Last Friday, Alex and I managed to grab a couple of hours where we both had some spare time.

It doesn’t happen too often that our schedules coincide like that, so we decided we’d head out for an adventure while the weather was holding up. One of my more accessible Cornish bucket list items to complete is to walk from Mawnan Smith/Durgan around to Helford Passage and grab a coffee at the Ferryboat Inn, so we drove off to park at Durgan to do just that.

The sun came out for us and it felt lovely and warm on our backs as we walked down to Grebe beach and across into the quaint little Durgan hamlet at the bottom of Glendurgan Gardens. We had the dogs with us and they were enjoying finally getting to be outside without being drenched in cold rain!

The water of Helford river is always such a stunning crystal blue colour like this – in the warmth of the sun I was so tempted to take a dip, but neither of us had prepared for that, so on we walked!

As we started coming around the point at which the South West Coast Path connects to Trebah Gardens, we could start to hear loud truck noises coming from what we soon discovered was a huge construction site on the beach at the botton of Trebah Gardens. We walked along the coast path through the field and were suddenly met with a tall grey construction fence blocking our path, with a sign on it saying that due to work being done on Trebah’s beach, this area of the coast path has had to be blocked off.

There was no way around the fence, and the only option seemed to be to walk 2km back on ourselves and go home! This was so disappointing and I was pretty annoyed that we hadn’t managed to tick off one of my bucket list items to walk to the Ferryboat for a relaxed afternoon coffee.

We called up Trebah and asked if there was any way around to get back on the coast path, but they said the only thing we could do would be to walk back and then walk along the road to Helford Passage (which we didn’t want to do because we had the dogs with us). Trebah informed us that they had permission to block the South West Coast Path (which is a public right of way) from the Council, and said they’d put up signage… but we certainly hadn’t seen any!

There was also nothing up on their website or Facebook page to say that this construction was going on or would block the path, so overall I’m pretty disappointed with their effort, and they weren’t at all apologetic on the phone.

Anyway, we decided to turn back and find somewhere on our way home to grab a coffee instead, so we walked back to the car and drove off.

Argal reservoir happens to be exactly on the way home, so we stopped in at the lake to visit Wild Vibes cafe. I’ve been to Argal to walk around the lake a few times before, and I’ve previously done Fitness Wild HIIT classes which are hosted on the lakeside as well, but I’ve never actually eaten at Wild Vibes – the cute little shed-cafe at the edge of the water.

I’ve been meaning to visit here on a warm Spring day after a long walk around the lake, but this was just the right moment to quench our thirst and craving for cake! Wild Vibes is known for offering create vegetarian and vegan options, so I went for an oat milk hot chocolate and shared a deliciously moist vegan orange brownie. YUM!

I’m so glad we did get to finish off our afternoon walk with something tasty from somewhere we’d never tried before, as it made it feel like we’d done something a bit different with our spare time together!

Wild Vibes are open most days in Winter ’til around 4pm, and service breakfast and lunch as well, which I’ll have to pop back to try at some point soon…