CORNWALL: BACK TO THE PAST

A return to my childhood home stirs a mix of complex emotions

Back to the past. It had been 4 years since my last visit to my home country, before Covid. Before my Mum’s death. To be honest there’s not much I miss about England or English culture and not much to celebrate. Once, maybe 20 or 25 years ago, I used to get a warm feeling as I got on the train down to Cornwall, to go to my family home. Since then that home has disappeared, and many of the things I liked about my country have faded.

Now, returning to the UK, I feel a strong sense that I’m witnessing a country in terminal decline; a decline in its relevance in the world, its ‘soft power’. Walking the streets, I was shocked at the number of homeless people, in London, in Brighton. It seemed the problem was far worse than in less wealthy countries that I knew, for example, Spain, where I currently live. As always there’s still plenty of money, plenty of Ferraris and Porches cruising the streets, but the chasm between the rich and the poor, the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, becomes starker and more polarized each time I return. A Ferrari next to a filthy tent with a desperate soul inside, someone who lost any hope an age ago.

Homecoming?

After working for a month teaching Environmental Education in a summer school near London, I had the opportunity to return home to the South West for a few weeks. To go back to the past.

Staring out of the coach window, I kept waiting for that feeling of ‘homecoming’, a warm feeling, especially as we approached the rolling hills of Devon. The scene is undeniably pretty, but that homecoming feeling never came. Arriving in Plymouth’s city centre did nothing to increase my enthusiasm. The place, always a bit of a dive, constructed with grim grey post-war architecture, seems to have rotted even further. More shops are closed and the feeling of decline and decay is so redolent in the atmosphere you can smell it. Seeing my cousin, long missed, waving to me in the car park, brought a deeply needed ray of sunshine to my heart.

The song of the sea

That first week, having to sort out a variety of post-work issues, plus going through my dead mother’s stuff in a lockup outside of the centre, did little to elevate my mood. The following week, I was determined to put that behind me, to strike out and have a holiday. The weather was spectacular, the UK experiencing a heat wave and one of the driest summers on record…A grim sign of climate change certainly, but I still appreciated the sun in a country more often associated with iron grey skies and rain. I got the ferry across from the Barbican, Plymouth’s old harbour, to the picture postcard fishing/smuggling village of Cawsand in Cornwall. When I was a boy, the Barbican was a place that stank of gutted fish and rough bearded fishermen clad in sweaty oil skins. Now it’s newly bohemian, a place of art galleries and trendy bars.

Chugging out across the vast blue expanse of the bay that is Plymouth Sound, watching yachts elegantly riding the waves I suddenly felt that dark feeling that I’d had since my arrival begin to lift, caressed away on the fresh salty sea air…The beauty of the place, and the sea where I’d grown up, began to return to me. Half an hour later we arrived at Cawsand Beach. It’s a village of narrow tiny streets, pubs, and colourful houses clinging to the margins of the sea…Touristy maybe, but incredibly cute and characterful. The beach and rocks, crammed with seaweed, blennies, and barnacles evoked memories of ‘rock pooling’ as a child, exploring the pools, turning over stones to find crabs and shrimps. I watched as people drifted bye on kayaks and paddleboards.

The magic of the forest

I set out on a trail I’ve walked many times in my life, South, towards a rocky peninsula called Rame Head. As soon as you leave Cawsand, the trail leads you into a dense woodland of gnarled trees, their trunks coated in moss, the forest floor covered in a dense blanket of ferns. Through the forest, there are glimpses of the marine blue sea, of yachts, and the secluded bays below.

I was taken aback by its beauty. Surprised by a place I have been to so many times before. It was like a scene from ‘Lord of the Rings’, a mystical tunnel of trees enclosing a shadow-bound trail. It struck me I had grown up walking these trails, imagining I was in a jungle in South America or Africa. Since then, I have visited ‘real’ jungles in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; spectacular places. But this place had the strong whiff of long-forgotten memories, perhaps its own special magic. Maybe this was a kind of ‘homecoming’? I felt something I haven’t felt for years…A love for my place of birth.

