10/06/2026
Nanjizal
I was having a discussion yesterday about this fantastic beach a short distance to the East of Land's End, which came up whilst talking about sea caves. It's become much better known in recent years with the Instagram wild swimming brigade.
As you can see from some of these, the sea can get pretty wild there! Only accessible by foot (or I suppose the sea, though never seen this done), It's a fantastic walk over the fields to get there and then walk along the coast path to Land's End. Having done the walk in reverse, it's not nearly so visually rewarding.
The first image took me five years to get, I'd start walking over the fields only to see a bank of cloud on the horizon, forcing abandonment. I published it as an A5 greetings card (still available, as are larger prints) and here are the notes printed on the back
Song of the sea
This rock arch is called ‘Song of the sea’ or Zawn Pyg in Cornish. It’s at a secluded beach called Nanjizal, just to the East of Land’s End. Access is by foot only, via the South West Coast path or footpaths over fields. It’s a feature of one of my children and my favourite walks.
I’ve wanted to shoot at this beach in winter for several years. This is when the sun sets in the middle of the bay. Patience paid off and eventually I got conditions that I’d waited for, sunset coinciding with low tide and no heavy cloud bank out to sea.
Keeping a watchful eye on the sun, I made a series of other images on other parts of the beach. When the sun was sufficiently low, I headed over to the left side of the beach to shoot this. It soon became apparent that it was best to exclude the sky above the arch.
If you look in the bottom right hand corner, the silhouette of the reflected rock against the skyline seems to form the profile of a face. The singer perhaps?
These are from 2009-2015. I must get back there!!
