DAY 30
Tuesday June
21st 2016
St. Just to
Feock Miles
107
Today was a long day, but a good one. Mileage was limited
because of all of the beautiful places to stop at and the narrowness of the
roads. I also reached the final cardinal
compass point of my journey
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| Sennen Cove |
We left our nice B&B after a great breakfast and headed for
our first destination, Sennen Cove. This
is an old fishing village and was at one time the most important seine net
fishing place in Cornwall. It is now, of
course, a very popular surfing place lying at the southern end of Whitesand
Beach. It is heavily dependent on
tourism and only a few fishing boats now remain focusing on Mullet rather than
the old traditional herring and pilchards.
In the olden times a watcher, known as a Huer, would be posted, often in
a small tower, to watch for the shoals of herring coming into the bay. These were known as Silver Darlings, which
reminded me that in the Orkneys, they use the same term. The fishing boats would then go out and spread
their seine nets around the shoal and they would be hauled in to the
shore. In 1977 apparently 17,000 pounds
of herring were caught on one occasion.
Mainly due to overfishing, there is now no seining for herring as there
are few herring left.
The village has an old round building “Round House” that used to
house the capstan wheel that would draw the boats up the beach. It was also where the herring would be
pressed and the oil obtained. It is now
an art gallery. Across the road is a
house called “the Old Saltings” where no doubt this used to be the place that
the fish were salted down for preservation.
As it seems with any town or village on the coast of Britain,
there is an RNLI lifeboat station, this one holding a Tamar Class lifeboat and
a smaller inshore vessel. I have
actually been on board a Tamar Class vessel when this was the one on station at
Exmouth. A fried of mine who was the
mechanic on board took me into the spacious engine room that he said that he
travelled in during operations. I know I
would have been sick if I had to journey down there! It is a big boat and able to take very heavy
seas. The RNLI is so numerous around the
coast of Britain that mariners can feel secure that someone is reasonably near
by to rescue them if they get into difficulties and are able to signal they are
in distress. The lifeboat is required to
be able to reach any vessel in distress up to 50 miles out to sea within two
hours of the call out.
Sennen was famous at one time for also having a sea rescue dog,
a Newfoundland called Bilbo who was part of the local beach lifeguards group and
he began his work in 2005. This group
were taken over by the RNLI in 2008 and then, unfortunately Bilbo was stripped
of his job. This was because of two
things; firstly, dogs were prohibited from being on the beach during the summer
months and secondly the RNLI rule was that only one person (or dog) could
travel on the quad bike that went down to the water! There was a petition to have him reinstated,
but unfortunately Bilbo died in 2015.
Newfoundlands are bred as water dogs and have a natural instinct for
assisting people in difficulties in the water.
After Sennen Cove we experienced the only ugly part of the day,
a visit to Land’s End. This is just a
tourist trap with a visitor center (read place to sell tourist tat) and for
which you are expected to pay £5 to park to
go into their shop. Avoid it! It is not the most southerly point of Britain
(as John O’ Groats is not the most northerly).
It is actually the most westerly point on mainland England (Ardnamurchan
Point being the most westerly on mainland Britain). Also the headland is fairly
non-descript. There was no place to turn
around so we had to drive in. The turn
around point and exit are clearly marked as no doubt most people think the same
as us and don’t want to stay!
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| Porthcurnow Beach from Minack |
We motored on around the point and came to Porthcurno where
there is a museum of telegraphy. This is
famous in the development of communication and was the terminus from 1870, when
the first undersea cable was put in that carried communications as far away as
India. Between the two world wars this
was built up to 14 cables and was the largest such station in the world. During the war a number of tunnels were
excavated (by tin miners) to house the communications equipment and this
operated through until 1970. The tunnels
today form part of the museum. In the days of morse code operators initiated
contact with each other by sending out the morse for the letters PK, standing
for Porthcurnow. (Cornwall is known
locally as Kernow, hence the use of the letter K). This then became accepted as the standard
contact between operators anywhere.
