More from the journal: England, Part Three

[For Part One, see https://storiesbycarrol.wordpress.com/2015/07/06/more-from-the-journal-england-part-one/.]

In early 2006, after a long period of ill health, I traveled to England to take the walking trip I had dreamed of since my teens. My 17-year old niece, Maddy, accompanied me. Maddy had Asperger’s Syndrome and had never been so far away from home.

All photos are my own except for the ones that are credited to others.

June 4

We ate a good breakfast and Maddy was able to walk as far as Mousehole, another mile and a half from Castallack Farm. Again it was blazingly hot and searingly sunny. I cursed my foolishness in not bringing a hat, but who’d have known that England at the beginning of June would be like this? Apparently, up to a week or so ago, they had been enduring one of the coldest and most rainy springs in recent history. And now it’s in the mid-80s and cloudless. Go figure! The “normal” temperatures for this part of the country for this time of year generally range from the upper 40s to lower 60s.

Mousehole is pronounced “Muzzle”.

The thing that impresses me is the number of other walkers we’ve spoken with who think nothing of striding off for a good ten or twelve miles’ walk. A couple who were at our B&B this morning had walked from Sennen to Castallack in one day. The German we spoke with yesterday on the cliffs said he’s been coming every year for years, to walk from X to Y along the Cornish Coast. If I had been by myself, or with another reasonably fit adult, I could have walked much farther than we did (5.5 miles the first day, and about 7 the second). I’m astounded at how good I feel (notwithstanding perhaps the most extensive sunburn I’ve ever had, on arms, upper chest and face). No arm pain, no bad numbness (except while writing); nothing to report save a muscle cramp in my left calf. Compared with Maddy, I’m a model of physical fitness. I could not believe I carried both packs yesterday (even though it was not for very far, really). I’m so amazed at the physical change in my body – it’s like being reborn, or having an all-new body to marvel at and inhabit and enjoy. When I did my stretches yesterday I could touch my toes with no problem, and could perform all the other exercises that used to be painful and onerous. And instead of 17-year-old Maddy running circles around me, I ran circles around her.

We strolled slowly through part of Mousehole and ate luncheon at a tiny eatery, and looked at gimcrack tourist gifts through the windows of the many shops. All the shops had names like “Cat and Mouse” or had piratical or nautical themes. The village was perched on impossible hills above the water, with a handsome stone jetty sticking out into the water. Boats were tied up in the water and shrieking children ran chasing each other through the water at the shore. A stream issued from a culvert and spilled out over the rocks down to the sea. Gulls wheeled and cried overhead. The sun was blazing and we had little energy for touristing, what with our packs. We learned too late that we didn’t need to pack our bags on our backs each day; we could have chosen one B&B and taken the excellent bus system to anywhere on the Penwith Peninsula effortlessly without worrying about getting back. We could have walked from Sennen to Lamorna in one day, like the couple we met this morning, without being encumbered by heavy packs. But we didn’t know, so we can’t be faulted. Next time I do this, I’ll carry only a small bag with snacks and binoculars. (Sadder and wiser.)

Cottages in Mousehole.

Mousehole was very cute, with tiny stone cottages on narrow streets of appalling gradients, but it was filled with wandering tourists and one had the distinct impression that it was not real, but part of Neverland. So without examining it more closely, we caught the bus (which was standing right there) back to Penzance. We found our next B&B, unpacked and relaxed for a while, went to the Turk’s Head for a second lunch, strolled through the Morrab Gardens and the grounds of Penlee House, and did a coin laundry. It was notable that Penzance, which had looked so exotic to us upon first arrival, now looked rather seedy and unimpressive compared to the lofty cliffs along the coast, the beautiful cove of Penberth, the lush hidden valley of St. Loy, and the incredible quaintness of Mousehole. “Oh…..it’s Penzance again.” Our B&B this time was much less noble than Camilla House had been (although perfectly adequate for our purposes) and life seemed a bit flat in comparison to the adventures we had just been through. I had a headache from the constant blazing sun. We ate dinner at the Admiral Benbow (he’s the chap who finally caught Captain Kidd, apparently) and were amused with its décor, which was garish faux ship-style, with curved beams in the ceiling, ships’ wheels, bright paint with thick shiny varnish, and a fake hatch in the ceiling. We went “home” to our B&B, read, and worked Sudoku puzzles. Maddy has become a complete Sudoku fiend, thanks to me.

June 5

All these B&Bs are charmingly done up with flowered duvets with ruffles, but who wants to sleep under a toasty duvet when the day has been 80 degrees and the nighttime temperature is scarcely any lower?

