Sunday, March 8, 2009
Cornwall

I am certain that my sleep patterns are affected by room temperature. I slept till almost 7. 30 am today—the hotel room being much cooler than my bedroom at home– finding only enough time to jump in the shower and repack before I met my colleagues in the lobby of the Sunnyside Hotel downstairs. The sun was shining upon Newquay and Sunday morning surfers were already hitting the waves by the time we sat down in Pistachio Restaurant for our full English breakfast.

Muesli and OJ started off our day as the waitress took orders for our fry-ups. Since we were not leaving for Boscastle until 10 am, I had the leisure to linger over coffee as I gazed out over the ocean and listened to the shrill calls of the gulls. A group of weekenders had descended on the hotel and as they piled in for breakfast, the place grew livelier. Hauling my strolley uphill, I made my way to the coach and at 10 sharp, we pulled out of Newquay, Surfer’s Paradise, and drove along sleepy country lanes on the journey to Boscastle.

Then, as happens to often in these parts, the sun disappeared behind menacing clouds and a light drizzle began. Raindrops splattered the windshield as our driver maneuvered his vehicle towards the little Cornish village. No one seemed to be stirring for villagers take their Sunday lie-ins seriously, it would seem.

Arrival at Boscastle:
The village of Boscastle sits in a river valley straddling both banks. We arrived and parked in the parking lot with instructions to get some lunch and return to the coach by 1 pm. Walking out into a playful breeze, I found the village still asleep or stirring very slowly and reluctantly. Most shops were clustered around the car park and none seemed in a hurry to open. At last, not right then.

Recovering from An Ecological Disaster:
It was only as I walked towards the riverbanks that it vividly came to me that I had seen the destruction that had been wrought upon this village in 2004 when a flash flood and a huge landslide had destroyed most of it. Thanks to BBC World News, I remember gasping at the scenes, so expertly shot, of houses tumbling into a gushing river. I had wondered then where in Cornwall this place was located for I had always thought of it as flat pastureland.

Well, it turns out that the flash flood had left a trail of destruction in its wake and Boscastle’s attempts to resurrect itself out of the mess are little short of miraculous. But for the occasional scaffolding that drapes itself across a stuccoed cottage, there isn’t much to remind the visitor of the disaster. This speaks so well for federal funding and the use to which it is put in the UK. Hailing from a country like India, where government assistance almost always ends up in the pockets of some slimy official, I was heartened to see the results of the valiant and determined efforts to rebuild that have overtaken this quiet Cornish outpost. Well done, Boscastle!

And then suddenly it came down again. The playful breeze became a vicious gust that wrapped itself around me as rain pelted down and drove me to the nearest tearoom. There, I found that a few of my students had treated themselves to a meal. Since I had eaten a massive breakfast, I could not face the thought of food and I waited until the rain stopped and sunshine flooded the streets again before I set out to explore.

Sunday Shopping:
Boscastle has a series of charming shops that are all interconnected—you enter one of them and find yourself walking through a whole string! As always, it is the antiques shops that first attract me and when I spied a sign for Pickwick Antiques, I just had to fish around inside. What a perfect little antiques shop I found! As the salesman later explained, the shop carries what he calls “small treasures”—the sort of antiques that tourists can carry easily with them in their pockets. I saw loads of silver cutlery including a bunch of odd pieces—butter knives and soupspoons, saltcellars and peppershakers, cut-crystal cruet sets and bits of jewelry. There was also a good variety of very pretty china—Trios, i.e. cups, saucers and cake plates. Lovely porcelain cake serving platters and many Limoges and Royal Albert sets graced the collection—all shown off strikingly in spotless glass vitrines.

My eye was drawn then to a little teapot that would be perfect for brewing one or two cups of tea. It was not an antique—in fact, it was a Victorian reproduction that featured purple violets against a pure white background. What made it special was its lid—it featured three bone china violets in a three-dimensional design that was as finely crafted as a brooch. It called my name urgently and though I took three or four rounds of the shop, I could not get it off my mind. Furthermore, the price was right—at ten pounds, I could not go wrong, not for so exquisite a piece of china.