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| Minack Theatre (courtesy of Pete) |
Right next to Porthcurnow and on the cliff above the beach is
the famous open air Minack Theatre. This
has literally been carved out of the rock and as the most stupendous setting
along the lines of a Roman style amphitheater.
The theater was the brainchild of Rowena Cade who owned a house on the
cliff and in 1973 allowed her garden to be used as the setting for a production
of the Tempest. The theater grew over the years from this one production and
now as many as 80,000 people a year come to see plays performed here. The actors are usually touring companies who
make this a “must stop at” place to perform.
Apparently productions go ahead whatever the weather and if you go you
should take a cushion to sit on and a blanket in case it gets chilly.
We drove on and down into Lamorna Cove with the lovely named pub
called Lamorna Wink just before it. From
there we moved on to Mousehole (pronounce Mouzal). It was here that the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas
spent his honeymoon in 1938. There is a food festival held here in December and
the famous fish dish “Star Gazey Pie” originated here, being a fish pie where
fish heads point up through the crust.
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| Mousehole |
The Penlee lifeboat, the Solomon Brown was called out to make
the rescue and take off the crew. The
Solomon Brown was an open 47 foot boat built twenty years earlier and with
engine power sufficient only to make 9 knots.
Waves at this time were reported to be up to 60 feet. The helicopter pilot reported seeing the
Solomon Brown come alongside the ship and despite being thrown by the sea up
onto the ships deck and then washed off again, it managed to get the Captain’s
wife, two daughters and one other crew member on board. The Coxswain radioed that “We’ve got four”
but that was the last message ever heard.
All eight crew on the lifeboat and all eight people on board the Union
Star were lost.
Within 24 hours of the disaster 23 volunteers came forward to
man a replacement vessel. A memorial and
flower garden are now in place where the lifeboat station used to be. The replacement lifeboat was moved to a new
station at Newlyn. Two days before the
disaster Charlie Greenhaugh, a crew member who was lost, had turned on the village’s
Christmas lights. After the disaster the
lights were turned off, but his widow asked for them to be turned back on
again. Since this time the Christmas
light’s at Mousehole are turned off for one hour at 8.00pm on 19th
December as a mark of respect for the lost men.
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| Cleaning the bottom at Penzance |
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| St. Michael's Mount |
In Mount’s Bay is the famous St. Michael’s Mount, which has
similarities to Mont St. Michel on the western coast of France. The UK version has a castellated house,
rather than an Abbey, which is what is atop the French version. At low tide St Michael’s Mount can be
reached, on foot, by a causeway from the village of Marazion. It was low tide when we arrived so with the
assistance of a very helpful parking attendant who, because of his injured leg
(caused by a motorcycle accident) and use of a crutch, took pity on my bad back
and allowed us to park close to the causeway so we were able to walk across to
the island. We actually followed other
people taking a diagonal short cut across the soft sands, which was better for
my back than the cobbled causeway.
However, what none of us knew until we got there was that the sandy
beach had two streams of water running across it, so we had to either get our
feet wet or jump them. I chose the
latter course, but regretted it when my feet landed and jarred my back
further. St Michael’s Mount is managed
by the National Trust, so I got further value from my reciprocal membership of
the Scottish National Trust that I had taken out at Culloden.
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| St. Michael' Mount Causeway |
The house was very interesting and the site dated back to the 12th
century. The island may have been the site of a monastery from the 8th
to 11th century and King Edward the Confessor (Edward III) actually
gave it to the Abbey of Mont St. Michel in 1060. It stayed under their control until the 14th
century when it was passed to Syon Abbey near London. It was fought over and besieged a number of
times in various internal British conflicts.
In 1659 the Mount was sold to Colonel John St Aubyn and has been in his
family ever since. When control was
passed to the National Trust in 1954, along with a large endowment, the family
retained a 999 year lease to continue to live in the property.
