St. Just is a small place with a big history as part of a
Mining World Heritage Site. It has tiny back to back cottages that originally
would have been miners’ homes. Botallack Mine is was one of the tin mines very
near St. Just. It is between St Just and Pendeen village. You can see the two
engine houses and the actual mine shaft goes 400 metres out under the Atlantic.
The national Trust look after them and the arsenic mine nearby.
It's the one used by the BBC in the making of their
historical drama series Poldark. My St. Just hostess Helen was unimpressed. She
thought the acting wooden, the hero too dashing and the costumes too pretty and
the sunsets too coloured up. She rather
dismissed the series as an extended advert for Visit Cornwall! This is a view my eldest daughter could not disagree with more - she loves Poldark! Helen is a colourful character herself. She
is originally from Manchester but has carved a niche for herself here by
becoming very much involved with the community, particularly in the arts.
Not only is her little house crammed to bursting with
arts projects...
...but she runs all kinds of events for the village too. The local
Women's’ Institute makes fabulous rag rugs and Helen has a house full.
Helen used to work for Tourist information so straight
away suggested my must see must do list:
- Cape Cornwall - just two minutes away
- Sennen Cove – in her opinion the most beautiful places in the county.
- She told me not to bother with Lands End – “its rubbish and they will charge you £6 to park there to take a photo and then fleece you with tourist tat!"
- Minack theatre “a total must do”
- And St. Ives
The weather was not brilliant but the scenery didn’t need
good weather to impress me.
Cape Cornwall was just a minutes or two away from her
home as she said, down narrow lanes where I met this chap and a couple of his
friends.
Cape Cornwall is also a small headland also managed by the
National Trust. It’s about four miles north of Lands End.
There are supposed to be Choughs there, black birds
recently re-introduced to Cornwall, but I have no idea what the difference is
between a chough and a rook or a crow, so I have no idea what the birds were
that I may have seen.
On to Sennen Cove, famous for surfing. The waves were
certainly spectacular today. Very rugged and part of the Lands End Peninsular.
You can see why the beach is very popular even today when in spite of it being
mid July it is cold enough for jackets and very windy.
My friend John Kidson had suggested parking there and
walking to Lands End to avoid the extortionate car parking fees. I didn’t walk
to Lands End, I drove to the car park, informed the traffic kiosk attendant that I was not
staying, took a photo and left. I could see what Helen had implied. It was a
bit of the theme park. They didn’t charge to park at John O’Groats but
Cornwall is very seasonal in terms of work and I suppose they have to make
money where and when they can.
I already knew about the Minack theatre at Porthcurno. My mother loved
it there and introduced it to us when we were children first on holiday in Cornwall. My daughter’s friend Vicky has just been there to see a show. It was
already busy with tourists by 10.30am.
Minack is built over a gully on a granite cliff.
It’s remarkable not just because of its location but
because it was constructed by one woman, Rowena Cade and her gardener Billy
Rawlings, over a period of many winters, hauling the building materials down
from the family house or up from the beach.
Current touring theatre companies have to do the same
with their sets, props and costumes every Saturday. The Trust that now manage
the theatre still do it every day with the rubbish from the night before and catering
supplies for the forthcoming performances.
Minack has landscaped gardens of succulent and exotic
plants. It’s beautiful.
My original plan
was to scatter mums ashes on the stage, but it was scuppered because a theatre
company was already there rehearsing and doing sound checks for a forthcoming
performance of ‘A Winters Tale.’ There
were lots of tourists around too, so I could not do it surreptitiously. No choice
then. I would have to be more blatant. I called over to one of the production
team.
“Excuse me, can I ask you to do something a bit weird for
me?”
“Probably. What do you want?”
“I have a little pot of my mother’s ashes. Could you just
scatter them onto the stage for me?”
Kitty never turned a hair.
She opened up the barrier and told me I was so welcome to
do it myself. So I did.
She called the
young company director over and I told them a bit about Dreda and a little
about her love of theatre and performing, and about Freya and her skills and how
I would love to see Freya performing one of her own pieces on that same stage. Their
company, ‘Moving Stories’ was here with around 30 students from the Central
School of Drama and the production of 'A Winter’s Tale' was a musical version of
Shakespeare’s play – not unlike opera! Freya would have loved it. I would have
loved to see it too, having watched with the other tourists, little bits of
teckie run through. But sadly by the time it was on for real, I would already be
near Exeter.
St. Ives was a nightmare. Nowhere to park and far too
many people. How dare they? Whatever happened to me being the only tourist
in England?
No chance. This is
July in Cornwall and this does mean pedestrians sauntering in the too narrow
streets, no car parks and pasty and
fudge shops!
Eventually I found a half space on the building site that
is the Tate Gallery refurbishment, just
big enough for Gloria to squeeze in and went in search of food, which being in
St Ives was likely to be pricey. Yep - found some food I could eat and it was
pricey and a bit pretentious.
The beaches in St Ives, like so many on that side of
England were sandy and wide. The RNLI have a lifeguard station with loud
speakers and tannoys to try to keep swimmers within the red and yellow flag
area....
While allowing kayak and surf board training schools to work without drowning swimmers and no-one
noticing.
At a distance the wetsuit clad lot looked like sharks!
St Ives is famous for a couple of things: a) its art
school and almost every other shop an art gallery and b) the fact that there are so many second home
owners that recently the council decided that new homes should only be sold to local people. It was noticeable
how many pretty houses were holiday lets. One estimate puts holiday/second homes there as high a 45% and that some
cottages go for as much as £2000 a week. Given that Cornwall’s main industry is
tourism and that is seasonal and low paid, how can local people afford to buy?
The St Ives Society of Artists were holding their Summer
Exhibition in a somewhat damp smelling church building.
There were also artists like Nina Brook working in a
studio in full view of passing trade.
I had been looking forward to seeing St. Ives but if I'm
honest I was a bit underwhelmed. It is a kind of nostalgic advert for Cornwall, and I don’t mean 1950’s style with children in hand knitted swimmers playing on
the beaches. This is all about a dream sequence: sand, surf, men like male
models strutting their stuff, sporting shiny black wetsuits and designer pony
tails, expensive branded clothes shops,
yet more fudge, and one shop after another claiming title to “The World’s Best
Award Winning Cornish Pasties.” Evidence? Toothpaste? Torch batteries? Tins of baked beans? Where did the real people do their shopping
for life’s essentials like toilet rolls? I did see a greengrocers and it was
flagging up as the oldest in the town and almost a museum.
I am rather afraid this is setting a pattern since I have
not visited Cornwall for at least twenty years.
Tomorrow I am taking mum to some of her favourite places; Marazion, Mousehole and St. Michael's Mount so we shall see
As for tonight, I am off to The LaFrowda Summer Ceilidh back
in St. Just. It’s part of their arts and music festival week and at the
weekend, the town will close to traffic for their carnival.
What is a Ceilidh and who or what was Lafrowda? Remains to be discovered.
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