An idiot in Cornwall.

Some are born daft, some become daft and others have daftness forced upon them. I am not sure what category I fall into but it must be one of the three. You see, I do not particularly like going up ladders. That does not stop me from going up them. At my old house I would occasionally climb up the ladder to clean the gutters. The alternative was to pay a tradesman to do same. I was not going to let a fear of going up ladders cause me to fork out money so I grit my teeth and did the job myself.
One of the reasons why I chose to relocate to the area I am now resident in was the glorious coastline. The Levant Mine (a National Trust property) is one mile (that is 1.61 kilometres Derek) from my flat. From there the is the most magnificent walk to Cape Cornwall. Along this stretch of coastline there are situated the iconic Crown Mines. There is a good path down to these. This path however narrows after this and is extremely perilous. The path becomes very narrow about 12 inches (that is 305 millimetres Derek) at one point. At the edge it drops right down to the rocks and sea many feet below. As you can well see in the image there is a wide ledge at the end of it. As you can imagine, this perilous path is regarded as a challenge to the teenage youth around-about who dare each other to venture out. A Swiss lady I met on one of my walks was most definite in her opinion that the authorities should fence the path off as dangerous. Thus it was on a subsequent evening I stupidly decided to challenge myself. As this article and image attests, I made it there and back without falling. Had I have fallen my executors would be organising my funeral around this time.
I cannot say the experience was pleasant and I will not be repeating it. My stupidity however brought forth the memory of my late mother’s warning to me as a child never to attempt to jump the Strid.
In the Yorkshire Dales at Bolton Abbey on the River Wharfe there is a pleasant riverside walk leads upstream through woods to the Strid, a notorious stretch of water where the Wharfe is forced into a deep and narrow channel.
At its narrowest point the Strid is only about six feet wide, and foolhardy visitors have in the past tried to jump across the roaring chasm. Failure is invariably fatal, however, as there is no recorded incidence of anyone having survived a fall into the thundering waters of the Strid – which mercilessly sucks its victims into the underwater caves and eroded tunnels which lie hidden underneath each side of the rocky channel.
Needless to say, the Strid is an extremely dangerous place, and visitors should take care to keep a safe distance from the edge, with children and animals being kept firmly under control.
I never attempted to jump and will never do so. On reflection however, I think my mother would have given me the same advice regarding the ledge at the Crown Mines.