Lore of the land North-east Cornwall has no big-draw attractions but that, says Jeremy Seal, is a good thing. Despite last year's flood damage the area is as enchanting as ever. Guardian, 18/6/2005
The mossy ledges and crevices surrounding the Bronze Age rock carvings behind the ruins of Trewethet Mill had attracted a rich horde of votive offerings; abandoned coins, keys, a tin Buddha, bracelets and ribbons, as well as landscape talismans such as gull and guillemot feathers, seashells, and sprigs of violets, campions, buttercups and sea pinks. Nothing about this impromptu shrine in North Cornwall’s Rocky Valley was more revealing, however, than the bunch of wild garlic – wrapped in an Air Southwest boarding card. So much for modern air travel’s supposed homogenizing effect; even those who have just arrived on the Gatwick-Newquay flight fall victim, it seems, to Cornwall’s mythic spell, especially in the county’s wild northeast.
An atmosphere of enchantment nourished by New Ageism, Arthurian legend, shadowy shipwreck lore and plain neglect pervades the wild coastline of seacliffs and wooded combes between Tintagel and Morwenstow on the Devon border; a good thing, even a saving one, for northeast Cornwall cannot compete in the major ‘visitor attractions’ that are increasingly the currency across the county. Cornwall has lately been dividing into three parts, rather like Asterix’ Gaul, as major new projects give definition to particular regions but occlude others in the process. The northwest has plenty going for it, with the Tate Gallery at St Ives, a booming sea sports scene around Newquay, foodie Padstow, and Rock across the Camel estuary, popularly dubbed Fulham-on-Sea. As for the south, it boasts the National Maritime Museum at Falmouth and the gardens at Heligan. It also has the Eden Project, and it’s here that the comparison becomes positively unforgiving. Cut from this fabulously successful attraction standing in a disused china clay pit to the northeast’s own imposing hole in the ground, the slate pit at Delabole, where they opened the nearby Gaia Centre to high expectations in 2001; this much-touted alternative energy attraction has been in the hands of the receivers since 2003.
The weather god, given all this, might be considered to have been rubbing it in last August when it targeted the northeast specifically with spectacular headline floods. The events of Boxing Day last cautioned guarded use of the term devastation, especially since the reported casualties on August 16th amounted to one broken thumb; even so, the damage suffered not only at Boscastle but at Crackington Haven and Bude, as well as to scattered inland properties, was exceptional and often fearsome. Some eight months later, I returned to report on the clear-up and to remind myself what it was about this victimized part of Cornwall which kept me coming back.
I was staying at the Old Rectory, St Juliot, an admired B&B run by Sally and Chris Searle on the wooded slopes of the Valency valley above Boscastle. The Rectory’s claim to fame is that Thomas Hardy was billeted here in 1870; a young architect, he was charged with the restoration of the nearby church. Hardy had not much looked forward to his visit, but it exceeded every expectation. He not only met Emma, his future wife here – I was staying in her charming room - but took such inspiration from the area that he resolved upon a future writing books rather than mending churches. ‘Much of my life claims the spot as its key,’ he would later write. Put simply, Hardy had a much better time than he had anticipated in northeast Cornwall. To those deterred by the lack of obvious attractions, this is a truth which continues to hold good.
The talk at the Old Rectory was of restoration, just as it was in 1870. But Hardy’s tottering transepts had given way to the drain rods, dehumidifiers and even full-scale refurbishments that had preoccupied washed-out residents across the area. The Old Rectory had escaped without damage but the nearby Valency River was unrecognizable. That evening, I walked the river’s mile-long descent from the rectory through oak forest to Boscastle. I knew this beautiful stretch of river from previous visits; I had often seen dippers bobbing on the rocks here. But the ‘leaf-covered aisle’, as Hardy described the Valency in his autobiographical novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, was no more. The flood waters had uprooted the trees that shaded the river, and swept away the four footbridges that spanned it. They had stripped the banks of mosses, ferns and lichens, leaving moraines of churned soil, tumbled rocks and twisted tree trunks. Along either bank, high barricades of trapped debris had snagged against the surviving trees.
