Country life
Cornish bliss
Denis Wood
After an early Easter it is bliss to go to St Mawes again. You can go from Exeter by Okehampton, Launceston, Bodmin, Indian Queens and Grampound Road, but this year I would take the winding road from Exeter to Moretonhampstead — are there still gas lamps in the streets there? — and over Dartmoor where, if it is cold, there will be sheep huddled on the road under,the banks and sometimes, but not always, ponies in threes or fours. Down to Two Bridges, through Princetown to Yelverton, a village still very much under the Moor, although on the main road between Tavistock and Plymouth. Then over the Saltash toll bridge; here we will not throw pennies into the Tamar hoping that, by some miracle, we shall never again have to leave Cornwall. Now the Cornish names begin to come up, Liskeard, Lostwithiel, Restormel Castle on our right hand, St Austell and then, after Higher Sticker, the turn to the left through Tregony, Reskivers, Ruan Highlanes, Trewithian and the edge of St Just with a first sight of blue water. We shall come in by the castle to see spread before us the wide prospect of Falmouth Bay and the Carrick Roads.
Next morning I would hire a little 'punt' — here in Cornwall this means a pulling boat with a sharp stem. It may have three thwarts which, if daughters are willing, can be manned by an elder daughter at stroke pulling one paddle, middleage amidships with two paddles putting in most of the weight and doing the steering, and a younger daughter in the bows with one paddle. If the children have by now grown up, you can go by yourself, experiencing the curious sense of release which sets in infallibly when you push off from the landing stage and bend forward to your oars; although it may be only a few yards, the land is already left behind, you are alone, afloat. Since nothing can go wrong in these few days, the tide will be at half flood as you pull away, leaving Amsterdam, Place House and Froe Creek to starboard, round Polvarth Point, past the moorings at Percuil into the widening salt water lakes, peaceful now that the holiday' makers with their outboard motors have gone away and silent except for the piping calls of oyster catchers and, high above the grass fields, the faint mew of buzzards soaring and wheeling overhead. On the hillsides there will be herons with their long shadows on the steep grass, so tall that they look like men standing there. Then on up to the head of the creek at Trethem and a pause for a few minutes at full flood before the ebb sets in. It is now well to leave in good time because, if your keel so much as touches the bottom on the ebb, you may have to wait until the flood comes again to float you off.
After lunch across to Falmouth in the ferry to the maritime museum, full of models of sailing ships from about 1550, including a good one of Cutty Sark who lay in Falmouth harbour for years before she was taken to Greenhithe. A look round the many antique shops and their usually worthless but irresistible collections of books.
Home for dinner and afterwards to walk up through the village, past the palm trees rustling in the breeze, towards Henry VIII's castle to see St Anthony's light flashing beyond Carricknath Point.
Before going to sleep you may hear curlews calling from the direction of Froe. Masefield wrote of them in his poem Biography:
That curlew-calling time in Irish dusk, When life became more splendid than its husk ...
and in his strange novel The Square Peg, "As she stood, she heard overhead the mournful sweet laughter of a curlew. She saw him, with his curved beak and crooked wing, going off into his lonesome. '0 blessed bird,' she thought, 'would I could go where you go and know what you know.'" .
On the way back I would pause and throw a penny into the Tamar. I have just received my copy of the spring number of the `Journal of the Garden History Society', as interesting, idiosyncratic and diversified as ever; Dr W. T. Stearn on the Chelsea Physic Garden, Priscilla Minay on James Justice (1698 to 1763), eighteenth century Scots horticulturist and botanist, Alison Hodges, on the grotto at Painshill and John Harvey on gardening books and plant lists of Moorish Spain, Non-members of the Society can get the journal for El, post paid, from Dr Christopher Thacker, French Studies, The University, Reading, Berkshire.
Membership of the Society costs £2.10 a year — the Membership Secretary is Miss J. Lee, 24 Woodland, North Side, London SW4 ORJ.
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