Thank goodness for a photo archive. We are off for our annual end of the summer weekend in the campervan. The good weather however has not come with us. Just one good photo from our evening walk.
One good photo.
Photos aside we had a great long coastal walk exploring all the old tiny bungalow and chalet lanes where pre and post war dwellings are being turned into minimalist architects holiday aspirations. In accordance with the end of the season. All cafes closed at 4pm. We set off at 4:30 and by 7:30 when we returned we were wearily in need of a cup of tea and a wee.Triumphant though because we had managed to stay one foot ahead of ominous rain clouds that hovered just across the bay.
2023
Nobody needs to see those rain clouds so the same bay from 2023 will bring much better quality joy. Although the National Trust does use a photo that I could have taken today to advertise the area.
Possibly the most prolonged and windiest nights of our camping career brought the rain, eventually, to our sliding, campervan door. Today may be a book day.
Yesterday was a fabulous February weather day. Fabulous because the sun was up and greige was banished. I was on a mission to take a bad photograph for my ongoing dabbling at image-manipulating. The day itself was full of other stuff. Shopping, child care and book club. So my moments of image manipulation were snatched in the rare quiet moments of the day. Time poor is sometimes a good thing. At the early stages I am. happy with my multilayered image.
Not quite sure that I am where I want to be image wise. But sometimes the enemy of good is better. and multi -layered is the tenuous link for this blog.
I woke myself up this morning to get out of a multi-layered dream. Certain that I did not want to be where my subconscious had dumped me.
Like many people Airbnb is in my travel portfolio.
For reasons unknown my early morning dream had me checking into an Airbnb late at night above a coffee shop. I awoke in the dream ( Probably when the first real life alarm went off) to find my bed in the midst of the coffee shop with people stepping around my bed with coffee and breakfast items. Seemingly oblivious or being discrete about having to step around my bed. It was definitely a contemporary 2025 coffee shop but the disturbing thing for me was not that I was in bed, but that many of the customers were smoking indoors and there was an unmistakable smoke fug filling the room. Just as used to happen before indoor smoking in public places was banned. I quickly woke myself up.
In my waking life I have never given such a thing a moment’s thought. Where and why on earth do our brains write such bonkers scripts.
I wonder if my creative thinking is all about layers so my dream world is being a bit layered and book club was about parallel lives.
The tree, although beautiful, did not take our attention. The dogs filled the mental space where pondering could have happened.
But this tree turns out to be the perfect specimen for my current experiments with an easy image to double and treble expose digitally altered grey seascapes. I can’t say that I am entirely sure where all this fettling about is taking me but January skies are a lot more interesting with some tweaking.
The Rain it Raineth Every Day. Norman Garstin 1847-1926
Sometimes it feels as if this is true. William Shakespeare wrote the quote which is the title of this painting and the nearly true statement in Twelth Night. One of my favourite W.S plays.
A rainy day in Penzance. What to do?
A lot of enjoyable faffing about and dog walking in damp conditions and an afternoon trip to Penlee Gallery and Museum. Which was a wonderful welcoming place.
And here is the serendipity of live blogging.
The sun is out this morning, the Bobbers are up and the sea is exceptionally chilly.
No more arty faff. Just me and sunrise and my post swim plunge pool.
At no point in blog #900 were we more than 2 miles as the seagull flies from home. But as you can see from this map we live in a complex place water-wise. To cover that 2 miles as non-seagulls involves either a long drive involving a toll bridge. A car ferry or a foot ferry.
When I moved from Cornwall to Devon people questioned the decision but being a woman from Essex I always felt rather more like a Tamar Valley resident than a Cornish one. Cornwall can be tricksy with people not born there. Devon has a more open heart. The small move to Devon was, and is no big deal.
Devon on the horizon, Cornwall at my feet. Sometimes the other way round. Just like Jam and Cream or indeed Cream and Jam
The big deal is of course the way I serve scones.
Geography and Cream. Critical!
If in doubt eat a cheese scone no jeopardy with a cheese scone.
I am not the only family member that ponders. Hugo finds pondering easiest on a comfy bed. He is pondering the quality of the biscuits he was given in a pub in Penzance. I was at the same pub but not given a biscuit, a tickle or photographed by a stranger, looking cute near a ship’s wheel or staring masterfully at a sextant. For me the pub itself became a massive ponder.
The Admiral Benbow is one of the oldest pubs in Penzance. It has elevated itself from an illegal drinking den in the sixteenth century to a regular pub with an irregular clientele in later centuries. All safely in the past. Famed for being the meeting place of pirates, smugglers, wreckers and all other forms of seafaring miscreants. The pub would also have been a great place for all varieties of prostitution to thrive. My ponder on the subject of the Admiral Benbow is really about the whitewashing of crime and criminals, illegal activity in all its many forms by the passing of time and the ‘ romance of the sea’
I cannot imagine choosing to spend an evening in a pub or club associated with 21st Century criminals. Drug dealers, handlers of stolen goods, people traffickers, or perpetrators of modern slavery.
But centuries passing and a whiff of the sea makes sharing a time-hop space with the imagining of rogues acceptable, fascinating and enjoyable.
Romance and fantasy stick themselves to the sea and seafarers in a way that seems disproportionate and mystifying. The whites of tropical uniforms are a ‘thing’ in both heterosexual and queer culture. Sailors have a word for a temporary madness that hits them in the tropics.