A tourist in my own country

Walking along the trail towards Rame, the forest eventually fades, and the wide vista of rugged coastline, gorse, and blackberry bushes opens up, together with epic vistas of the sea and the triangular mass of the Rame Peninsula. The smell of the plants was familiar. As I walked, I kept finding myself surprised by familiar things. I was acutely aware that I was now I tourist in my own country, not really belonging to any one place. It’s not a negative thought, just a curious idea. A citizen of the world, of everywhere but nowhere…That’s me. A wanderer.

Rame Head

Just before reaching Rame, the peninsula is squeezed into a thin neck, one side looking back towards Plymouth Sound, the other giving a sweeping view along the Cornish coast, all the way down to the Lizard, the British mainland’s most Southerly point. The wide beach of Whitsand Bay opens up, and directly below is the luminous sea, punctured by lines of linear rocks, crystal clear with azure colours more reminiscent of the Caribbean than the UK.

I tramped up the rocky stairs to the small abandoned stone hut that crowns the Rame’s highest point, only to realize that the local herd of wild ponies had also chosen that same place as their refuge on a hot day. Anything for a little shade! Unfazed by my presence or that of other walkers, they had taken over the ruin, crowding inside, or into any other shady space along its outer wall. An idiosyncratic but beautiful scene.

I sat down with the ponies and surveyed the magnificent vista, the horizon visibly bending with the curvature of the earth, the boats below, gulls riding the thermals, occasionally trying to steal the nuts I had brought for my packed lunch. I scanned the rocks below, looking for a glimpse of a resting grey seal, knowing they like these places, but saw none. Nevertheless, that was the first day I felt truly happy to be ‘home.’

Beach Life

Over the next few days, I spent my time rediscovering my ‘homeland’ heading down to Newquay on the train, rediscovering its mix of tacky English holiday resort and surfer chic…but mostly enjoying to stunning ‘surfers’ beach of Fistral. Again, with the Sun beating down and Bob Marley booming from the surfy bars, it felt almost Caribbean. I headed down to Penzance, full of pirate and salty seadog imagery, and the beach at Porthcurno for a swim and snorkel. Porthcurno is surely one of the UK’s most scenic beaches, with the open air Minack Theatre perched on a magnificent spot on the cliffs above.

Back in time

One day I took another ferry across the Plym river to the village of Turnchapel, to wander around the place I grew up as a child. That was a trippy experience. When I was growing up the place called ‘Mountbatten’ was a MOD military base. You couldn’t get in without confronting a bloke with a gun. Now it’s all posh apartments, an exclusive marina, and waterfront bars. 40 years changes a place.

I stood still outside my Grandma’s old house, Crowsnest, transfixed by an image of the past. The current owner must have seen me and thought a weirdo or potential robber was sizing the place up outside…He ambled out and asked me if I was lost. I explained that I had lived there 40 years ago, that my Grandfather had been the former harbourmaster of Plymouth. The gentleman surprised me by inviting me in. In my memory, the house seemed immense. But then I was a 6-year-old kid. It’s still a big house…But I’ve got bigger, and the rooms have shrunk! I was flooded by memories of Christmases spent there, my aunt living in the Annex, and the views of tankers across the river at the docks. It was a truly strange and emotional experience, going back in time, seeing scenes that brought back long-forgotten images into my memory.

But that for me is the experience of going home, a turgid mix of memories and experiences, some grim, some fascinating, some beautiful.

For more coastal adventures check out:

Jungle buddies reunited – Tintagel, Dartmoor, and a little bit of magic – The Lacandongringo

Dolphins, dinosaurs and wild coast – The Setúbal Peninsula – The Lacandongringo

A first feline encounter – The Lacandongringo

Cabo de Gata – Between Mediterranean Heaven and Plastic Hell – The Lacandongringo

Land of the Lynx: a weekend of hope and despair in Doñana – The Lacandongringo

For more information about Cawsand and Rame Head visit:

Walking in Cawsand (visitcornwall.com)

And for walks around Porthcurno:

Porthcurno and Penberth – Walk – South West Coast Path