Everywhere we’ve been, except for Castallack Farm, had seagulls everywhere that screech and wail like peacocks, all night long. One of them sounded exactly like a whining puppy in the middle of the night, a puppy that had been locked outdoors with no friend, food or shelter. Yet I’m sure it was a bird. At breakfast this morning a woman at the next table asked the host about the poor puppy that had been locked outside. “I nearly phoned the RSPCA even though it was the middle of the night,” she said, “I was so indignant.” The host looked blank. “I never heard a puppy,” he said, “none of the neighbors have one. It may have been a gull. It’s breeding season and they do make quite a bit of noise at present.” “It was a dog,” the lady insisted. She began making conversation with me; it so happened she was from London. I asked the population, learned it was 15,000,000 (twice the size of New York City – that’s something to consider) and then her face darkened. “It’s that size because of the immigrants,” she told me. “Everywhere you go you see Poles. And people from Eastern Europe.” She looked as visibly disgusted as if she’d been a white Mississipian in the civil rights days, talking about blacks. I found it striking that she would agitate herself more on behalf of a dog than a Pole, but of course said nothing.

We settled the bill, shouldered our backpacks and set off for the post office (to mail another batch of postcards) and the bookstore (to get a Cornwall book before it was too late) and then the train station. I looked at the city with affection as it shone in the bright, warm morning sun, and realized I didn’t want to leave Penwith. I could very happily spend the entirety of my next vacation in Cornwall. As the train moved out of the station and rolled past Saint Michael’s Mount, I found I had tears in my eyes, and wiped them furtively several times until I mastered myself.

Poulteny Bridge at Bath, on the River Avon

The trip was long and was made longer by mechanical problems with the next train up the track. We pulled into Bath around 4:00 pm and found our B&B, which was totally swank, with a ceiling featuring floral bas-reliefs in the plaster and great swags of salmon-colored curtains with sheer lace behind them. The garden outside was to die for; the poppies were in full bloom and were as wide across as my fully-extended thumb and pinky (eight or so inches across, magnificent flowers). We strolled back across the river into town to get Maddy something to eat, so we therefore missed out on getting in to see the Roman Baths and the Pump Room before they closed. We walked beside the River Avon, looking at the lock, the weir, and the charming old bridge with shops built along it, and we climbed up to the Circus and the Royal Crescent.

Maddy found the whole place off-putting instead of exhilarating, because she does not like anything that is swank or classy, and the sheer magnitude of it gave her sensory overload. I began to regret having brought her there, since it was so obviously wasted on her. Tomorrow we are signed up instead for a day-trip tour to Stonehenge, Avebury and the edge of the Cotswolds. The next day I had hoped to “do” Bath, since Frank and I missed doing properly long ago, but now I’m wondering whether I should try to get us into another different tour instead, to Glastonbury and Wells. It’s a shame to come to a World Heritage Site and not make the most of it, but it’s also no good to have a bored, diffident teenager on my hands who says that she despises this sort of thing in a voice that rings through a crowded street. She has no idea how loud she talks. I wonder if I was the same when I was her age? I suspect I was very similar to her in many ways, but I do know that I was quieter in terms of decibel level.

She confided to me how she feels she was born in the wrong era and in the wrong country, and how she believes that things like Harry Potter’s Hogwarts and other magical worlds actually exist on a different dimension and how sometimes a person can make the dimensions come together and touch. Suddenly I had a strong sense of déjà vu, recalling my awful first year at IU and how I took refuge in fantasy to block out my unhappy “real” life. I had completely forgotten.

June 6

We took an all-day bus tour of Stonehenge, Avebury and part of the Cotswolds today. Maddy was thrilled with Stonehenge and exclaimed over and over how excited she was. It was WAY more crowded than I remembered from 19 years ago, several tour buses from London having rolled up just as we arrived, the visitors all crowding through the gate and shuffling past holding audiophones to their ears. I myself like Avebury better for its vast scale and its picturesque qualities, but Maddy was less impressed because she had never heard of it before. She is now totally enthusiastic about ley lines and believes implicitly in them, although she thinks dowsing for them is bogus. Our tour guide demonstrated the dowsing rods at Avebury, just as Harry had done at the Merry Maiden stone circle, but I realized when I handled them again that the rods naturally cross (as they’re reputed to do if you’re on a ley), and they flip outward if you raise or lower the tips slightly. I think any crossing of the rod tips is completely due to the holder’s own subconscious desire to find a ley, and Maddy is of the same opinion.

Maddy being unimpressed at Avebury.

Sunburned selfie at Stonehenge.

