DAY 29

Monday June 20^th 2016                                                           

Bude to St. Just                                                                             Miles 138

Today I have a companion once again in my good friend Pete.  Pete will be my guide and scribe over the next two days.  One of the glories of the United Kingdom is the coast of Cornwall.  Surely one of the most dramatic and picturesque anywhere, with ancient fishing villages, that have remained largely unchanged over the centuries and roads that similarly have remained largely unchanged.

We left Bude in torrential rain.  Bude has an excellent beach, provided notice is taken of the tides.  We drove from Bude along the cliff tops and came over the other side to Widemouth Bay another premier surfing beach.  Despite the heavy rain there were surfers in the water.  I suppose they are going to be wet anyway so why should rain bother them.

 

Cracking ton Haven

Crackington Haven was our next destination.  In the fog we found a farmhouse B&B that Pete and his family stayed at in 1977.  At that time his son was one year old and the farmer’s son was also the same age.  Today that son is running the farm and the B&B.

 

Boscastle and river running through it

A few miles below Crackington Haven is Boscastle.  In August 2004 both Crackington Haven and Boscastle were the sites of a massive flash flood, caused by heavy rainfall.  100 homes were destroyed, 80 vehicles and several boats were washed into the sea.  Fortunately no lives were lost, partly because the flood occurred during the daytime and not at night when people were in bed.  (It made for dramatic TV footage though). Once again, as with Lynmouth, the villages are located at the base of a valley with rock cliffs above them and a narrow river channel running through the village.

 

Tintagel - picture from a poster

In continuing heavy rain we drove on to Tintagel. Legend suggests that Tintagel, with its ruined castle, might be the place where King Arthur was born.  There is even a cave purporting to have been used by Merlin.  Of course no one can prove any of this (or even if King Arthur actually existed) but it provides a magnate for tourists.

 

Doc Martin's house (the smaller one)

Eight miles further on and down very narrow lanes, we came to Port Isaac.  This is the mythical Port Wen of the television series Doc. Martin and the small village makes the most of the hundreds of tourists that come along to see where he and the other characters inhabit the village.  We actually, inadvisably, drove down into the village and it has extremely narrow streets with no ability to park.  Having squeezed past the tourists and almost lost the wing mirrors against the walls, we drove the circuit once again and came back and used the car park above the town.  The footpath from here into the village provides an excellent view of the small harbour and in particular Doc Martin’s house across the valley.  You can actually book this house (named Fern Cottage) for a self-catering weekend or longer.  It has two bedrooms but will set you back £206 per night.

The village is tiny and you can see everything within 15 minutes.  The only obvious Doc Martin artifact is a neck brace, worn by Mrs. Tishell the fictional Pharmacist, that is now around the neck of the figurehead of Lord Nelson on the wall above the shop used in the series.

 

Saffron cake

We stopped for a coffee in a café that used to be a Methodist chapel and still contains the upper balcony, now used as a gallery for handicrafts.  We were persuaded by the waitress to try the saffron cake with our coffee.  Excellent and I would love to try this again.

Just after Port Isaac is Port Quinn.  This is apparently where Martin Clunes, who plays Doc Martin, likes to walk his dog.  He is a great dog lover in real life, but fans of the show may be aware that this is not the case in the program with Doc Martin objecting to having been adopted by a stray dog,who stays with him no matter how hard he tries to lose it.

Around the Point is Polzeath, another very popular surfing beach.  Again lots of surfers were in the water.  The sun now began to break through the clouds. 

 

Estuary at Rock

Polzeath is just outside the River Camel estuary and further along the estuary is the village of Rock.  The Halifax Building Society published a survey in 2010 that placed Rock as the 4^th least affordable place in Britain.  (Padstow across the estuary from Rock was named as the second least affordable place).   Rock has been nicknamed as “Chelsea on Sea” by the Daily Telegraph.  What drives the house unaffordability is the out-of-towners who buy homes here and use only for holidays.  40% of houses in Rock are holiday homes.

There is excellent sand here, lots of it forming both a beach and a number of sand bars and boating is extremely popular.  In May 2013 an awful boating tragedy occurred here when a family in a RIB were all thrown out when the father apparently fell onto the throttle and the steering wheel, causing the boat to accelerate suddenly and turn sharply. The family of six were all thrown into the water.  The father, mother and an eight year old daughter were struck by the boat as it went round and round in circles at high speed.  The father and daughter were killed and the mother lost her leg.  The three other children were uninjured.  The mother now devotes her life campaigning for boating safety and awareness of ensuring that the boat operator is attached to the engine kill cord.

