Cape Cornwall

You are standing on the only headland in all of England and Wales to be called a cape. Around you the Atlantic divides, currents parting north and south against the granite, and above the green summit rises a single tall stone chimney, dark against the sky. There is surf on every side, and out in the swell the jagged Brisons rocks break the water. This is the edge of England, and it feels like it.

Cape Cornwall sits on one of the wildest stretches of the whole coast, between Pendeen and Sennen Cove, on the long march towards Land's End. This is one of the very few headlands in the country to earn the title of cape, the word reserved for the great turning points of a coast where the currents part and the character of the sea changes. For a long time, before surveyors settled the matter, people believed this was the westernmost point of England. It looks the part. That chimney on the top is not decoration but memory: it is the survival of the Cape Cornwall tin mine, which worked tin and copper here until it closed in 1879. Below the summit lie the worn remains of St Helen's Oratory, a small chapel from the early medieval centuries, when this was a place of prayer as well as labour. In 1987 the headland was bought by the H. J. Heinz company and given to the nation, and it is now cared for by the National Trust, kept open and wild for anyone who walks out to it.

Take a little time here, and look for several things in turn. First, the chimney itself, crowning the green cape. It is the one man-made vertical line in a scene of sea and rock, and it marks where miners once followed the ore out under the Atlantic. Second, look out to the Brisons, the wave-battered granite stacks offshore, standing hard against the surf; they are a haunt of seabirds, and worth watching in any weather. Third, scan the heath and cliffs closer in for birds. This is chough country, the red-billed crow that has returned to Cornwall, and you may see kestrels hanging on the wind or stonechats ticking from the gorse. Fourth, look down to Priest's Cove, the small rocky inlet tucked below the cape, where local boats still shelter. And fifth, watch the rocks and the water for seals, which frequent this coast and often surface in the swell below. Keep well back from the cliff edges as you look; the drops are steep and the seas powerful.

The story worth carrying away is that of the chimney, and of that single gift. When the Cape Cornwall mine closed in 1879, the great engine and its workings fell silent, and the chimney was left standing on the summit, a lone survivor of an industry that had once honeycombed this whole coast with shafts and adits reaching out beneath the sea. For over a century it endured, and then, in 1987, the food company H. J. Heinz stepped in, bought the headland, and handed it to the nation. So the old mine stack, once a symbol of hard toil at the ends of the earth, became instead a monument to the land itself, given freely so that walkers might stand here forever at the edge of England.

From here the South West Coast Path presses on south along a magnificent, lonely coastline towards Sennen Cove and, beyond it, the famous headland of Land's End. Turn back once as you go, and hold the picture of the chimney on its green cape, the Brisons breaking the sea beyond, and the whole wild Atlantic pouring past on either side. It is a view that stays with you. Walk safe.