We drove on past Silbury Hill to Lacock, an astonishingly handsome mellow old medieval-Tudor village with limestone buildings and wider streets than is common (were they built wide perhaps for market purposes, or for driving droves of sheep?). We ate at the King George, which dates to the 1380s and has the oldest continuously-operating pub license in England (although for obvious reasons it cannot have been named the King George back in the 1300s). I had my first hard cider: bubbly and sweetish-tart, a little like sparkling fruit wine. We strolled down to Lacock Abbey after lunch and got in to take a super-quick tour of the cloisters; the rest of the building being closed. I had no idea that it was used as a backdrop in the “Harry Potter” movies. I took what I think are some good photographs inside the ruined old galleries of the cloister, impressed at having just found out that William Fox Talbot (the inventor of the photographic negative process) also lived there for some time.

A lovely medieval lady carved into the church at Lacock.

Lacock Abbey was one of the many places that the Harry Potter movies were filmed.

We drove on the Castle Combe where we spent a half-hour, a ridiculously charming picturesque village only one street wide, with old stone houses of the same era as Lacock. Our guide told us that the villages with the most remaining historic atmosphere are the ones that suffered the worse economic privation in the past and therefore found it impossible to afford any alterations that would have modernized the appearance. The town was undeniably beautiful, but its narrowness seemed almost stifling, and its quaintness almost oppressive. Apparently it costs over half-a-million pounds to buy a cottage there nowadays, so it’s very gentrified.—We went into the little churches at both Lacock and Castle Combe. The first had several original brasses left in the floor, behind velvet ropes, and the second had a Crusader effigy tomb, very impressive.

Picturesque Castle Coombe has been untouched by time because for centuries it was too poor to tear things down and update.

We came back to Bath with enough time left over to see the Roman baths. Maddy seemed less interested in the Roman ruins than I thought she might. And she definitely dislikes Georgian Bath, finding it boring. I resolved to forego one more day of exploring Georgian Bath in lieu of taking another day-tour tomorrow to Glastonbury and Wells, since she’s so interested in ley lines and New Age weirdness. (It’s funny that after arguing that she hates Christianity, she’s now apparently interested in looking inside churches, having seen two in Cornwall, two today, and the Bath Abbey yesterday.)

We ate dinner at a little café just above the oval-shaped weir, and then went out at sunset for a “Bizarre Bath” comedy walk with a local stand-up comic and sleight-of-hand artist. Maddy, being completely literal, was barely amused by any of it and asked loudly several times if he could explain. When the comic tonight made a gentle jibe at her expense, even though I had told her in advance to just smile and take it silently, she told him “Same to you” in a tone that sounded exceptionally rude. I should have known that comedy would be problematic for her. I regret having gone on the tour, even thought she had asked yesterday in particular if we could go see this attraction.

June 7

We took the day tour to Wells and Glastonbury. Wells was initially interesting, having a medieval cathedral, the first we’d yet seen (and a magnificent specimen), but it was market day in town and the place was filled with day-trippers, literally thousands of them, and my phobia of crowds kicked in with a vengeance. By the time we left, two hours after getting there, I was completely fed up with the place and could not wait to leave.

This scissor brace was added to Wells Cathedral centuries ago to help support the sagging vaults above.

Glastonbury was different. I had looked forward very much to the tour and knew what we were heading into. When the tour guide was driving down from the crest of the Mendip Hills, he pointed out Glastonbury Tor, which lay straight ahead of us across the Somerset Levels, and my heart leaped at the sight: a high, perfectly shaped tall hill on a misty horizon, surrounded improbably by a flat plain. A tower jutted from the top. The tour guide stopped the bus at the foot of the Tor, which was itself atop another broader, lower elevation, and let all of us off except those who had no interest in climbing (three elderly ladies). There was no way I was NOT going to climb; I had come a long way to get the satisfaction of doing exactly this. Maddy had had enough of climbing hills in the sun, and she stayed at the bottom while I and the others charged up the path to the top.

At the top, sweating and out of breath, I felt no ley line energies prickling the hairs at the back of my neck. I felt peaceful, and reflective, and I walked slowly about on the small top of the hill, examining the 1300s ruined tower and the silver shining “compass” that shows you what you are looking at in each direction, and how far it was. I sat on the grass on the brink and watched the jackdaws fly past beneath me in the air. The Tor is so very high that the viewer can see in all directions over three different English counties. The pleasant pattern of fields and hedgerows stretched in all directions to the far-off hills. I was perfectly happy, sitting there with a gentle hot breeze flowing past, baking in yet another day of unseasonable English heat. I chatted with a fellow American on the tour, a man from Seattle who was interested in King Arthur. He was friendly, a fellow American in a strange but fascinating land. I never learned his name, but I warned him about stinging nettles and taught him that the crows with gray heads were jackdaws, and told him how lively Cornwall was. By the time we descended together, we were friends.

