Monday 11th July
I forgot to mention a couple of days ago a section of the path about a mile and half long was irritatingly overgrown - it was the National Trust again who ought to stick to looking after properties instead of fighting a loosing battle with nature and chopping trees down all over the place. A notice proclaimed the area to be suited to glowworms, yes glowworms, and good old NT didn't want to upset them by strimming the path.
Walking today was gentler and again I had a good café turn up for morning coffee - all very enjoyable. At St Anthony-in-Meneage there were boats and a slipway and a rather pathetic chandlery. I asked if they did tea. I was presented with a paper cup with a tea bag sachet thrown in together with one of those nasty mini milk cartons and asked for £1.60, then told to go outside, open a hatch door to reveal a machine that dispensed hot water. I hadn't realised the sachet had not been opened so had to fish it out and open it, then to go back inside and ask for a wooden stirrer which had not been included with the initial kit - " wus you ever bit by a dead bee."
Helford is quaint and attractive. I am in a B and B called the Sail Loft. The husband and wife are in their late seventies and keen sailors owning a fast 36 footer. She has two, and he seven Atlantic crossings and they are still at it, intending to be off to the Scillies at the weekend but for granddaughter baby sitting duty, hmm!
Tonight's menu at the Shipwrights Arms (well recommended with its new owners):
moules marinère, fresh local cod with chips and imaginative salad garnis, and sticky toffee pudding.
Alan, sorry, not a tractor in sight.
Tomorrow's target, Falmouth. First I have to cross the Helford river - the ferry is within two hundred yards of my B and B but it doesn't start until 9:30 am.
For the quote, one of those old Bogart films, RR will no doubt provide the title and the whole cast list straight from memory.
Just looking at a stunning bay view with boats from the pub window. The evening light is extraordinary, everything is rich with colour and sharp,sharp,sharp.
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i've noticed a dearth of unprompted tea and biscuits proffering on this walk - which may perhaps explain why you coughed up £1.60p (=2€) for a bag of luke-warm-water-made tea of indeterminate provenance and artificial milk : it this due to the well-known Cornish parsimony (a bit like Yorkshire but without the charm or wit, it seems) or that living on the edge of the known world induces a reluctance to chat to strangers passing by - or just that nobody lives close to your path?
ReplyDeleteYou are having better weather than 'up north' - enjoy it !
Reading your first para I was briefly transported... to Tunbridge Wells! That you had become Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, given to picking out the minutiae from the narrowest of horizons and chavelling (a verb invented by Mother) at them; subscribing to the modified version of the old saw: The way to Hell (or, in Tunbridge Wellsese, Croydon) is paved with a million irritations.
ReplyDeleteAnd then, to my delight, I discovered that what I had imagined was a temporary state had become permanent. That tea had resented your attitude and had bitten back. And you, like some latterday Flying Dutchman of the Home Counties, were doomed to walk for many a mile without any hope of moving even an inch beyond the boundaries of that "royal... large affluent town in western Kent." Oh you can say you live in the Cumbrian equivalent of RTW but your heart, aspirations and vulnerability to petty distractions rest among the Pantiles in that (I quote the tourist office) "charming historic town where the smart people go for their short-break staycation". There to drink lattes and to reflect that things aren't what they were.
For you and other tweed-clad burghers Shakespeare has written the perfect epitaph:
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
No Munros, no more Marilyns, just a long long life spent railing at the inadequacies of institutions.
Gimmer - you are correct - my reputation is dwindling. I am not passing through little villages, but also this is a major UK LDP so all who live on its edges are no longer interested in passers by, they have seen it all. I thrive on the odd- ball routes that I devise for myself, and although I am enjoying this trip there is more satisfaction in my own creations. On piste and off piste?
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RR - well, where to begin? I am sure there will be more railing to come. I know my railings only relate to trivialities but I see not much difference between mine and your quibbling about some minor indiscretion by a horn player in an obscure orchestral piece.
No tractors! What a place. Obviously spending too much money on hotels.
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