Padstow to St Ives Reviews

By Stefanfrom Vienna on 2011-08-29

Pros:  Once in a Lifetime Experience
Cons:  Urban
Describe Yourself:  Occasional Traveller
Best Uses:  Trying Something New,Holiday
Bottom Line:  Yes, I would recommend this to a friend

Comments about Padstow to St Ives :

First of all: This walk has really in an extraordinary landscape. You have the coast and the sea mostly at your side, can see many many different birds and other wildlife and you can really enjoy the path. One cannot imagine that there are many different kinds of sand beaches in England and that you have so many flowers and other things to enjoy. You usually have a bit of a wind but it makes walking itself more convinient for you don’t get too hot. Also you hardly get any rain on the coast for the clouds move inland quite fast and pour their rain there. You can also enjoy the turing of the tides (which is really very astonishing) and many very nice little towns with a very accomodating flair.
The way is also not very difficult to walk and I can really recommend to look into this brilliant walk.

On the other side we had to realise that it is not a path in the “wilderness” as we were used to on our previous walks (West Highland Way, Kerry Way). You come by many smaller or larger villages and especially in the first 2 days we hardly encountered any long distance walkers at all. There were quite a lot of people walking there but most of them were just dog- or daywalkers (in sporting shoes at best) and there are many many surfers walking from one beach to the other. Also you walk directly on sand beaches where you find a lot of surfers or sun bathers on sunny days.
We had quite decent equipment for long distance walking wich looked rather alien to all these people on the way and recieved a lot of queer looks from them. This got better on the second part of the journey but it seemed to be that the way itself is not often used by “normal” long distance walkers anymore which is rather different from all other ways we had before.

To be blunt we also didn’t like Newque since it was crammed full with people and you felt rather more in the middle of London than somewhere in the wilderness. We had bad luck with Newque for the there was a big festival going on (the way passed right through that festival) and Newque is also very popular place for summer holidays for students to make party and get drunk. It was a good choice from MacsAdventure that we didn’t stay the night there (we got picked up) however we had to walk through the town on the next day which wasn’t very pleasent.

The organisation from Macs Adventure was good, we had really nice accomondation and as always we found our luggage at the right place on the right time. However we would have liked to stay more in the little towns rather than much outside. We had 4 out of 6 accomondations which were at least a mile away from anything. In one case (Mother Ivey’s Cottage) this was definitely worth it and our landlord served us very good food and really cared about us (he even phoned me up a week before what they should cook!). The other locations outside of town were nice but if you walk the whole day and if you have to make a sidetrip of one or two miles back and forth just to go to dinner in the evening it is not really very comforting. We would suggest that you put a choice button into the html order form where you can choose if the majority of the accomondations should be within towns (one or two outside are ok, if it is worth it- but not nearly all of them). Also it would have been nice if you forward the Allergy or food restriction information that we fill out in the html order form to our landlords/ladys.

All in all it was worth it and I would do it again

By Carinfrom Sweden on 2011-08-05

Pros:  Great Accommodations,Well Organised,Once in a Lifetime Experience,Fun
Describe Yourself:  Occasional Traveller
Best Uses:  Holiday
Bottom Line:  Yes, I would recommend this to a friend

Comments about Padstow to St Ives :

Really nice

By Leine Walkerfrom Sweden on 2011-08-05

Pros:  Well Organised,Once in a Lifetime Experience,Great views,The guidebook was good,The map was good
Describe Yourself:  Occasional Traveller
Best Uses:  Holiday,Trying Something New
Bottom Line:  Yes, I would recommend this to a friend

Comments about Padstow to St Ives :

It was one of our best holidays ever! Congratulation to a good concept! We will join you again. Walking on Mallorca sounds interesting. Thank you very much.