Calenture a sort of giddiness that brings a heightened state of excitement in hot weather. Throwing themselves into the sea for fun and feeling sexually aroused.
Seafarers really do get some of the best words.
As I sat in the Admiral Benbow enjoying a rum,while Hugo enjoyed a good sea dog biscuit it was easy to imagine the bar boasts of olden times. I really hope Calenture cropped up.
Prof.Google helped me out on this one.
Are Sailors romantic because they were the first profession to really see the world and bring us unimaginable things from foreign destinations.
Which brings me, rather circuitously, to today’s random question
What’s your favorite candy?
Chocolate. Just chocolate. Not chocolate cake or puddings. Nothing too fancy.
Ponderings, in the Admiral Benbow on Monday night. Plenty of space for historical visitors from all centuries. Some nibs of chocolate in a leather pouch and tales of Calenture. Just fascinating.
Lola, meanwhile, thinks such pondering is overated. She could be right.
When I moved to Cornwall in the 80’s from Brighton, life was not quite as idyllic as I had anticipated. The job I came to do was kicked into the long grass and rather than having a month to find my feet in a new area I had 6 months. 6 long, wet, lonely months. November is not the best time to move house and home many hundreds of miles from friends and familiarity. Luckily I had a small companion, a two year old son who could accompany me on my winter adventures in a strange land . The town I moved to, like much of Cornwall had an unhealthy reticence about welcoming people from ‘ Up the line’ In November toddler groups are part way through their term and our little team of two was turned away. Sometimes with the promise of being put on a waiting list. 35 years on I am still on more waiting lists than I care to think about. Undefeated I joined the National Trust and we set off on a two person adventure to learn about the history and geography of Cornwall in the short daylight hours of winter. It was an adventure and one that gave me the foundation for a life that I have mostly lived in the South West of England. The trouble is that sometimes I have missed a gem because back in the eighties certain places failed our not-too-high standards. Basically anything Pixie/Pisky related. Witchy the same and to a degree Smugglers if Wreckers were not included in the narratives. Poor cafe facilities or being over priced also got a bad mark. Some places I have never returned to.
Yesterdays trip to Golitha Falls is a case in point. From my recollection both Pixies and a poor cafe were involved.
What a chump I have been, not to have given the place a second chance until now!
No Pixies in the 21st Century and a fabulous cafe. Free parking and the most beautiful woodland river walk. Golitha Falls perhaps suggests a rather grander drop of water than exists but the area is beautiful and despite the carpark being full, really quiet once we were in the woods.
Golitha Falls is the location of the drowning of the last King of Cornwall.
King Doniert, not a name that has ever come back into fashion ,died in 875 either from fighting in the river or frolicking. Nobody knows. What is rather unbelievable is that these ancient woodlands would have looked pretty much identical to what we experienced yesterday.
Serendipity took us there yesterday. My, rather daft, prejudice against decades old tourist tat has denied me some rather lovely walks. Maybe I need to revisit some of the other places that were crossed off my list more than 30 years ago.
And how lucky was I to have 6 months exploring such a fascinating county with a 2 year old in his wellies.
This patch of England has been my home since 1988, it is far from my place of birth and in that time I have not always lived here. But it is where my soul has its feet under the table. This morning for no reason in particular I wondered why Plymouth Sound was a ‘Sound’. Geography had the answer.
Yesterday we were at the far west reaches of the Sound, at Kingsand and Cawsand. The furthest point seen through the circle is, I believe, the far west point of Plymouth Sound before it becomes the Atlantic Ocean.
Conversely dog grooming occurs on the furthest easterly point at Wembury.
Yesterday I was able to take a photo of Both the easterly point and the most westerly with a wooden tall ship in the middle.
The Pelican of London had just left Plymouth and was taking quite a buffering from the wind as it sheltered in Cawsand Bay. Madness to think that a tall ship moored here would, in the past, have been ripe, low hanging fruit for the smugglers, pirates and wreckers of all the places we love to walk our dogs and enjoy gorgeous scenery.
Bigger than a bight and wider than a fjord . Packed with history and landscape. 99% of @theoldmortuary blogs occur from here.
In a week of unexpected journeys this one took us to Mounts Bay this morning. Scene of the 2024 Prostate Charity swim. Today the destination where we returned Miss VV to her dad after a day and night of campervanning excitement for a four year old. On that time we learned that a local cutprice megastore was actually a World of Honey and that car journeys are measured by increments known as Penguin Rocks.
Never has Trago Mills been so romantically named and a measure of a Penguin Rock is 7 minutes. These small revelations happen when you only get to see a grandchild once or twice a year. She doesn’t know that we find Trago to be a bit of a chore. We don’t know what Penguin Rock is. We have all gained something today.
A ladybird sought sanctuary from a sea holly, initially from the sun but ultimately from another heavy rain storm.
We sought sanctuary at a cafe called Hoxton Special, promising life changing coffee.
Of course we have no way of knowing if this coffee changed our lives. We drank 1 and a half cups each and left the cafe.
Having avoided the storm, fully caffeinated up we set about the rest of our day. Which decisions were coffee related and which were not is one of lifes great unknowns. But like many good cafes they provided something to consider.
Hope your Sunday was as eventful or not as you required. More next week.
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