Shocking sights, but bluebells and campions poking through the raw earth had already begun the process of repairing the valley. Nature’s course was not an option, however, in Boscastle itself where livelihoods were at stake; scaffolding and concrete mixers abounded. The village looked battered but was open for business. ‘Glad to be back,’ said the defiant sign outside the village stores which the flood had fully submerged eight months before. Even the ancient and picturesque Harbour Lights gift shop, which the flood had swept away, had reopened in new premises on the other bank of the river. In the Cobweb Inn the locals were putting a brave face on it. ‘It is a bit of a building site at the moment but we think there’s every chance we’ll end up with a prettier Boscastle than before,’ one predicted; the local authorities had buried unsightly overhead wires and cables as part of the restoration. Back at the Old Rectory, the Searles were similarly upbeat. ‘Did you notice the stunning colours of the riverbed rocks?’ exclaimed Chris. ‘They used to be covered in weed.’ And the deposits of fresh silt would do wonders, Sally reckoned, for the Valency valley’s bluebells and foxgloves in the coming years.
Even so, bookings were sluggish across the region. One of the guests at the Rectory provided a likely explanation when he admitted to feeling concerned at the time of booking that visiting Boscastle might be considered inappropriate, even ghoulish. Nobody in the village agreed. Everybody was very happy to provide wide-eyed visitors with dramatic reminiscences. Shops were doing a steady trade in flood merchandise including videos, books and postcards. ‘Nobody’s mourning,’ Chris Searle confirmed. ‘We’re all keen to get back to business.’
No time was wasted in carrying out repairs to flood-damaged sections of the southwest coastal path which were completed in the spring; the path, at its most giddyingly rugged here, is widely considered among the area’s greatest draws. I stopped at Boscastle’s museum of witchcraft (open) to borrow a walking stick – these can be duly returned or relinquished at stipulated points along the path – and skirted the sheer-sided harbour on my way south. Grassy banks of spring flowers ran to shaggy fringes at the cliff edge. Gulls wheeled above their shit-splattered offshore eyries. I crossed stiles made from slabs of slate and admired the views of Lundy Island from slate benches. I was reminded that the local gravestones and garden walls, arranged in the characteristic herring-bone pattern known as ‘curzy’, were also made of slate as a precipitous path (with slate step risers) brought me to Tintagel. I toured the ancient castle ruins perched on its seashore crag, a magnet for myths if ever there was one, before paying a visit to the little-known King Arthur’s Halls. A 1930s custard tycoon called Frederick Glasscock indulged his grand fascination with Arthuriana by converting a Victorian house on Tintagel’s Fore Street to baronial halls hung with paintings in commemoration of the legend. Sneaking in before a party of French school children descended on the place, I had the experience all to myself. I sat on the replica throne for the Son et Lumiere story of Arthur before continuing to the Great Hall of Chivalry, with its round table, stained-glass windows and granite-carved wall shields. From this extraordinary edifice, regular meeting place of Tintagel’s Freemasons, I learned plenty about Arthur; I learned as much again about the region’s capacity to awaken old stories.
I drove north the next day to Bude, often dismissed by those on the pilgrimage to buzzing Padstow as a Victorian resort stuck in a dowdy dotage. I found the town’s little museum brimful with reminders of a rich and varied past best instanced by its contrary canal; most canals carry inland goods to the ports but Bude’s, which Tennyson is supposed to have fallen into, was intended to carry the town’s lime-rich sand into the interior as a dressing for the fields. Then there were the shipwrecks. The figurehead of the Bencoolen, wrecked in 1862, is on display, along with antique line drawings representing ships which were driven onto the rocks over the centuries. Several Bude boats were lost last year; the irony was that it was rainwater, uniquely, which did for them. One of the boats ripped from its moorings by the river deluge even ended up in Porthcawl on the other side of the Bristol Channel.
