Not an hour passes without me coming across some remnant of this revolutionary canal, while one lengthy stretch of towpath has been transformed by nature into a rather magical tunnel of trees. Five miles of the network are today preserved by the Bude Canal Trust.
The Tamar's source
Fittingly, my final day is the most enjoyable of all. I set off from the Upper and Lower Tamar Lakes, reservoirs fed by the river that have become popular for water sports such as kayaking and stand-up paddleboarding. Passing through an increasingly bumpy landscape, and crossing the river one final time, I arrive at last at the Tamar’s source. Or sources, to be more precise, because it’s actually a collection of small springs. A lovingly engraved slate on a large rock at the roadside advertises their unseen presence.
The final few miles to the sea take me through the vast and glorious Marsland Valley Nature Reserve, a steep-sided thickly-wooded wonderland where I’m lucky enough to spot a pearl-bordered fritillary, a butterfly with an underwing like an exquisite stained-glass window. The valley takes me gently down to Marsland Mouth and journey’s end. I sit and watch the Atlantic waves mesmerically rolling in, then head along an unspoilt slice of coastline to the little village of Morwenstow.
Waiting in the tiny shelter for the bus that will take me to a soft bed in Bude, I reflect on the 87-mile route I’ve just taken. For most of its length, it has guided me through lesser explored tracts of Cornwall and Devon – remarkably, I didn’t meet a single other hiker. The lack of public footpaths in some places necessitated a lot more road-walking than I prefer, though at least it was mostly on country lanes. And there wasn’t a great deal of accommodation, cafés, pubs or handy village stores en route after Plymouth. While this wasn’t an insurmountable challenge, and was a tribute to the trail’s adventurous spirit, it did mean forward planning was required, such as finding buses to take me to and from my night’s lodgings towards the end.
That said, I enjoyed the fact that walking the Tamara Way was less than straightforward – it made the completion of it, on a clifftop with sumptuous views of the sea, all the more satisfying. Needless to say, by then my chocolate bar had long since been devoured.
Main image: Shingle beach at Cremyll, backed by Mount Edgcumbe Country Park/Getty
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