I am picking my way amongst boulders like the backs of hippos. The sea is to my left. There is nothing between myself and the horizon that indicates any other life. The entrancing wash of the waves onto the beach allows the images to unravel as if from a film projector.
At the end of this rock-filled beach sub tropical plants crowd in around me. These giants have leaves so huge you could use it as an umbrella. They are Gunnera Manicata or Giant Rhubarb. On the land side heavy trees – a dark, impenetrable mass – appear as one mass. Jurassic Park: the UK version.
Cove Cottage – an upmarket holiday cottage – is tucked away a few hundred metres inland with its own well tended garden. The stream plays amongst mossy rocks. I hope there isn’t a dead sheep in it upstream. I splash my neck, and face and drink small mouthfuls from my cupped hands.
I think of how Cornwall seems like a different country to the rest of England. Roger Deakin said he felt this whenever he crossed the Tamar Bridge.
I wonder once again at the solitary existence I’ve carved out for myself.
I was sent away to school at 8. It felt like a mistake. Like one of those films where a spelling mistake means the wrong name gets chosen and the wrong person put forward. But it wasn’t that. My parents wanted it. It was what was expected. I never blamed them; I loved them too much but it wasn’t for me.
The teachers weren’t the sort that would or should be allowed anywhere near children nowadays.
I’m not affected by it. I think I was one of the lucky ones but boarding school makes you grow up quick. You build resilience but you also build walls to hide behind.
And strangely going away, going it alone has stayed with me all this time.
Even when I was in London I would always escape to Richmond Park. I went to Spain for a year to teach English. I moved back and trained to be a teacher in Cornwall. I lived in a fisherman’s cottage where I was so close to the sea that on a stormy night I would hear the slap of spray against my bedroom window from the waves hitting the sea wall. Most of my recent history I’ve been alone.
Dad also liked to tramp alone. He would disappear for a few days with a tent and a stove and walk down the Finn Valley or go up to The Saints (a collection of small villages all within a few miles of each other each named after a different saint), both in Suffolk .
The week after he died I was stopped short in the attic at Church House. In one of his rucksacks there was a freezer bag with half a bar of orange soap and a camera film case with waterproof matches inside. Part of his camping kit. I realised I do something very similar for my mini adventures tramping the path.
‘You’re so like him’, people always say.
I emerge from the jungle of St Loy into a familiar scene. Half the world is sea, half the world is cliffs and land and dissecting the two is the white squiggle between the grey and the green. The rhythm sends me into a trance and I remember nothing between here and Penberth, my next port of call.
The Slow Walker 