 

Looking to Rock from Padstow

We had to travel up the estuary to Wadebridge to cross the river Camel and reach Padstow.  Parking was difficult to find but after a 5 minute wait for a lady to water and feed her puppy, she drove off and we found a space.  Padstow is nicknamed “Padstein” after the famous chef Rick Stein who owns at least three restaurants here and a cooking school.  We went into a hall that had a local craft food and drink market and also a show of art from local artists.  Here Pete recognised one of the artists who used to live in Wargrave.  I purchased a bottle of local cider.

 

Rick Stein's Restaurant

There were a lot of dogs and puppies in town with their owners.  It was really nice to have so many wagging tails and wet noses all wanting to greet me.  One of the great things about Britain is that dogs are welcomed in most places, especially in pubs.  This is not the case in Vancouver and I feel that the city is the poorer because of it. 

 

Padstow Harbour

One other distinct difference between Britain and Canada was exemplified by a visit to Boots the chemist in Padstow.  My back was painful and I asked for a product containing paracetamol (acetaminophen) along with a muscle relaxant. No such product exists and the muscle relaxant available in North America is considered a prohibited substance in Britain.  However, I can purchase over the counter in Britain, cough syrups, such as Pholcodeine, containing large quantities of codeine.  This product is not available in North America because of fears of misuse.   Indeed you can be arrested if you enter the country with this product in your luggage.  Conversely paracetamol can only be sold in limited quantities in Britain as, although an excellent drug, it is highly toxic if used beyond the recommended daily dose.  In North America the dangers of acetaminophen (paracetamol), usually called Tylenol, are not addressed and you can buy quantities that contain 7 times the fatal dose.

 

Watergate Bay

This coast contains numerous bays that are magnets for surfers.  Harlyn Bay, just around the headland from Padstow, is another such bay and again lots of surfers were there.  This is seen again at Porthcothan Bay and Mawgan Porth.  The area has spectacular rocky outcrops pushing out into the ocean and dividing the bays.  Watergate Bay is a very large bay that Jamie Oliver has recently “blessed ” by opening a new restaurant here!

 

Fistula Beach

Newquay is the largest town on this coast and has two superb bays, Newquay Bay and Fistral Bay, either side of the headland.  It is known as the surfing capital of Britain.  The main surfing beach is at Fistral Bay, which was bathed in spectacular sunshine and had huge waves when we stopped there.  It was very noticeable that Fistral had excellent weather, but looking behind us, back over the land, dark clouds were present.

The last time I was in Newquay was for my honeymoon!  The town has grown in size since that time.  It is still a magnet for holiday makers, but has unfortunately also become a popular place for stags and hen parties and for youngsters seeking an alcohol fueled weekend.  The television scenes that we see are of young people, frequently girls, who have had so much to drink that they become unconscious or are unable to stand up.  This is another contrast with North America where binge drinking is less common and certainly drinking outside is not allowed.  No one appears to be tackling this problem, despite the significant short and longer term health issues that ensue that overload both the hospital and police services.

We continued on to Perranporth, where Pete said that he had spent many of his childhood holidays.  We found a parking spot close to the 3 mile long beach and brewed a cup of tea. Perranporth is named after St. Piran the patron saint of Cornwall.  St. Piran died in 480 and is believed to have come from Ireland.  Not much is known about him.  An oratory built by him, which became covered by the sand, was excavated in 1910, but then left alone and is once again under the sands. His symbol is a white cross on a black background and has become the county flag and symbol of Cornwall.  St. Pirin is also the patron Saint of tin miners (of whom I suspect that there are now none left – certainly in Cornwall!).  It is said that he brought with him the secrets of extracting tin from ore, which had become lost in Cornwall, so that the industry was revived – and has since died again.

 

Can Galver Tin Mine

In Perranporth I came across my first Unisex loo.  It is about the size of any other public toilet but with mainly stalls inside, plus urinals for men at the end.  There were both men and women using it.  Felt strange at first but after a few moments I thought no more about it and everyone there seemed relaxed about it also.  It was also free.

After Perranporth and with time marching on we continued along the coast by whatever road is closest to the ocean.  Sometimes it is very close at other times it took us quite a bit inland. We drove through St. Agnes, Porthtowan and Portreath.  All very small but all with nice beaches and lots of people and surfers.

