We were on the road again and this time my wife Jenny and I were heading west along the fast- moving A30 through Cornwall before turning off across quiet and rolling open country heading for The Roseland Peninsula.
Even the name has an evocative charm about it and it was thirty years since I had last walked around it while following the six hundred and thirty miles long South West Coast Path. I can still vividly remember looking up and seeing a Georgian mansion standing out on the hillside above and saying to my walking companion: ‘That could be the house of the camomile lawn,’ and on my surprise on approaching, a small plaque declared that it was. For the house called Broom Parc was chosen by film producers as the set for a 1990’s TV drama based on Mary Wesley’s novel The Camomile Lawn.
This tells the moving tale of five young cousins who return to the mansion for one last beach holiday in the summer of 1939 before being swept up and tossed in all directions by the tidal wave that was the Second World War.
Our base for our family holiday was another substantial house with truly magnificent gardens and tantalising glimpses of the sea near Porthscatho, but not unsurprisingly without a camomile lawn.
A bank of stunningly white clouds drifting innocently across the sky early the following morning forecast a calmer day after the torrential downpours of the proceeding afternoon while far out at sea the white sails of an ocean-going yacht were suddenly caught in the sunlight.
Much later because it takes a certain amount of time to feed, water and prepare our party of six adults, four grandchildren, all cousins, for the great outdoors, complete with beach party paraphernalia, we headed out across a parched field of recently mown grass towards the sparkling sea.
It was a twenty-minute stroll down to the coast path and along to Towan Beach with its secluded café and where dozens of families had already staked their colourful beach towel claims along the curving golden sand.
It was the perfect spot with a weathered sign which had undoubtedly stood out against many a winters gale proclaiming that it was two miles to St Anthony’s Head walking west and also, two miles to the small harbour of Porthscatho in the opposite direction.
We dined early and alfresco at The Standard Inn, an 18th century fisherman’s pub in the neighbouring village of Gerrans just up the road from the harbour which with its slipways and protected breakwater has a rich past steeped in the fishing industry. Early 17th century records show that shoals of fishing boats landed a rich harvest of silvery pilchards which were salted, packed in barrels, and exported around the Mediterranean.
Sunday dawned with clear blue skies and while the family were destined for a sand, sea, and body-boarding day back at the beach, I set out early to walk the two miles further west to St Anthony’s Head standing at the entrance to the wide estuary giving access to the River Fal with Falmouth on the far side and St Mawes and the Roseland Peninsula on the other.
This glorious, easy to follow and undemanding walk winds its way around remote coves and gentle headlands with well weathered benches strategically placed to make the most of a series of stunning views.
I stopped and chatted to several walkers along the way including a diminutive and clearly indomitable sixty something French woman from Geneva who had covered the circa five hundred miles from the start of the South West Coast Path at Minehead in Somerset.
Battling her way around the rugged and strenuous North Devon coast in the face of heavy storms blowing in from the Atlantic had been challenging she admitted. Then her face brightened: “But meeting so many friendly and welcoming English people along the way was a great pleasure,” she added with a smile.
That evening we barbecued a magnificent sea bass that had been line caught in Mevagissey, but the rain set in overnight and it was lunchtime before it cleared and we drove around to St Mawes and again a vivid memory from my previous walk thirty years ago came flashing back into my mind’s eye.
For on that occasion, we had suddenly realised that the small ferry which we assumed would take us from Falmouth across to the tip of the peninsula to continue our walk was in fact, only going as far as St Mawes and that we would need to catch another ferry across to St Anthony’s.
But that was a summer only service and this was a Bank Holiday Sunday in early April so we were now faced with a long detour that was going to completely wreck our tight walking schedule. But help was at hand because as we were the only passengers onboard, the young skipper took pity on us and decided to risk an ebbing tide and take us across anyway. It was a random act of kindness which I have never forgotten.
St Mawes was a busy fishing harbour, but its trade steadily declined during the twentieth century and today it is a fashionable resort for tourists and yachting enthusiasts.
Here overlooking the harbour, I met RNLI team member and face-to-face fundraiser David Lilley from St Austell who has covered South West Cornwall for the past four years offering helpful information and advice relating to seawater safety while also signing up new members.
If all goes well David who formerly worked in the aerospace industry will have generated an amazing £1 million in new funds based on his sign-ups staying with the RNLI for five years.
I set out around 7.30am the following morning to walk in the opposite direction from the house to Porthscatho and had almost completed the two miles along another stretch of the coast path when I chanced upon local traditional boat builder Simon Holman out walking his dog, Stella.
Simon who lives in the village has been honing his traditional boat building skills since he was eighteen and now runs the small Polvarth yard in nearby St Mawes where he specialises in new builds and repairs.
His hillside home village, which like neighbouring St Mawes has a history steeped in the fishing industry, derives its interesting name from the Cornish language with Porth meaning harbour and Scatho meaning boats.
Not far away as the seagulls fly the enterprising Taffinder family who have their own fishing boat run the Curgurrell Farm Shop, catching and preparing crabs for sale as well as selling other fruits de la mere including that Cornish line caught sea bass which we had barbecued earlier and was so delicious that we had to return for seconds.
All too soon our glorious week on the Roseland Peninsula with its rolling meadows and quiet and secluded coves and beaches had come to an end and it was time to join the crawling queue of traffic heading up the A 30 and back home to Wales.