Postcards from a Small Island

A few notes from the England Coast Path

As a foreigner determined to make sense of my new home in Britain, I always make a point to read historical context signs. Britain has no shortage of these signs, and as you can imagine, some of them are more helpful than others. Some of them are, no exaggeration, truly something.

In May, I walked around the Isle of Portland, on the Jurassic Coast in southwest England. As I stood in front of the swanky, seaside Pennsylvania Castle, I read a sign claiming that it “remains one of the finest of Portland’s three castles.” Pennsylvania Castle now rents for thousands of pounds per night, while Portland’s other two castles are an old military fort and a pile of rocks that was formerly shaped like a castle.

I think about this, like, three times a week.

When a ranger on the Jurassic Coast told me the trail up ahead was “a bit hilly,” I knew I was in for trouble. American translation: “absolute hell.” Alas, the views are worth it.

“Pennsylvania Castle remains one of the finest of Portland’s three castles.”

It just says so much. It says: this is a culture where it’s tacky to claim that something is “the best” or “the most” or “the finest,” definitively, because you can’t prove it, and because no one would like you anyway even if you could.

This is one of the things I love most about living in the United Kingdom. In the U.S., we have big, flashy neon lights everywhere, where we’re all trying to drown out everyone else who’s also claiming they are the best. But in Britain, understatement is king. If your house was on fire (or if, say, you were locked in your garden on a 0 Celsius evening), you wouldn’t call it the “worst thing ever,” you’d just say it “wasn’t ideal.”

The next day, as my friend and I walked from the town of Weymouth to the picturesque Lulworth Cove, we paid even closer attention. At a pub called the Smuggler’s Inn, we read the history of a 15th-Century pirate named Harry Payne, who used to steal wine from French and Spanish cargo ships and redistribute it around town.

“Unfortunately,” the leaflet said, “the French and Spanish grew tired of the attacks and together they invaded Poole as payback, burning the town and killing hundreds of people, including Harry’s brother.”

Unfortunate, indeed. (Harry was away at the time.)

Great appreciation for understated signage is just one of the things that keeps me going on a quest to hike the entire England Coast Path, a 2,795-mile trail that wraps around the whole country. I’ve been spending most of the summer hiking bits of the trail here and there, a project that began as a way for me to better understand my new home. After all, to fully understand a place, you need context. And when it comes to Britain, that is something I do not have in abundance.

When I’m in the United States, where I’m from, I understand pop culture references (ok, I understand some pop culture references), which makes conversation easy. I know all our former presidents’ last names, so when someone refers to something like “Reaganomics,” I don’t have to Google it. I know where all the states are in relation to one another and I know that Los Angeles is where you go for acting, and New York is where you go for finance, and Colorado is where you go to wear Chacos and Birkenstocks in cities that are safe from the fashion police. I don’t have the same cultural fluency in Britain, where I’m also constantly questioning my command of English. I recently happened upon the word “hoick” in conversation, which was described to me as, “a verb, kinda like ‘yeet,’ but not,” which made me feel very old indeed.

And so, I walk. I walk, and I visit historic houses and small museums and I read local newspapers and I talk to people in pubs and on the trail. I walk from train stations to tiny villages with the prettiest harbors I’ve ever seen. I walk to beaches and ruins and castles, some of which are nearly 1,000 years old. I walk to teahouses—so very many teahouses—and take note of the order of assembly of the components of a cup of tea* and whether the jam or the clotted cream is the first to get heaped onto a scone. I walk and I eat Cornish pasties and Craster kippers, and I read about how these regional delights became longstanding traditions.

This week, I’m hiking from Padstow to St. Ives on the Cornish section of the Southwest Coast Path, graciously organized by 10Adventures. I just started my trek yesterday, hiking about 14 miles to Porthcothan, and today I hiked onward to Newquay. St. Ives is another 40-odd hilly miles from here.

The ruins of Tintagel Castle, known for its ties to the legendary King Arthur. Merlin’s Cave is in the center left. It did not seem to be a cozy place to live.

In total, I’ve walked about 150-ish miles of the ECP so far, and while that’s not even a tenth of the whole trail, I am constantly amazed by how diverse it is. I thought I would eventually get tired of hiking the coast, staring at the sea, but I haven’t. It is so dynamic. The tides change, the clouds skate across the sky, the whole sea gets moody and dark and then in an instant, the light shifts and everything is different colors. It’s incredible.

Over the next few months, keep eye out for my stories about the trail in Backpacker, Adventure.com, and Outdoors.com. And if you, dear reader, happen to be on the hunt for story ideas for articles or multimedia projects and you’d like me to send you some pitches, please message me! I’d love to collaborate.

Till then, please enjoy a few postcards from the trail below. Adventure well! And stay out of office ;-)

Thanks for reading,

Kassondra

*The order of assembly of a cup of tea is something many British people take very seriously. I discovered this when I was dating a Brit and tried to make us tea. He cried out in horror when he saw me tipping the milk jug toward mugs that still contained their tea bags, and literally shouted, “WHAT are you doing?!!?!?” as if I were about to set the house on fire. In spite of this, he remains one of the finest of my few British friends. (I remain terrified of making tea for British people.)

Postcards from the England Coast Path

In no particular order, here are some views from the southwest, southeast, and northeast corners of England.

The view of the Southwest Coast Path from Tintagel Castle, in Cornwall, was not too bad.

A few happy sea cows, as spotted between Padstow and Porthcothan, Cornwall.

Walking into the mist on the Jurassic Coast of Dorset, in southwest England. Scotch eggs and sausage rolls for lunch. Heaven.

The “Magnificent Hunstanton Cliffs,” as promised to me by ChatGPT, which sent me on a wild trek up and down the Norfolk coast of southeast England in basically no logical geographic order whatsoever. It was not ideal.

I spent a week hiking between the castles of Northumberland on a self-guided InnTravel tour, which was phenomenal. Didn’t get my letter, but they let me into Hogwarts (Alnwick Castle) anyway, thank goodness.

England is often referred to as a “green and pleasant land” and I can confirm, it is delightful indeed. This stretch of Jurassic Coast from Weymouth to Durdle Door was one of the prettiest hikes I’ve ever done.

This was one of my favorite views on my hike yesterday from Padstow to Porthcothan in Cornwall. This part of the coast is in the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which is an actual designation that exists in Britain. Neither of these things surprise me.

Warkworth Castle is the finest castle in Warkworth, Northumberland (it is also the only castle in Warkworth).

P.S. Subscribe to Trails Magazine!

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