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Emarginula rosea
Pheasant
shell
Cornish
elm
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In Looe you can see the seaweed and the
everlasting-pea cascading down the cliffs!
We set off along the shore below Marine Drive and explored the muddy/shingly
beaches on the west bank of the river.
There were plenty of shells here, including less common ones like pheasant
shell Tricolia pullus, slit limpet Emarginula rosea, and cowries. It is
quite rocky and the strata are close to vertical. At the end of Marine Drive we struck across the
cliffs to Polperro above a slope colonised by Cornish elm, their branches of
smooth leaves conspicuously erect. Out
at sea St George Island is a bird sanctuary and with binoculars we could pick
out cormorant, mallard and great black-backed gulls. Along the path we came across hemlock,
vervain, pale flax, musk thistle, common centaury and long-stalked
cranesbill.
Approaching
Talland we could see a discreet caravan site on top of the ridge and one of
the markers for calibrating nautical miles.
Talland Beach had few people (it was cloudy
with the odd spot of rain) and was interesting for its lines of purple-red
and green rocks, among which grew sea rocket.
Across the Warren and into Polperro the vegetation was mostly garden
escapes like pink oxalis, balm, giant knotweed, tree mallow, fly honeysuckle,
bear’s breech in enormous clumps, wormwood, garden parsley, Russian vine,
sleeping-beauty, and mother-of-thousands.
Polperro is a maze of narrow alleys and old buildings, like the pub on
stilts, and the Shell House faced with patterns and pictures made of shells,
that passing children tried to remove and in front of which tourists photographed
each other. Most of the cottages were
obviously holiday-rents and the whole village had a theme park feel. The streets and shops thronged with
international tourists. We bought a
couple of disappointing ice-creams, looked at the harbour and decided to move
on quickly.
The
path from here seemed, by contrast, very remote. It was strenuous, steeply up and down, with
some good flowers. Planted karo shrubs
provided windbreaks, and the grassland and scrub was full of wild thyme, wild
madder, square and trailing St. John’s-worts, sheepsbit, haresfoot clover, least
and lesser birdsfoot trefoils, slender club-rush, lady fern, English
stonecrop and western gorse. On the
last slope before Westcombe was an extensive area of gorse that had been
burned during last year’s long hot summer.
It was now regenerating as bright green shoots among the black
skeletons, along with blue stands of viper’s bugloss and the odd spike of ivy
broomrape. At West
Coombe we took the footpath inland to Lansallos, where we could phone
for a taxi back to Looe.
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Shell
House, Polperro
Polperro Harbour
Karo
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