Old
steps at Coverack
Greater
broomrape
|
The path goes out to Chynhalls Point before
almost doubling back to Coverack to pass around a hotel on the front. The beach below the hotel was pebbly above
beautiful clean sand, where a man was digging for lugworms as fishing
bait. The path passes behind a
foul-smelling pig farm, where an invisible battle between man and beast was
apparently taking place, with much swearing on one side and squealing on the
other. After this the path continued
along the coast for the rest of the day. The main underlying rock was serpentine and
the flowers reflected this, with dropwort and autumn squill for the first
time. Cornish heath recurred along
with greater burnet in the damper areas.
Fertilised fields, however, encouraged coarse grass and bracken.
At
Black Head the rocks and exposure combine to produce a special flora including
fringed rupturewort, dyer’s greenweed, petty whin and prostrate broom. There was greater broomrape on the gorse,
plus thyme and ivy broomrapes. We had
lunch on the next headland of Pedn Boar, sheltered from the wind, among
squill and butterflies, watching gulls and kittiwakes flying past. The serpentine was evident in rocks in the
path, which were shiny and slippery where wet. The more trodden rocky steps were just like
the polished marble staircase of some old church and a beautiful dark
red. A paint-testing station above
Beagles Point was derelict and an eyesore, but the path continued very
flowery to Carrick Luz. There the
special flowers like Cornish heath are conspicuously absent because of an
intrusion of acid gabbro at this point, although rupturewort persisted, so
characteristic of the Lizard.
Waves
thundered as they dashed against the foot of the steep cliff and produced
good surf for the holidaymakers on the beach at Kennack Sands. These sands are fine and soft with a good
mix of red and black (really very dark green) serpentine pebbles as well as
contrasting pebbles of other formations like banded gneiss, granite-gneiss,
epidiorite dykes and white flints derived from recent deposits. Many people were surf-boarding with varying
degrees of success, or simply chasing waves out only to be chased back by a
fast foaming tide. Those watching on
the sands were forced regularly to shuffle clothes and seats back to a
narrowing section of dry sand. The
dunes are the largest in the Lizard but seemed botanically poor. After ritual ice-creams from the beach café
we walked up to the caravan site to phone for a taxi.
Uncommon insects seen today included the bee Epeolus cruciger and the rove beetle Platydracus stercorarius.
The geology of the Lizard is of special interest
and may be explored in more detail at
|
Black
Head
Serpentine
& other pebbles
Kennack
Sands
|
Kennack
Sands
Picnic
at Kennack Sands, beginning of C20th
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