A YOUNG father has described the terrifying moment he was cut off by the rising tide at Falmouth.
James Johnson and his brother Zack had enjoyed a Sunday stroll across Gyllyngvase Beach, but after chatting for an hour on a rocky outcrop, their route back to the beach had gone.
"We didn't call the Coastguard at first because we were worried we'd make idiots of ourselves and it's a pride thing," said James, aged 24.
"There were only two options really - to drop down into the water or to go even higher up the cliff - but both would have been risking our lives."
James and Zack, aged 18, had left home in Trelawney Road at around 4pm and after getting "lost in conversation" on the rock, decided to head back to the beach around 5.30pm.
"The tide came in so fast and if we'd jumped into the water we would have been swept away. We started off joking about it and making light of it but we had to stop because we knew we were in real danger.
"Anything could have happened really. I started to get chest pains and my brother's phone battery was dying and didn't have any credit."
They decided to ring O2, the network provider for Zack's phone, which granted them some "goodwill" free minutes to ring Alice Tiffin, James' partner.
She in turn rang Falmouth Coastguards, who then called the men to establish their exact position.
By now they were very cold and still stranded on slippery rocks around 30 feet above the sea, as darkness began to fall.
The coastguards tasked appropriate assets to the incident – including requesting assistance from Falmnouth RNLI.
When the inshore lifeboat arrived to take them on board, crew members considered it too dangerous to land them on the beach, instead opting to take them back to the station.
James and his daughter Faith
James added: "We're not stupid lads looking to take risks, we were just caught out. When I first came to Cornwall in 2017 I lived and worked in Watergate Bay, so I know how powerful the sea can be.
"My mum has told me we should have checked everything like the tides before we set off, because you hear about people losing their lives falling off cliffs. We definitely won't do anything like that again."
James, whose daughter Faith will turn two this weekend, has thousands of YouTube followers under his hip hop moniker Dynamic.
He moved to Cornwall from Yorkshire and lived in a tent for three weeks with Alice at Watergate Bay, before moving to Falmouth.
Anyone caught out by the tides around the coast, or who sees someone in trouble, call 999 and ask for the coastguard.
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