Bude’s fishing and leisure fleet certainly took a blow, but one that seems to have masked a wider recovery. At the time of my visit, the local bookshop, Spencer Thorn, had closed; not down, as might have been expected, but while it underwent a major expansion. Bude has never enjoyed culinary renown, a fact Gill and Neil Faiers set out to challenge when they opened Bangors Organic Tea Rooms near the town in 2003. Bangors uses locally sourced ingredients and aims to grow all its own produce within a year or two. The menu includes home-baked yeast splits, which apparently make for a truly authentic West Country tea. Bangors also offers excellent B&OB, where O is for organic, adding to a rapidly improving roster of local accommodation [see box]. I wondered whether northeast Cornwall was about to embark on the changes which other parts of the county had already undergone.
‘We wouldn’t want it to be like Padstow or Newquay,’ said Gill. ‘We like the fact that the area’s rugged and largely unspoilt. The place has a loyal clientele who love it for what it is. All that’s needed to make it really special is more effort in terms of quality food and places to stay.’
The inspirational leek and chestnut mushroom soup that I lunched on at Bangors suggested that the process was already underway.
WAY TO GO
Getting There:
One week’s fully inclusive car hire in Cornwall from £125 through Holiday Autos (0870 400 0010 or visit www.holidayautos.co.uk.
Where to Stay (all prices for two persons sharing B&B per night):
The Old Rectory, St Juliot (01840 250225, stjuliot.com) From £72.
Redivallen Farm, Trevalga (01840 250854; reddivallenfarm.co.uk) From £50.
Trevigue, Crackington Haven (01840 240418; trevigue.co.uk) From £60.
The Bottreaux Hotel and Restaurant, Boscastle (01840 250231; boscastlecornwall.co.uk). From £65
Courtyard Farm (01840 261256; cornwall-online.co.uk/courtyard-farm-cottages) From £175 per week self-catering, sleeping three.
Eating and Drinking:
The Napoleon Inn and Boney’s Bistro (01840 250204; [email protected]).
Bangors Organic Tea Rooms, Poundstock (01288 361297; bangorsorganic.co.uk). Open from 12-6 for lunch and teas
The Cabin Café, Crackington Haven (01840 230228)
Life’s A Beach Bistro, Bude (01288 355222). Day café open 11-4 but weather dependent; bistro open evenings 7-late.
Activities:
Tintagel Castle (01840 770328). Open 10-6. £3.90 adults, £2.90 concessions.
King Arthur’s Halls, Tintagel (01840 770526). Open 10-5. £3 adults, £2 seniors and children
Bude and Stratton Museum. Open 12-5 all week, admission £1.
Boscastle Visitor Centre (01840 250010; visitboscastleandtintagel.com. Open all week
Copies of the North Cornwall Visitor Guide are available on 01271 336072, or log on to www.visitnorthcornwall.com.
An atmosphere of enchantment nourished by New Ageism, Arthurian legend, shadowy shipwreck lore and plain neglect pervades the wild coastline of seacliffs and wooded combes between Tintagel and Morwenstow on the Devon border; a good thing, even a saving one, for northeast Cornwall cannot compete in the major ‘visitor attractions’ that are increasingly the currency across the county. Cornwall has lately been dividing into three parts, rather like Asterix’ Gaul, as major new projects give definition to particular regions but occlude others in the process. The northwest has plenty going for it, with the Tate Gallery at St Ives, a booming sea sports scene around Newquay, foodie Padstow, and Rock across the Camel estuary, popularly dubbed Fulham-on-Sea. As for the south, it boasts the National Maritime Museum at Falmouth and the gardens at Heligan. It also has the Eden Project, and it’s here that the comparison becomes positively unforgiving. Cut from this fabulously successful attraction standing in a disused china clay pit to the northeast’s own imposing hole in the ground, the slate pit at Delabole, where they opened the nearby Gaia Centre to high expectations in 2001; this much-touted alternative energy attraction has been in the hands of the receivers since 2003.
The weather god, given all this, might be considered to have been rubbing it in last August when it targeted the northeast specifically with spectacular headline floods. The events of Boxing Day last cautioned guarded use of the term devastation, especially since the reported casualties on August 16th amounted to one broken thumb; even so, the damage suffered not only at Boscastle but at Crackington Haven and Bude, as well as to scattered inland properties, was exceptional and often fearsome. Some eight months later, I returned to report on the clear-up and to remind myself what it was about this victimized part of Cornwall which kept me coming back.
