Stepping off the London train at Bodmin I am struck by the brightness of the sunlight and the clarity of the air. London in sunshine is thick with fumes and noise. Cornwall in sunshine is all brilliance – of sound, of air, of light. I breathe deeply and there is a minty flavour. It is clean. Arriving in Crantock for a January stay, I am immediately enveloped by the mystical landscape so familiar to me after sixty years of Cornwall visits. If Port Arthur in Tasmania (see February 2017 blog) is the saddest landscape I have stood upon then this village on the north coast of Cornwall may be the most romantic.
For many visitors the pretty and charming coves around St
Mawes, Fowey and Falmouth are the favoured attractions in this un-English and
Mediterranean-like peninsula. For me, the wildness of the north coast has
always been my preference. I recall the first autumnal storm of 1981. I sat on the
cliff top on West Pentire and watched the massive blue-grey waves rolling in
across the beach. The noise from the waves below and the wind above was
frightening. The sea birds could not fly in a straight line. Here was the land
under full-scale attack. Was being in the trenches in 1916 remotely similar? I
think so. If I, or a foolhardy surfer, had stepped into the watery maelstrom we
would have been sucked under and then left smashed on a sandy no-mans-land.
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| Celtic cross in Crantock |
Whilst I sat precariously on West Pentire I was
contemplating a horrible upcoming activity at my place of work. I was to stand
in front of two dozen loyal and longstanding colleagues, some WW2 veterans, and
tell them they were redundant. Unnerved by the physical storm around me I was
reminded that mankind has no control over such activity. Unnerved by the impending
emotional task at work I felt comforted that man can influence human storms.
This was powerful stuff. I had to find the right words for these wretched
workers. I believe I did.
Novelists, poets and fantasists have been inspired by
Cornwall. One outstanding writer, Daphne du
Maurier in her book Vanishing
Cornwall, notices “Cornwall projects from the body of England much as Italy
falls from the land mass of Europe. The two peninsulas, so dissimilar in size,
are curiously alike in shape.” She goes on to describe further geological and
geographical similarities. Yet she does not write about travellers. Sun
worshippers from towns further north to each peninsula have found warmth, tranquillity
and exotically different food and drink. Whilst the village of Crantock only
came into existence in the late fifth century AD (when Irish visitors
established a site of worship), it has been visited increasingly by travellers
from England and from northern Europe.
Another who was drawn to this village was Leonard Greenwood. Leo was born in Gisborne, New Zealand; elected to a fellowship at Emmanuel College Cambridge where he taught classics from 1909 to 1950; was a lifelong bachelor; and became a member of the Cambridge Apostles in 1903. In 1928 he acquired a cottage between the beach and Crantock village and invited his undergraduates, including my father-in-law, to reading holidays. He established quaint and eccentric practices for guests. E.M. Forster, a Cambridge contemporary of Leo and another Apostle, may well have taken an interest, but there is no evidence he visited Kareena.
Another who was drawn to this village was Leonard Greenwood. Leo was born in Gisborne, New Zealand; elected to a fellowship at Emmanuel College Cambridge where he taught classics from 1909 to 1950; was a lifelong bachelor; and became a member of the Cambridge Apostles in 1903. In 1928 he acquired a cottage between the beach and Crantock village and invited his undergraduates, including my father-in-law, to reading holidays. He established quaint and eccentric practices for guests. E.M. Forster, a Cambridge contemporary of Leo and another Apostle, may well have taken an interest, but there is no evidence he visited Kareena.
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| Leo Greenwood's Kareena |
First timers to Kareena, both men and women, underwent an initiation ceremony,
involving sitting on a ‘throne’ in the garden, being dubbed with a length of
seaweed and allotted by Leo (aka Lion), the king of the jungle, a beastly name
such as Whale, Dog, Panther, Bruin and Mink. Their fellow ‘Beasts of the
Jungle’ would attend, attired in Grecian dress. Skinny-dipping in the surf
before breakfast was common, something I copied on my first visit to the same
cottage in 1972. (I thought one sighting of my nakedness was enough for the
local dog walkers and fishermen in the bay.) One recent Christmas Day I wore my
daughter's wetsuit!
A romantic’s lost love is evidenced still on Crantock beach.
On the rock face of a cave my family call ‘Marnot’ appears an inscription
reputedly etched by a local man whose lover was swept to her death whilst
riding her horse on the sands: -
Mar not my
face, but let me be Secure in
this lone cavern by the sea Let
the wild waves around me roar
Kissing my lips for evermore.
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| Polly Joke, Crantock |
A leading eccentric from these parts – and there are plenty
of them past and present – is one Robert
Stephen Hawker (1803-75). An Oxford undergraduate who won the Newdigate
Poetry Prize, he married at the age of 19 his 41-year old godmother. In 1934 he
was appointed vicar of Morwenstow, up the coast from Crantock. He worked hard
amongst the locals who comprised smugglers, wreckers and drunkards. He
succumbed to eccentricity, and possibly a bit of wrecking himself. He talked
to birds and invited his nine cats into his church. I love the fact that Hawker
excommunicated one such feline because it caught a mouse on a Sunday. From the
timbers of the shipwrecks on the beach way below (Morwenstow’s cliffs are
amongst has the highest in Europe) this priest built a hut where he composed
poems. None other than Alfred Tennyson lauded his mystical Arthurian composition,
The Quest of the Sangraal. When Hawker’s
first wife died he married again, this time to a woman forty years younger!
I often say that Australians are constantly reminded that the landscape and the elements shape their daily lives, a phenomenon that most contemporary Europeans do not experience. On the landscape and in the seascape at Crantock I come nearest in the whole of England to this feeling that the land moulds the character, mood and direction of its inhabitants and not a few of its visitors. It has a power over the people that is never withstood.
I often say that Australians are constantly reminded that the landscape and the elements shape their daily lives, a phenomenon that most contemporary Europeans do not experience. On the landscape and in the seascape at Crantock I come nearest in the whole of England to this feeling that the land moulds the character, mood and direction of its inhabitants and not a few of its visitors. It has a power over the people that is never withstood.
Cornish folk say that there is only one good aspect to
Devon; that it leads to Cornwall. Early Celts from Brittany in the first
century BC avoided Devon and halted at the River Tamar. “A wise decision” say
some today. In 2017, whilst Sturgeon and May haggle over the future of
Scotland, don’t bet against an uprising from Mebyon Kernow.
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| Surfers in a Crantock seascape |
If you would like to share your experiences of the places
discussed in this blog please record them in the Comments section.
Since my first visit to Cornwall in 1955 I
have read many entertaining books, (fiction and non-fiction), that capture a
part of what this landscape was and is. In no particular order I can strongly
recommend the following: -
Non-fiction:
·
Vanishing Cornwall
by Daphne du Maurier; 1967
·
Murray’s Handbook
for Devon and Cornwall published by John Murray; 1859
·
Hawker of
Morwenstow by Piers Brendon; 1975
·
Tudor Cornwall by
A.L. Rowse; 1941
·
The Companion
Guide to Devon & Cornwall by Darrell Bates; 1976
Fiction:
·
Frenchman’s Creek
by Daphne du Maurier;
·
Jamaica Inn by
Daphne du Maurier;
·
The House on the
Strand by Daphne du Maurier
·
The Poldark series
by Winston Graham; 1945-2002
·
Zennor in Darkness
by Helen Dunmore; 1993
Books by the authors referenced
can be bought at: https://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk
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