 

Hell's Mouth

Pete got me to stop at one place, close to Gwithian that I would not have seen just driving by.  We stopped the car and walked to the cliff edge (unfenced and crumbly) and below us was a dramatic sea cliff and rocky bay known as “Hell’s Mouth”.  Such places feel almost eerie as your mind keeps saying to you how awful it would be if you slipped and fell.  Having had experience in the last 12 months of slipping and falling (and breaking things) I did not get as close to the edge as I might have done!  The views from here were across to Godrevey Point and lighthouse

 

St.Ives

We drove around Hayle to arrive at our next destination of Carbis Bay with St. Ives behind it.  St. Ives is a major holiday destination and rightly so because of its gorgeous position.  However this has been another place where the demand for second homes has pushed house prices up to a level that local young people cannot afford to buy.  In May of 2016, people who did not have permanent residence there owned 25% of homes in St. Ives.  A recent vote by residents has been to restrict the building of new second homes.  Presumably this means that only locals can buy new builds, which will thus limit the market for new properties and keep their price down.  How they will then prevent a local buying cheaply one of these properties and then making a killing by selling it on, I don’t know.  Apparently a legal challenge to this decision has been made by local building company and it is to be seen if this can be implemented.  What will happen is that existing homes will be in greater demand and in a restricted market, prices will rise even further.

It is difficult to know how to deal with this sort of situation.  I mentioned earlier that in one area in Scotland people had formed a development corporation to access grants and other funding to purchase land and build lower cost housing for locals.  In Vancouver a review of utility bills highlighted where condos in the city were not lived in all year round (at least 25%) which suggested that these were not used full time.  It is now being mooted that a higher property tax be applied to such houses/flats as a means of making it less attractive to have them unoccupied and hopefully resulting in more properties being affordable to rent in the city.  There is no easy answer, it is all a supply and demand market, but I do have some sympathy with a young person or family that has grown up in an area and want to continue living there, but can’t afford to buy a house.  It has in the past led to drastic reactions, such as in Wales where a number of years ago, holiday homes were targeted and fire bombed.

Moving on we now headed along the coast road, with beautiful views almost all the way, to find our B&B for the night in St. Just.  This was the most expensive B&B I have so far stayed in (by about £10) but it was also one of the best.  Very professionally done.  Nice light coloured carpets (and many B&Bs seem to have horrible carpets, usually in heavy dark red colours) with every facility in the room you could require.  They even had a bar and the daily newspapers to read.  It does not take much to lift a B&B from being ordinary to exceptional.  The lady running this knew how to do that and thus could charge more.  For breakfast we both had smoked haddock and poached egg, the healthiest breakfast so far on the trip! 

In booking B&Bs I find Trip Advisor (or other similar web sites) to be quite helpful in choosing where to stay, though I sometimes feel that my standards must be higher than others as my experience does not necessarily match those of the comments.  If you read the visitors book in most B&Bs you can see that people generally, especially when they know the host will see it, only write positive things.  In a couple of B&Bs that I stayed in the comments said “wonderful stay, lovely host” when probably what they wanted to write was “this place is shabby and dirty and the host was grumpy and did not shave and I will never come again”.  I wanted to write the latter at one of my B&Bs but decided to say nothing!

The B&B was close to the airport that flew to the Isles of Scilly.  Due to fog and rain planes had not been able to fly the night before and we had at least one couple in the B&B who had been forced to spend an overnight in St. Just rather than in the (expensive) B&B they had booked on Scilly.  I have in the past tried to book a vacation on the Isles of Scilly but to do this you need to book months in advance and be prepared to pay a high price.  Not being able to find a suitable place Marilyn and I flew to Majorca (beautiful island) from Exeter instead and had a wonderful time. This example highlights the fact that with so many local airports around the UK, providing low cost flights to warm and sunny climes, the British B&B has to keep its standards up if it wants to do well.

We went for dinner in St. Just and had a good meal in a local pub.  The restaurant was very nice, but staff were clearly not well trained and the  cheery manager really could have shaved before he came into work.  After our meal we moved into the bar and watched a very lack luster performance from England in a nil nil draw against Slovakia in the Euro16 tournament.

Tomorrow Pete assures me will be a short day mileage wise, but a long day in terms of driving, not only because of the narrow roads, but also because there is so much to see.