Photo courtesy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Tor

When we descended the hill to the bus, which had driven off to town with the elderly ladies and then returned for us, I found that Maddy had gone with them without telling me. “She said she was tired of ley lines,” the tour guide told me. I was horrified at the prospect of searching through all of Glastonbury in every Magick shop and emporium for my niece, and explained that she has Asperger’s. This of course concerned the others quite a bit. But as it turned out, Maddy was fine. She had been hanging out in a New Age bookstore just across from the bus parking lot, and came out when she saw us (“us” being me and the tour guide, who felt somewhat responsible for losing a passenger thus). I ended up allowing her to continue her shopping by herself after lunch, since she expressed the desire to do so, and promised she’d stay in one of the two shops opposite the car park. I went up along the high street to check out the action.

Glastonbury is the very heart of New Age weirdness in England and I saw two practitioners of Wicca striding the streets in black hooded robes. (I must say, black is not a good color for a hot cloudless day, but they DID look impressive.) There were shops selling incense, tarot cards, tattoos, hippie clothing, Wiccan costumes, books on astral projection, Native American beliefs, and Egyptology stuff. The number of groovy individuals walking back and forth was impressive, not to mention the fact that they all seemed very interested in the free exercise of the capitalist system. I bought a lovely little hand-embroidered hippie-chick blouse for £12.50 and went away, quite satisfied, to have a quick look at the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. There I met my friend from the Tor, and we strolled around the grounds sociably together. He had been there for a while already, and showed me where “Arthur’s tomb” had been, and the cutting of the Holy Thorn (not a cutting any longer, but a tree the size of a crabapple). The ruins were lovely and I was glad I went to see them. Even in a state of ruin, they radiate serenity. I very much enjoyed Glastonbury in contrast to Wells.

Glastonbury Abbey was intentionally destroyed by Henry VIII, its bishop brutally executed.

On the way back our guide took another road, this one through Cheddar Gorge, and stopped at the side of the road so we could marvel at the formations towering high above us. The limestone cliffs were brownish, not the color of grey Indiana limestone, and the rocks fell apart along ragged cleavage lines instead of separating in neat layers.

Cheddar Gorge is one of England’s most spectacular natural formations.

The gorge was several hundred feet deep and very steep and winding, and as the bus labored up the long, long road, the cliffs above were visible through the van’s skylight – indeed, they filled the skylight entirely. When we parked and got out and looked upward, the effect was vertiginous. There were wild (or feral) goats making their way along the sloping grassy shelves halfway up the cliffs. The guide said they were an actual rare species, but they were all multicolored (browns with white markings) instead of uniformly drab, which made me privately suspect they were simply feral.

My feet are killing me, particularly today. I’m simply grateful they did not act up on the hike last week. I have a seeping large blister on one toe, and both little toes have been driven completely beneath the adjoining toes because the boots turned out to be too narrow at the ends. I shall gladly dispose of them when I get home. When I think of how straight and independent my toes used to be, and then look at them crushed and constricted today, I wonder if I’ve caused lasting damage.

[Find the fourth and final installation of this travel journal at https://storiesbycarrol.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/more-from-the-journal-england-part-four/.]

More from the journal: England, Part Two

[For Part One, see https://storiesbycarrol.wordpress.com/2015/07/06/more-from-the-journal-england-part-one/.]

In early 2006 I traveled to England to finally take the walking trip I had dreamed of since my teens. My 17-year old niece, Maddy, accompanied me. Maddy had Asperger’s Syndrome and had never been so far away from home.

All photos are my own except for the ones that are credited to others.

June 2

“My dogs are barking,” as Lissa used to say. We hoofed it to the bus station with our packs this morning after paying our bill (over £160), which included two people for two nights, and dinner the first night – a bit steep, but the accommodations were luxurious) and caught the bus to Land’s End, a corny assortment of tourist gift shops and amusement arcades. A young man in the bus also got off with a backpack, like us. “How far are you walking?” I asked. “The whole way, to John O’Groats,” he answered in a soft Scottish burr. “Awesome!” I said, “good luck! How long will it take you?” “Eight weeks,” he replied. He went inside to officially register, as all the “End to Enders” are supposed to do, and we walked on, past the arcades and sweetshops to the astoundingly blue Atlantic. There was not a cloud in the sky and the day was hot. In the distance, 28 miles away, at least two of the Scilly Isles were plainly visible. We strolled slowly along the promenade over the water, gazing at the lighthouse out a ways on rocks called The Longships, and could see the Scillonian making its slow way toward the distant islands on the horizon. I told Maddy how the Scilly Isles are probably the inspiration for C.S. Lewis’ Lone Islands in the Narnia books; and reminded her that this was the closest she would be to home until we flew back. Then we started our walk along the Coast Path.

