Tramping Diaries. SWCP Porthcurno October 24th 2021

I have arrived at the triangle of white gold. The water surface is bumpy. One heavy wave after another rises, curls and falls with a heavy ‘crump’ onto the sand. After each a trail of white surf is dragged back to sea. Encampments of 2 or 3 people sit at polite distances from each other. Aside from the activities of children and dogs, many of those seem content to just sit and look at the sea.

I am standing on a dune back and a little above the beach. I am standing in front of a hut. It is just a small white block with a flat roof. Above me the cliffs rise both on my left and right where the path arrives one one side and disappears on the next. Ahead of me is the gold and the blue of beach, sea and sky.

Porthcurno was the point where many telegraph cables buried under the sea would enter the UK from far overseas. From all over the world cables would travel hundreds and thousands of miles and this is where they ended up.

Built in 1929, you can see the rows of glossy metal tubes where the cables are lined up vertically against the wall. Above each group of tubes is a white sign to tell you the origin of the cable. The one nearest to me says ‘Gibraltar’. There’s something English about this. The modesty of the scene and a reminder of past greatness.

A man peers through the metal gate that blocks our way in. He is so absorbed he mistakes me for his wife.

‘Look there’s one from India there.’ We do that thing of laughing briefly at his mistake. She’s down on the beach admiring the view. I promise myself I’ll visit the museum when I get the bus back here to pick up the car from Treen. Half of me wonders if I’ll make it.

I want to keep moving. ‘I must go down to the seas again. To the lonely sea and sky.’

It’s that feeling in the pit of my stomach like I used to get on the last day of the summer term. The dizzying expanse of the summer holidays stretching out before me. The expectation of all that could happen.

It’s a steep climb up the other side past the Mynack theatre with its terraces and balconies built into the great rocks around it like it’s a natural feature that’s been there for millennia.

The wind is coming from the west. Going right through me. I can feel I’m getting closer to the end of the land. I imagine the hundreds of miles of ocean ahead of me and the cables lying down there and all those messages tip tapping across the ocean floor.