First, Crackington Haven.
We first heard of this place in some TV show like 'Relocation, Relocation, Relocation', in which a potential relocator dreamed of having a holiday home there. As my kids are foul mouthed yobs like me but Mrs W is very strict about swearing, we promptly adopted "Crackington Haven!!" as a fallback expletitve (you have to say it forcefully and bang your fist in time).
The beach is quite fascinating, as the cliff on the right hand side is made up of layers of brown and orange rock, with vertical white lines running up through the (thicker) orange layers, but not the (thinner) brown layers. This cliff has crumbled in the time honoured fashion of a layered cake, so that the layers can be easily recognised, even where they are diagonal to their original lie.
On the left hand side, the (rather lower) cliff is pure grey slate, which has cracked and slid across itself in a very geometric fashion, creating triangles and diamonds, some a few inches across and some several yards across.
The dividing line between the two is just to one side of the river that flows down and across the beach, where there is swirly grey and brown rock, which is not layered at all but looks more like wood grain. The first few feet of slate also have the white seams, which appear to be harder than the slate as they stand slightly proud, i.e. the slate is being eroded slightly faster than the white stuff.
Next up, Boscastle, which we'd only heard of because of the flash floods back in 2004. They've had twice as many visitors since then, of course, which is why they've extended the ill-fated car park that was partly to blame for the original flood. The old car park is still tarmac'ed over and just as much of a flood risk as ever, but the surface of the new car park further up the valley is made up of a honeycomb-style plastic matrix (each hexagon being two inches across) with soil and gravel packed into each hexagon to allow rainwater to soak away quickly.
Apart from that, it's all been rebuilt/tarted up very nicely - what sticks in the craw is that this was paid for by a £4.6 million grant from The Environment Agency, rather than a precept on local Business Rates or Council Tax - if such expenditure is directly for the benefit of people who own buildings in the area at risk, then they can pay for it themselves, AFAIAC ...
PS, if you're scared of heights and/or you are an Elfin Safety enthusiast, steer well clear of the harbour bit.
