Did you know there is a tunnel on Newquay Beach? I think I know where it is, I’ve been in it before, but the sand level is variable and most of it’s under the sand. This is a tunnel somewhere between Great Western Beach and Lusty Glaze, so I suspect it’s directly off Great Western Beach, through to Tolcarne Beach (where the cliffs are unstable and there are warning signs, but until I pop down there on a definitive exploration I can’t be sure; it might be from Tolcarne Beach through to to the Criggars/Lusty Glaze.
The tunnel was hacked through the cliffs hundreds of years ago – when the workers along the cliff edge and the fishermen wanted to get between the beaches without waiting for low tide. Go back a couple of hundred years and the roads were just muddy tracks, so the easiest and best way to get from Newquay to Porth was along the beach – except you’d need the odd tunnel to make it viable.
I know that once I get down there I’ll get my bearings again and instantly know where I mean, so until I have the time (with the wind, weather and tide right), you’ll have to either go yourself to check it out and re-discover it, or wait for me to get round to it.
The sand is a lot higher these days than years ago. Porth used to be a huge port until it “silted up”. Well, silted up just means “loads more sand dumped there”.
Also, there’s a tunnel between Newquay Harbour and Towan Beach that was deliberately built into the Quay wall to enable easy passage between the two beaches – although 6′ high or so, it’s all buried under the sand except the top arch stones. Here’s a photo I took of it in 2006:
So, this means that the other tunnel on Newquay beach will also be under as much sand. The height of the sand varies across the year, meaning that sometimes a small cave one day is a huge cave a couple of months later.
I figure with enough people and spades…. it could be found and dug out just for a laugh one day. On the other hand, the cliffs are very unstable and it’d probably be a dangerous and daft thing to do….