The rock formations were simply spectacular. We wasted a lot of time in the first 30 minutes lining up good camera angles to document the dark, deeply-scored rock formations and the blue sea beyond. We trudged along slowly, me striding excitedly in front then stopping, hands on hips, to wait while Maddy caught up. Eventually, after I helped her adjust her straps, she managed to get up to stride and keep pace with me. The Coast Path split into several pieces every so often, and was unmarked, causing us to scratch our heads in perplexity quite a bit. We finally realized that when it splits into two trails, that we should follow the one closest to the cliffs.

The rocks just south of Land’s End.

The trail, in places, went so close to the edge as to be terrifying, with a narrow way and a precipitous drop upon our right, and crashing waves several hundred feet below. I thought to myself that if Maddy’s mother could see her now, she’d absolutely freak. I thought also to myself about how Maddy was intrinsically clumsy and prone to slipping and falling, and hoped in my heart that she wouldn’t topple off the edge. Fortunately she was able to keep her footing.

The view was incredible, the sun was hot, and soon I was thoroughly sweat-drenched and puffing from hauling myself up so many steep inclines. Steps had been cut into the rises, and I told Maddy, “Makes you think of the Endless Stair the hobbits climbed with Gollum when they went to Mordor, doesn’t it?” To which she replied, very literally, “But that was all ugly, and not green like this.”

The colors were impressive. We were striding across an actual moor, the only one I’ve ever seen. The treeless landscape was covered in brownish heather (unfortunately not in bloom) and with small gorse bushes in yellow blossom. Harry had told us yesterday, “When the gorse is in bloom, kissing’s in season; and it’s always in bloom, fortunately.” The gray weathered rocks were covered in patches of brilliant orange and gold lichen, and the heathland was covered in flowers that included pink spurge and a white bladder-like blossom that I did not know, and things like our own prickly lettuce with yellow, dandelion-like flowers.

A Cornish cove, with the Coast Path in the foreground and visible again on the far bluff.

We marched along under the hot sun and soon began to burn. I ordered Maddy to take off her black polyester jacket since it was almost 80 degrees, even though she said she was perfectly comfortable. She is apparently oblivious in large degree to physical discomfort in addition to her other characteristics. She is not unintelligent but has no sense of common finesse. She has been over-protected by her family and I think it high time she was out on her own, learning some new things.

We came across another holy well at St. Levan, but if the saint lived in the cell here, he (or she) could not have lain down on the tiny rock-slab floor, which was only large enough for a person to stand on comfortably, but perhaps he sat leaning against the wall. And if the saint drank from the well, he would have to negotiate a bit of scum, a scattering of duckweed, and a few fat black tadpoles. “We come here every year,” said a pair of walkers to us, “and the tadpoles are always here.” I wondered to myself where the duckweed originated – you can’t simply dig out a receptacle for water and have it spontaneously generate.

Another cove along the Coast Path.

The vistas were outstanding.

We passed coves with beaches, and people swimming and playing with children and dogs. “Those were all smugglers’ coves once, Maddy,” I told her, looking enviously at the frolicking people. At Porthcurno, to my great disappointment, we could not see the Minack Theatre due to an afternoon matinee performance. We descended a truly frightening set of steps to the valley, my heart in my mouth most of the way. We attempted to get in to see the Museum of Telegraphy, for Porthcurno is where the Trans-Atlantic cable came ashore, along with many others, but the attendants regretfully and very politely told us that we could not park our backpacks while we looked at the exhibit, not could we (of course) take the backpacks inside. It was unfortunate, for it looked very interesting. They let us browse the gift shop, where I picked up a postcard for Hugh Heinsohn and found that 17 cables originally came ashore there. Porthcurno was chosen to be the site of “the Victorian Internet,” as they call it, because there were no large ships that harbored there whose dragging anchors could snag the cables.

Towering echium spikes near the Minack Theatre.

I had wanted to press on to Treen and eat at the Logan Rock Inn, but we could not locate the proper trail and were furthermore extremely weary. My feet were killing me because of my boots, which were fine on level ground but terrible on descents, which pressed my toes painfully together. We gave it up, and went to the bus stop to catch a ride to St. Buryan, our destination for the evening’s B&B. The bus was an open-topped double-decker, and even though Maddy professed to have no interest in riding on top, I made her do it because to do otherwise would be feeble. I have never had a more terrifying ride, nor a more thrilling. The double-decker lurched through the Cornish countryside like a runaway dinosaur, tree branches lashing the rails at the top, rocking from side to side, squeezing through the narrow lanes past stopped cars whose passengers flinched, whipping past the second-floor windows of houses. It was like the Knight Bus of the Harry Potter books. The narrowness of the roads and the San-Francisco-like steepness in places made it really frightening, but pleasurably so. “I don’t see anything so scary about it,” said Maddy unflinchingly.

The main street of St. Buryan.

