Cornwall: the world-renowned corner of England known for its scenery, beaches, atmosphere, and food. I had the pleasure of visiting this peaceful place for a weekend with my boyfriend and his family in June, and found it was all of these things and more.
Before I begin, I should mention that I am Canadian and had never before visited the UK (aside from a brief sojourn into Northern Ireland a number of years ago). Cornwall was my first experience traveling in this country, after completing my mandatory isolation period at a farm near Portchester, but already I could say that the people here are overwhelmingly accommodating, helpful, and friendly. (Canadians are known for being polite, but I don’t think approachability is one of our strengths.)
Cornwall was no different. The lengths to which people will go to help a stranger can best be summed up with an anecdote of my missing camera case.
The ancient, peeling, and worn leather cover of my Pentax ME Super SLR camera had fallen off, unnoticed, at some point during a long walk from the farm at which we were staying down country lanes towards the coastal town of Padstow. Not knowing how far back I had dropped it and not having the energy to retrace my steps, I had given it up as lost. (It had cost me nothing and its function could be easily replaced by a lens cap.)
Some minutes later, a car came rumbling down the narrow lane and we squeezed to the side to let it pass. Instead, it pulled up alongside us, stopped, and rolled down its windows. The couple inside informed us that they had seen something like a camera case at the top of the hill - apologizing that they hadn’t picked it up, as they hadn’t realized what it was until they saw the camera gear slung around mine and my boyfriend’s necks.
No worries; we would keep an eye out for it during our long walk back that evening.
Of course, after food, beer, and letting our sore legs rest, no one was in the mood to embark on a two-hour walk uphill and so we took the bus back, thinking perhaps we would go looking for the case the next day.
The farm we were staying on, though with luxurious and modern suites for rent, was a fully working farm hosting a number of animals, including chickens, pigs, sheep, cows, alpacas, and the more exotic peacock. (There were 3 peacocks on the farm, who would shriek all night while vying for the attention of the one peahen.)
That morning, my boyfriend and I were walking around the farm with our cameras, hoping to take some photos of the animals. A white pickup truck came up behind us, driven by one of the owners of the farm; he told us that a camera case had been dropped off outside his house and asked if it belonged to one of us. (I still have no idea how it wound up there after being lost some miles down a different road.) We said yes, it was probably mine, and he said he would drop it off at the property we were staying at.
Great! We would finish our walk and I’d put it on my camera when we got back.
Except even that, it seemed, would be too much effort for me to put into this search that I’d never really intended to initiate in the first place. A short time later, as my boyfriend and I were taking photos of a hoard of pigs, his parents came walking towards us, his dad holding the leash of an exuberant pug puppy and his mom holding my familiar black leather camera case.
And that’s how, with absolutely zero effort put into it on my part, my old, worn-and-torn camera case that could easily have been mistaken for a piece of trash on the road found its way back into my hands through the actions of a number of extraordinarily kind and helpful people.
Aside from the people, Cornwall is a beautiful place and understandably one of the UK’s top tourist destinations each year. Pastures of green farmland stretch towards wind farms on the hills and eventually down to the aquamarine sea, which is dotted with boats of all shapes, sizes, and function.
Padstow is one of innumerable towns tucked into the nooks and crannies of this southern-most peninsula, its harbour backing out onto the River Camel rather than the sea itself. Still, it’s affected by the tides, with low tide exposing sandbars in the middle of the estuary, stranding dozens or hundreds of boats until the water comes to pick them up again.
The town is especially known for being a favourite destination for the traveling chef Rick Stein and has several restaurants bearing his name and dishes. (We had dinner at his bistro, the day we walked almost two hours to Padstow.) Somewhere, there is a statue honouring his beloved dog.
The weather while we’re there is, I presume, typical of England in June: scattered sun and clouds that constantly threaten (but rarely deliver) rain, and temperatures in the high teens that, if lucky, will poke their head up above twenty degrees for a brief period. It’s nowhere near hot enough to swim on the beaches, but fortunately our holiday home has a pool room heated to tropical warmth.
Despite the restrictions limiting almost all foreign travelers, Padstow is still a bustling place with people walking along the harbour, visiting shops and pubs, and fishing for crabs on the pier.
A short walk out of town leads you to a war memorial on top of a hill, and beyond that lies the beach. It’s one of the few places in Britain with soft, golden sand instead of pebbles. The beach is framed by black rock cliffs leading up to sweeping green fields on one side and the mouth of the river on the other.
My boyfriend and I spend some time here feeling the sand between our toes and setting up some photos at a cleft in the cliff face, before we head back to Padstow to grab some fish and chips for dinner (a must when visiting a seaside town). We eat our meal on a bench overlooking the harbour under the watchful eye of some seagulls, which fight for possession of a single dropped chip once we get up to leave.
Most photos featured in this post are available for sale as prints in the Print Shop. Others are available upon request.