I was staying at the Old Rectory, St Juliot, an admired B&B run by Sally and Chris Searle on the wooded slopes of the Valency valley above Boscastle. The Rectory’s claim to fame is that Thomas Hardy was billeted here in 1870; a young architect, he was charged with the restoration of the nearby church. Hardy had not much looked forward to his visit, but it exceeded every expectation. He not only met Emma, his future wife here – I was staying in her charming room - but took such inspiration from the area that he resolved upon a future writing books rather than mending churches. ‘Much of my life claims the spot as its key,’ he would later write. Put simply, Hardy had a much better time than he had anticipated in northeast Cornwall. To those deterred by the lack of obvious attractions, this is a truth which continues to hold good.
The talk at the Old Rectory was of restoration, just as it was in 1870. But Hardy’s tottering transepts had given way to the drain rods, dehumidifiers and even full-scale refurbishments that had preoccupied washed-out residents across the area. The Old Rectory had escaped without damage but the nearby Valency River was unrecognizable. That evening, I walked the river’s mile-long descent from the rectory through oak forest to Boscastle. I knew this beautiful stretch of river from previous visits; I had often seen dippers bobbing on the rocks here. But the ‘leaf-covered aisle’, as Hardy described the Valency in his autobiographical novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, was no more. The flood waters had uprooted the trees that shaded the river, and swept away the four footbridges that spanned it. They had stripped the banks of mosses, ferns and lichens, leaving moraines of churned soil, tumbled rocks and twisted tree trunks. Along either bank, high barricades of trapped debris had snagged against the surviving trees.
Shocking sights, but bluebells and campions poking through the raw earth had already begun the process of repairing the valley. Nature’s course was not an option, however, in Boscastle itself where livelihoods were at stake; scaffolding and concrete mixers abounded. The village looked battered but was open for business. ‘Glad to be back,’ said the defiant sign outside the village stores which the flood had fully submerged eight months before. Even the ancient and picturesque Harbour Lights gift shop, which the flood had swept away, had reopened in new premises on the other bank of the river. In the Cobweb Inn the locals were putting a brave face on it. ‘It is a bit of a building site at the moment but we think there’s every chance we’ll end up with a prettier Boscastle than before,’ one predicted; the local authorities had buried unsightly overhead wires and cables as part of the restoration. Back at the Old Rectory, the Searles were similarly upbeat. ‘Did you notice the stunning colours of the riverbed rocks?’ exclaimed Chris. ‘They used to be covered in weed.’ And the deposits of fresh silt would do wonders, Sally reckoned, for the Valency valley’s bluebells and foxgloves in the coming years.
Even so, bookings were sluggish across the region. One of the guests at the Rectory provided a likely explanation when he admitted to feeling concerned at the time of booking that visiting Boscastle might be considered inappropriate, even ghoulish. Nobody in the village agreed. Everybody was very happy to provide wide-eyed visitors with dramatic reminiscences. Shops were doing a steady trade in flood merchandise including videos, books and postcards. ‘Nobody’s mourning,’ Chris Searle confirmed. ‘We’re all keen to get back to business.’
No time was wasted in carrying out repairs to flood-damaged sections of the southwest coastal path which were completed in the spring; the path, at its most giddyingly rugged here, is widely considered among the area’s greatest draws. I stopped at Boscastle’s museum of witchcraft (open) to borrow a walking stick – these can be duly returned or relinquished at stipulated points along the path – and skirted the sheer-sided harbour on my way south. Grassy banks of spring flowers ran to shaggy fringes at the cliff edge. Gulls wheeled above their shit-splattered offshore eyries. I crossed stiles made from slabs of slate and admired the views of Lundy Island from slate benches. I was reminded that the local gravestones and garden walls, arranged in the characteristic herring-bone pattern known as ‘curzy’, were also made of slate as a precipitous path (with slate step risers) brought me to Tintagel. I toured the ancient castle ruins perched on its seashore crag, a magnet for myths if ever there was one, before paying a visit to the little-known King Arthur’s Halls. A 1930s custard tycoon called Frederick Glasscock indulged his grand fascination with Arthuriana by converting a Victorian house on Tintagel’s Fore Street to baronial halls hung with paintings in commemoration of the legend. Sneaking in before a party of French school children descended on the place, I had the experience all to myself. I sat on the replica throne for the Son et Lumiere story of Arthur before continuing to the Great Hall of Chivalry, with its round table, stained-glass windows and granite-carved wall shields. From this extraordinary edifice, regular meeting place of Tintagel’s Freemasons, I learned plenty about Arthur; I learned as much again about the region’s capacity to awaken old stories.