Our accommodation in St. Buryan turned out to be a rather grubby cottage with a very social hostess named Deb. We had a conversation about neopaganism; she expressed genteel contempt for the whole circus that has grown up around Glastonbury, and I told her about our ex-tenants who were neopagans and did “skyclad” rituals and had a stolen human skull that they did ancestor worship with. “The skyclad part is all right, I sit in my own back yard naked on sunny days,” she said; but to steal a human skull is completely disrespectful.”

We strolled down to the large diocese church at the crossroads and saw a Celtic cross in front of it, along with a crude stone cross inside the churchyard dating to Saint Buriana’s day (in the 600s, I think). The church had many interesting ancient features, along with a beautiful wooden screen carved in the 1400s or 1500s and still bearing traces of the original paint. There was an arch at the front/side of the church, now filled in, which dated to the time of King Aethelstan. “I don’t like Christianity,” said Maddy. “Why?” I asked. “It’s contradictory,” said Maddy. “In what way?” I asked. She could not articulately explain, but I gathered that she’s currently enthusiastic about her friends’ neopaganism (they spent last weekend at the Elf Fest down at Lothlorien, near Bedford.) “Well, I’m not a Christian either,” I said, “but I have a lot of respect for anyone, of any religion, who has a true spiritual calling.” I told her about the radiant and activist nuns I had met at Oldenburg who felt that a true worship of God should include raising one’s food organically and showing others how to do it, but she was not impressed. “I don’t like Christianity,” she repeated. “Have you read the Bible?” I asked. “I tried but I got bored,” she answered. I told her I didn’t like evangelicalism, or any form of orthodox religion of any sort, but that I had a lot of respect for someone who simply worshipped his or her god without a lot of trappings or liturgy or congregation, as a matter of heartfelt faith. “Like old Saint Buriana probably did,” I said, looking up at the weathered stone cross in the churchyard, “or the hermit at the holy well yesterday, Saint Creed in his little stone cell.” “I think Christianity is stupid,” she repeated. “The problem with neopaganism, however,” I pointed out, “is that it doesn’t represent a real spiritual tradition. They keep saying that they’re following a worship that has been passed down for thousands of years, but all of that was lost to Christianity over time. What they’re doing has been reinvented recently, in the 20^th Century.” “It’s meaningful to them,” said Maddy. “Well, it would be more meaningful to me if it didn’t mix-and-match, with a little bit of this, and a dash of that, a bit of Native American beliefs thrown in, and a side-bit of Buddhism for good measure,” I said. “What’s wrong with that?” asked Maddy. “It’s not a belief system if it’s all scrambled together like that,” I said. “Well, a lot of people believe in it,” said Maddy. I gave up, and because she found sitting in the pleasant, sunny churchyard looking at Saint Buriana’s cross to be irksome because of the presence of Christianity, we left. I was sorry she couldn’t see the beauty of the church, where the organist was playing, and swallows swooped and dived around the tall tower. To me, a non-Christian of the staunchest sort myself, it was a lovely place of peace and quiet. On the wall inside the church was a stone coffin-shaped tombstone of a French lady of the days after the Norman Invasion, with an inscription in phonetically-spelled medieval French. It interested me to think about her life and what experiences she may have had, leaving France to come to Cornwall with her lord almost a thousand years ago.

St. Buryan’s church also has vaults that resemble inverted ships.

We ate at the St. Buryan Inn and went home to our B&B. Maddy was exhausted and fell into bed. I elected to take a shower, as I was exceedingly sweaty and grubby, but could not figure out how to turn on the hot water with the arcane British water heater. The water issuing from the jet was not just COLD water, it was ICY water, as if straight from a cave, or an underground cistern. Thinking “this is going to be a character-building moment,” I stepped resignedly beneath the spray. I had not been so cold since skinny-dipping at Griffy Lake in December, years ago. I gasped instead of breathed, body rigid, arms furiously working to soap and wash my body so I could get out again. Goose bumps were still all over my arms when I went up to join Maddy in the bedroom.

June 3

I went down early to breakfast, leaving Maddy to sleep in. The other people at my table were a young couple from London. We chatted politely; I mentioned that I had been alarmed to read about the English crime wave. “What crime wave?” snorted the young blonde woman in genuine amusement. I told her I had read that London right now has a similar crime rate as New York in the 1980s. “That’s nonsense,” she said firmly; “Of course, you have to watch out for pickpockets. And you shouldn’t go walking through Brixton with a laptop.” —I asked my landlords if it was true that a rough estimate of the age of a hedgerow can be made from determining how many species of plants live in it. “That’s quite true,” said Deb. “So how old are the hedgerows around here?” I asked, “they’re simply filled with plants.” “Oh, they’re quite old,” agreed Deb and Bob. “Medieval?” I asked. “Some near the coast probably go back to the Iron Age,” they thought.

