I’m still cursing myself for missing last night’s freak aurora as I look down onto Crantock Beach.
In my experience of walking the coast path in Cornwall it seems to be typical to have protracted periods of time alone with the path, the sea, the sky and then rare occasions when I’m suddenly thrown into the melee of Cornwall in peak holiday time mode. It’s true that it’s not the summer holidays but the sudden burst of summer sun has transformed the weekend into what appears to be an August bank holiday.
Love it.
The path winds its way along the western edge of Crantock beach, dips between high hedges and then spills out into a packed car park. Two girls with red National Trust T shirts and walkie talkies talk to each other from different ends of the car park looking perplexed. As I head up the lane into the village I count 20 cars queueing.
After a cold pint of Korev at The Old Albion Inn I wander past a great big man strimming between the graves and into the coolness of The Church of St Carantoc.
Named after a Celtic saint who apparently had a small oratory on the site of the church, St Carantoc has a fantastic rood screen with fine carving. A quote from the church history says of the church ‘The principal beauty is its very rich High Church fittings, dated mainly from 1897-1907. They include a splendid screen with coving, loft and rood, which incorporates a few medieval parts..The pews have good carved ends in the late medieval manner. The largely renewed roofs have fine colouring above the rood and the sanctuary.’
These are treasures indeed but the best carving of all – for me – lies hidden around the back of the church.
Here under a purpose built shelter sits the original village stocks and behind it a panel which tells a story that could probably only come from Cornwall.
It tells the story of the last man to be placed in the stocks, William Tinney, ‘a smuggler’s son and vagabond’ from West Pentire who was placed in them within the church tower in 1817 for a brutal crime where he apparently ‘robbed with violence a widow woman of Cubert Parish’. That is not all though. The story develops into something worthy of a James Bond-esque blockbuster. The panel continues ‘By negligence or design he was insufficiently secured and shortly afterwards appeared on the top of the tower. He had cut the rope from the tenor bell and by this he lowered himself to the nave roof. Climbing to the eastern gable of the choir and sliding down it he dropped to the churchyard grass and in the sympathetic view of certain village worthies bolted, got off to sea and was never brought to justice or seen in the neighbourhood again.’
A carving of Tinney sitting in the sticks presides over the panel of his story. He has a beautifully carved branch of oak behind him. His arms are folded belligerently, his face staring at the viewer under a cap with a feather while his luxuriant hair curls over his collar and his bare feet poke comically out of the stocks. It’s a cracking yarn and has all the romance of a great prison break story and contains the best ingredient of any story – mystery. For hours afterwards I can’t helping thinking whatever did happen to William Tinney of West Pentire?
Back at Crantock beach a temporary brightly coloured community has settled on the beach. White flesh covered for cold month after cold month is suddenly revealed. Blue, red and yellow windbreaks mark the beach at various points all the way beside Pen Pol creek. The scene looks like it’s been deliberately put together by an artist, not just a scene of random tourists. Dogs bark. Children squeal. Ed Sheeran belts out ‘I’m in love with the shape of you’ and I wonder if anywhere in the world has the Brits’ ability to have a good time when the sun decides to shine.
As advised by Paul at the cafe – he who said ‘You must have been sparko!’ when I told him about me sleeping through the northern lights last night – I take a dip in Pen Bol Creek which separates Crantock from Newquay. It is green with a sandy bottom and a few rocks. At low tide there are pools which are 6 feet and it’s perfect for wallowing in. I am a hippo relaxing. On one side thick trees cover the hillside their leaves sparkling, whooshing and swaying in the wind. On the other a variety of grand houses – some Victorian, others modern – look across the creek.
I lose myself in a heady mix of warm wind, sparkling waves, the rushing of leaves. It is like a waking dream.
It’s time to move on, to return to my car which seems like it could be hundreds of miles away and last seen….how long ago?
On the bus two holidaymakers chat to a local man with a lined face, matted hair and beard.
The visitors are sounding incredulous.
‘At Watergate campsite it was £470 for 5 nights for a bit of grass and shower block’, they are saying.
The Cornishman replies: ‘It’s because of Air BnB. A lot of people here are jumping on that bandwagon’.
I leave the bus at Perranporth and walk back to the relative wilds of St Agnes Head where my car waits alone on the cliff top. Before I get to it I hear a cuckoo nearby and calling its two note song over and over. It’s so clear it sounds electronic. I look at the two islands of Man and his Man and further south in the distance there is a beautiful white dome half lit in the sun like a half moon. It is the radar tower I passed at Nancekuke Common at the start of the year. I pause, taking in the scene, trying to hold onto it knowing it’ll slip away soon and then unlock the car door.
The Slow Walker 