Once on the island all of the pathways up to the house are rough
cobbles. There is apparently a small
funicular railway within a tunnel that can be used to take luggage up to the
house. It is still operating, but used
only rarely. It was not visible when we
were there.
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| Marazion from St. Michael's Mount
From Marazion we drove on with the intention of finding ice
creams! We found these in Porthleven,
close to Helston. Porthleven along with
Mullion Cove are the only two harbours on the western side of the Lizzard
Peninsula. In the winter storms of 2014,
the harbor wall at Porthleven was breached.
Porthleven was the home of Wing Commander Guy Gibson who led (and was
killed during) the famous Dam Buster raid during World War II. Near to Porthleven is RNAS Culdrose, which
until 2015 was the main Air Sea Rescue base.
Air Sea rescue has now been privatised and the contract awarded to
Bristow Aviation. This has caused a
number of naval helicopter pilots to leave the service, some joining Bristow.
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Mullion Cove was also hit and damaged by the storm of 2014 and
the sea wall has not yet been repaired.
Originally the harbour was built as a haven for pilchard fishing boats.
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| Kynance Cove |
Pete next took me to Kynance Cove, which I have to say is
spectacular. The BBC has described it as
one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in the South West. They are certainly not exaggerating. I viewed it only from above not having the
time (or the ability) to walk down to the beach. Within the car park (National
Trust) and seemingly oblivious to cars and people, were a herd of Devon Red
Poll cattle, all lying down and enjoying the sunshine!
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| Lazing On a Sunny Afternoon |
We then came to Lizard Point.
This is the most southerly point on the UK mainland and is the last of
my cardinal points that I wanted to reach.
It is also spectacular, indeed I would use the word breathtaking,
especially in the bright and warm sunshine that greeted us. Again this is another National Trust cared
for part of the coastline. Pete’s wife,
Sue, was recently here as the artist in residence within a small hut at the
point, alongside the café. The aim was
to demonstrate how artists draw attention to nature and it proved to be so
successful that this will become an on-going feature. As Pete had been here before he was able to
show me how I could park at the bottom of the track. But be warned if you decide to drive down to
the bottom, coming back up, with other cars coming down, is nigh on
impossible!
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| Lizard Point |
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| Pete at Lizzard |
Also at the Point were some
National Trust volunteers with telescopes ready to show visitors interesting
creatures of the rocks and small islets.
There were seals, gannets, Kittiwakes and I managed to get a reasonable
photograph of an oyster catcher way down on the rocks below.
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| Oyster Catcher |
After afternoon tea (you can tell we had a very sophisticated
and pleasant day!) we drove on to Coverack.
Pete and Sue will be back here on Saturday as part of a choir that will
be putting on a concert in the village.
The next part of the journey was extreme in respect of the
narrow lanes. Samantha had us drive one
lane, which for two miles had no passing places and the grass was brushing the
doors on both sides. As luck would have
it we saw no other vehicle until we literally got to the end where we pulled in
to let three vehicles pass in the opposite direction.
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| Helford |
Helford is on the north east tip of the Lizard Peninsula and is
a small and pretty little place overlooking Helford Passage (Helford
River). There is a passenger only ferry
(shame for us) across the river. There
were many small boats and dinghies moored up to the floating jetty, presumably
for people to access their sailboats placed on swinging moorings in the center
of the river.
Needing to be in Feock in time for Pete to get to choir practice we
rushed through the premier sailing and boating town of Falmouth (which I have
visited before). Falmouth is the site of an artillery fort,
Pendennis Castle, which was built in 1540 by Henry VIII to defend Carrick Roads. Carrick Roads is a Ria (flooded river valley)
of the river Fal and forms the third deepest natural harbor in the world.
I will be taking a few days R&R with Pete and Sue in Feock
before Marilyn joins me on Thursday and we complete my journey back to Exmouth
together on Saturday and Sunday.
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