Maddy and I caught the bus in front of the post office and rode back down to Porthcurno to set out on the second leg of our coastal walk. Today we ended up escaping disaster by a hairsbreadth. Maddy was tired and was not physically ready to set out on a walk. Being out of touch with her own body, she could not articulate it to herself or to me. She did not pack any water in her water jug for the walk, as I had done, nor did she take along any snack to eat on the trail, as I had done. She plodded slowly instead of walking briskly. The day was hot and the sun was blazing down. “Maddy, can you try to walk faster?” I asked kindly; “The slower you go, the longer we’ll be out here, and it’s exhausting to move slowly rather than fast.” She was completely blown by the time we reached Treen, which was only an hour along the coast. We trudged up an extremely steep long hill for three-quarters of a mile to reach the Logan Rock pub, where we ordered lunch, and Maddy was scarlet-faced and dull-eyed. “What ails the girl?” I kept wondering, half annoyed and half concerned. She ate scampi and fries and consumed an ice cream sundae. I stuck with vegetable soup and a salad, but had some ice cream as well, topped with a big yellow dollop of clotted cream which I ate a third of, then removed in one slab-like mass to my plate so I could attend to the ice cream, unimpeded.

The rugged coastline near Logan Rock. Photo perfecthotelcornwall .co.uk]

We set out again after lunch, around 1:30 by then because of our poor rate of progress. Maddy’s pace was one that a 3-year-old child could have easily matched. I began to get annoyed. I’d stride on leading the way at a very reasonable pace, a pace much slower than my usual workout pace, then realize that Maddy was far behind me. I’d stand and wait, again and again and again, until she would labor into view, then I’d set off again. She simply could not match my pace, and I began to look at my watch, checking the time, and began to grow concerned.

Maddy at a stile.

We came to St. Loy’s cove, the most beautiful place I have ever seen, a fairyland of trees with blessed shade, rushing and gurgling water, tall ferns beneath the shade and most unexpectedly, a house with a B&B that offered cream teas and cakes on a terrace with picnic tables, surrounded by a fabulous garden and greensward. I was hot and my tee-shirt was completely wetted with sweat under my arms, all across my back and on my chest, and I was embarrassed about how I looked, but I felt it only right that we stop for liquid refreshments and let Maddy rest. It was 3:30 before we moved along again. Before we trudged on, I made a quick detour around the garden to check out the amazing plants: burgundy-colored succulents with shiny, pad-like leaves; tall blue spikes of echium that must have been at least ten feet high; cardoons that put my own to shame, being already almost six feet high without even having flowered yet; and great blazing banks of purple, orange, yellow and white daisy-like flowers. The grass was carpet-like, perfection indeed. At the foot of the garden was a narrow view of the boulder-strewn St. Loy beach. I think I might actually consider killing someone in order to have a house and yard like that. My life goal is now to become rich enough to afford a villa in a Cornish cove.

St. Loy woods. Image belongs to http://www.cornwalls.co.uk/

We set off again on the trail. I had hoped that Maddy would be reinvigorated by our stop, and she expressed the determination to march around the coast to our destination at the next night’s lodging, Castallack Farm, but she began lagging again. Soon it was clear that she was in trouble. A passing German tourist (Cornwall is simply filled with Germans) told us it was another two miles to Lamorna Cove, where we needed to get off the Coast Path and strike inland. Maddy began to fail, with clear symptoms of sunstroke – nausea, cold clamminess, dizziness and weakness. I made her sit down and rest every 10 minutes and take water. Then I found out she had not packed her own water jug. Knowing that the consequences could be serious, I gave her my own water.

Soon she was not able to walk even for ten minutes. I said. “Let’s just keep moving, as slowly as you need, and we’ll rest every time you say so.” She lay down on the dusty, blazingly hot Coast Path with her head on her wadded up jacket, and I wiped her face with her bandanna, upon which I had poured some of our precious water. “I’m cold,” she said plaintively; “I’m so sleepy.” Looking at my water jug for the first time (it was lashed onto the back of my own pack where I could not see it, but she could reach it) I found that each time we had stopped for water, she had had only a sip instead of really drinking. Dehydration was obviously an issue here. I tried to figure out what to do. I sat so that she was lying in my shadow, shielded from the sun. “Maddy, no one can come and rescue us off these cliffs,” I said gently. “We’re going to have to walk off them somehow, by ourselves. We can rest here as long as you like and move on when you’re ready. Maybe it’ll be easier for you if we move on when the sun is lower and it gets cooler.” My concern was that we were late for our B&B and had no way of phoning ahead to let them know, and that they might give up hope of our arrival and rent our room out to someone else. An additional concern was that we had a good mile or more to go AFTER we reached Lamorna. Maddy sat heavily on the path. “Is that Lamorna?” she asked, indicating where the next headland cut off the view of the next cove. “It must be Lamorna,” I agreed after consulting the map; “there’s a little rock in the water off the point of the far headland, and the map shows one at Lamorna.” She got up wearily and we started on again.