I drove north the next day to Bude, often dismissed by those on the pilgrimage to buzzing Padstow as a Victorian resort stuck in a dowdy dotage. I found the town’s little museum brimful with reminders of a rich and varied past best instanced by its contrary canal; most canals carry inland goods to the ports but Bude’s, which Tennyson is supposed to have fallen into, was intended to carry the town’s lime-rich sand into the interior as a dressing for the fields. Then there were the shipwrecks. The figurehead of the Bencoolen, wrecked in 1862, is on display, along with antique line drawings representing ships which were driven onto the rocks over the centuries. Several Bude boats were lost last year; the irony was that it was rainwater, uniquely, which did for them. One of the boats ripped from its moorings by the river deluge even ended up in Porthcawl on the other side of the Bristol Channel.
Bude’s fishing and leisure fleet certainly took a blow, but one that seems to have masked a wider recovery. At the time of my visit, the local bookshop, Spencer Thorn, had closed; not down, as might have been expected, but while it underwent a major expansion. Bude has never enjoyed culinary renown, a fact Gill and Neil Faiers set out to challenge when they opened Bangors Organic Tea Rooms near the town in 2003. Bangors uses locally sourced ingredients and aims to grow all its own produce within a year or two. The menu includes home-baked yeast splits, which apparently make for a truly authentic West Country tea. Bangors also offers excellent B&OB, where O is for organic, adding to a rapidly improving roster of local accommodation [see box]. I wondered whether northeast Cornwall was about to embark on the changes which other parts of the county had already undergone.
‘We wouldn’t want it to be like Padstow or Newquay,’ said Gill. ‘We like the fact that the area’s rugged and largely unspoilt. The place has a loyal clientele who love it for what it is. All that’s needed to make it really special is more effort in terms of quality food and places to stay.’
The inspirational leek and chestnut mushroom soup that I lunched on at Bangors suggested that the process was already underway.
WAY TO GO
Getting There:
One week’s fully inclusive car hire in Cornwall from £125 through Holiday Autos (0870 400 0010 or visit www.holidayautos.co.uk.
Where to Stay (all prices for two persons sharing B&B per night):
The Old Rectory, St Juliot (01840 250225, stjuliot.com) From £72.
Redivallen Farm, Trevalga (01840 250854; reddivallenfarm.co.uk) From £50.
Trevigue, Crackington Haven (01840 240418; trevigue.co.uk) From £60.
The Bottreaux Hotel and Restaurant, Boscastle (01840 250231; boscastlecornwall.co.uk). From £65
Courtyard Farm (01840 261256; cornwall-online.co.uk/courtyard-farm-cottages) From £175 per week self-catering, sleeping three.
Eating and Drinking:
The Napoleon Inn and Boney’s Bistro (01840 250204; [email protected]).
Bangors Organic Tea Rooms, Poundstock (01288 361297; bangorsorganic.co.uk). Open from 12-6 for lunch and teas
The Cabin Café, Crackington Haven (01840 230228)
Life’s A Beach Bistro, Bude (01288 355222). Day café open 11-4 but weather dependent; bistro open evenings 7-late.
Activities:
Tintagel Castle (01840 770328). Open 10-6. £3.90 adults, £2.90 concessions.
King Arthur’s Halls, Tintagel (01840 770526). Open 10-5. £3 adults, £2 seniors and children
Bude and Stratton Museum. Open 12-5 all week, admission £1.
Boscastle Visitor Centre (01840 250010; visitboscastleandtintagel.com. Open all week
Copies of the North Cornwall Visitor Guide are available on 01271 336072, or log on to www.visitnorthcornwall.com.