“Right”, I said, to the salesman, “I think I will have that darling teapot”.
“Do you collect them?” he asked. (What is it that makes antiques’ dealers sniff out collectors so unmistakably?)
“I collect cups and saucers”, I responded, “but for want of space to display them, I now only buy sets that are very rare, very beautiful and very inexpensively priced”.
He laughed. “That is very wise indeed. But, collecting teapots is a natural progression from there, wouldn’t you say?”
“Maybe…but unless I am sure I will use it…”

All the while, he busied himself lovingly wrapping my little precious find in bubble wrap and tissue paper, and feeling as if I had bought a very appropriate souvenir from Cornwall—once the capital of china clay in the country—I walked out of the shop.

In Search of Boscastle Harbor along a Coastal Path:
The rain remained at bay and seeing the coastal path entwine itself along the riverbank, I decided to follow it uphill and see where it led me. My camera worked overtime in trying to capture the bucolic idyll that lay before me. As I wandered on, I passed by a National Trust gift shop and paused to buy a postcard for my travel scrapbook. That’s when I realized that so many of them featured “Boscastle Harbor”. Yet, I could see no evident signs of it. I then went up to the counter, asked one of the little old ladies whom one always finds in National Trust shops where I could find it and she simply said, “Just keep going, dear. You will not be able to miss it”.

At that point, I ran into some of my students and persuaded them to join me on the costal path. They were game, and braving the wind that had stepped up quite strongly, we began our climb to the promontory that, like Tintagel, jutted out into the sea. Pools of rain had accumulated along the narrow pathway that is maintained by the National Trust and I was pleased to see that my membership pounds did go towards these worthy causes. As we climbed higher, the wind became fiercer and by the time the harbor came into view, the scene was simply spectacular.

Gigantic waves dashed the rocks below and we saw a manmade ‘harbor’, probably newly constructed, way below us. It was clearly evident why smuggling had been such a lucrative pursuit in Cornwall for with high taxes levied on such things as tobacco and wine during the late 18th and 19th centuries, smugglers found ways to evade the tax man by bringing in contraband on small boats. In doing so, they risked their lives for such boats had only a fighting chance at reaching the small sandy strip of beach that we could see way below us.

Not content with taking in this scene, we pressed on along the pathway, determined to glimpse the other side of the rocky escarpment. By this point, the wind was almost lifting us off our feet. With many whoops and screams, we clung on to each other and posed for pictures, hoping to capture a scene that somehow seemed exclusively ours for there was no other human being in sight. In many ways, it was reminiscent of Tintagel in its remoteness and in the fury of Nature as wind and wave combined to create the sort of mystifying aura of which legend is made.

Then, it was time for us to return to the coach and when I boarded it, I could not quite believe what I had just seen. Little did I expect that I would have such an unforgettable adventure in Boscastle. I was delighted that I had asked where the harbor was located for, in doing so, I had the chance to indulge in something I had sorely wanted to do ever since I set foot in Cornwall—walk upon a coastal path towards the sea and allow myself to taste the salt spray on my lips. This walk, undertaken so spontaneously, had satisfied that desire and as I settled down in the coach for the long drive homewards, I felt as if I had enjoyed the county in every possible guise and created memories that would live with me forever.

Harry Potter came into his own as the coach ate up the miles along the highways of Devon and alongside the southeast coast as we brushed past Bristol. I could see the lovely white bridge that spanned the bay and led into Wales as we glided on. The landscape changed every few miles, the undulating waves of Cornwall and Devon giving way to the flat fields of Wiltshire. Then, we were stopping at a wayside restaurant for a quick bite (sandwiches and coffee for me as it was close to 4 pm and my breakfast had been long digested). Most of my students had dozed off by this point but I kept on reading The Goblet of Fire until we were skirting the periphery of London.

We arrived at the Nido hostel at 7. 15 pm though caught in Sunday evening traffic for a bit of the way. It took me only a few minutes to climb aboard the Number 17 bus and, fifteen minutes later, I was home, unpacking. A long call to Llew and a shorter one to Chriselle followed as I also tried to download my email and attend to the more urgent work-related messages that awaited my attention.

I worked steadily for almost five hours and it was long past midnight, when still feeling full of beans, I put out my bedside light and tried to fall asleep. I had finally visited Cornwall and toured this fabled holiday destination and I had returned home with memories that I knew I would cherish forever.