Would you have been in the market, some 200 years ago, for 63 iron boilers, 2 cavalry saddles, 179 firkins of butter, 11 iron tea kettles, and much more? If so, then you should have been in Cornwall at the time. Circumstances over the past eighteen months have forged for me a bitter-sweet relationship with a part of the country previously largely unfamiliar. The 'bitter' in all this was the ever worsening health of firstly my mother-in-law and subsequently my father-in-law. Sadly, neither are with us any more. The 'sweet', born of seven or eight visits – an expedition of 501 miles each way, together with stays at YHA in either Penzance or Coverack – has been a growing liking for, in particular, the Lizard peninsular.
Previously we had paid yearly trips, each ensuring a cream tea or two, visits to craft shops and a lot of time sat talking. Of late we have taken in a bit more of the scenery, the restaurants and the history of the area surrounding Mullion, home to Irene and Bernard for over 20 years.
The Lizard is very much a place of wild and impressive seas, as evidenced by the events of this past year. With these come destruction of the coastline and in some cases the homes perched above it. When we heard of storms lashing the Cornish Coast I had feared that as a result there might be little left this time of the cafes, gift shops and Post Office set right on the sea front at Coverack, which we had come to know well from our morning walks to buy a paper. 'They passed by,' said the Post Mistress, 'but didn't really come into the bay this time'. She told me that on the days following a 'real storm' fish would be found, flung high up the field beside the Post Office, some hundred feet or so behind the sea wall!
The YHA at Coverack, perched on the cliffs, affords truly stunning views out across the sea. Sorry to 'gush' so, like a representative of either the Cornish Tourist Board or, for that matter, the YHA, but we wondered what we had done to deserve this, a room with such a view for £13.00 a night – and why we had not discovered it years ago? Once a magnificent private residence it was hostelised, so to speak, about forty or fifty years ago. It retains most of its original core features, not least a fine timber staircase and railings salvaged from the SS Mohegan, a steamer which ran aground on the rocks here in late Victorian times (1898). It is on a notice now hung on the walls of this staircase that the above offers appear, linked to the sale of the contents of the wreck of the galiot Maria, lost in 1812. Specialist maps and books on the region suggest 40 or 50 wrecks hereabouts over recent centuries.
Visits to the church in Mullion itself over the years have revealed it as a treasure house of simple woodwork, Elizabethan or earlier. For inside, in addition to a dark, heavy but beautifully constructed oak rood screen, are rough hewn pews, cut and constructed, it is said, from trees of an ancient forest, which also supplied the timber for the warships of the time. The pew ends display simple, almost rough workmanship but portray dramatic biblical themes – amongst these Jonah actually inside a Whale. Here and there carvings suggest pagan origins, with glimpses through thick foliage of the Green Man.
Those interested in more modern times, and/or with impatient children to entertain perhaps, might visit the Earth Station Goonhilly, as we did once ourselves. Not far from here Marconi transmitted the first radio signal to Newfoundland in 1901. Today, giant dishes tower above you: 'silent monoliths in almost reverent contemplation of the heavens'. These not only receive signals from deep space but transmit telephone calls and the like, via satellite, around the world. Well, I for one was left most excited by this, and had to have a Cream Tea to recover…
And just for the record, Cornish Cream Tea: scone then jam then cream. Beware imitations. Devon Cream Tea: scone then cream then jam!