This time I strapped on her pack as well as my own, hers in front and my own on my back. Unfortunately, as we neared Lamorna, the path disappeared and became a rock-strewn passage with another sheer cliff on the right hand. I could not see my feet with Maddy’s pack on my chest, and I switched to carrying one pack on each shoulder. I clambered up over a particularly difficult place and looked back to see that Maddy had collapsed again on the path on her hands and knees and was throwing up. She barfed copiously, probably eight times, and completely lost her lunch as well as her breakfast. She lay gasping and spitting for a few minutes, then got up and found she had gotten vomit all over the knees of her pants and the sleeve of her jacket. Using our diminishing water, I carefully rinsed off the bad parts. She looked up. “I feel much better now!” she remarked cheerfully. She could even carry her pack again. We climbed around the cliffside path into Lamorna; all the while I was worrying, “Please, don’t fall on the cliff after getting this far, Maddy.” But all was well. We stopped at the public toilets and Maddy washed her hands and face and brushed her teeth.

We painfully hauled ourselves up another long incline to the top of the cove, where I used the public phone at the pub to call ahead and leave a message on the answering machine at our B&B. I also got directions from the helpful man at the bar. We walked along a narrow lane lined with hedgerows, painfully ascending still more inclines. Maddy was beginning to drag again. Finally we reached Castallack, where we found our hostess, Rachel, the owner of the farm, and collapsed gratefully into our room. I made Maddy go take a shower and shampoo, and when she was done I did the same myself.

Image courtesy castallackfarm.co.uk.

While she rested in our room I talked with our landlady and described what we’d been through, and how grateful I was to be down off the cliffs. Rachel gave me a Bach flower remedy for sunstroke, to administer to Maddy in her water. I went back to the room and made Maddy slowly drink two and a half glasses of water with the remedy dissolved in it, and I read aloud to her from a Bill Bryson book that was on the shelf in the room. We went to bed at ten, Maddy exhaustedly and I for one extremely grateful that nothing terrible had happened. As I lay there, I kept seeing over and over the image of Maddy lying on her side in the dust of the path, throwing up, and imagining what could have happened – her toppling over the cliff, stunned by heat and sun. I got up and took a sleeping pill so I wouldn’t have to see these visions over and over.

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[Find the next installation of this travel journal at https://storiesbycarrol.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/more-from-the-journal-england-part-three/]

More from the journal: England, Part One

In early 2006 I thought my days of action were numbered due to worsening autoimmune illness, so I resolved to go to England to finally take the walking trip I had dreamed of since my teens. Two weeks before leaving I drastically altered my diet, with outstanding results, and thus left for England with what amounted to a new and improved body.

My 17-year old niece, Maddy, accompanied me on this trip. Maddy had Asperger’s Syndrome and had never been so far away from home. Neither of us knew what to expect, but we turned out to be excellent travel partners who enjoyed each other’s company.

Following is the first part of my travel journal. All photos are my own except for the ones that are credited to others.

May 31-31

Sat next to a 300-plus pound man on the overnight flight from Newark to Heathrow. The armrests obviously gave him great pain, and I suggested that he feel free to raise them. He did this gratefully, but then his enormous bulk pressed all against my side and thigh. I spent the night squeezed painfully away from him, unable to sleep at all despite having taken half an Ambien. It sent me into a drowsy, murky twilight but gave me no sleep. Maddy, who had been inexplicably seated by the airline four or five rows in front of me, played Tetris on the personal TV set built into the back of the seat in front of her, then slept. It was a long, long night. My tailbone and legs protested. I declined the in-flight food but gratefully accepted orange juice. In the early morning we flew over what I supposed might be Wales, a coastline adjacent to impressive rolling hilly country, and we landed at Heathrow soon thereafter. We tried to fix our tickets which were all messed up for our return flight, since I deemed it better to fix it then and there (which they were unable to do) rather than wait ‘til the last moment next weekend, and this made us late for the bus to Reading, which made us miss the train to Penzance by about three minutes, causing delays that expanded and grew as the afternoon wore on.

Reading was filled with handsome little tri-colored brick houses all joined together, their original yards now taken up by parked motor vehicles, everything with a sad, shabby air of run-downness. We passed a Staples, a Toys-R-Us, and a Burger King. The view from the highway between Heathrow and Reading had been very similar to what we could have seen at home (save for the Victorian buildings). I thought of Oscar Wilde on the platform at Reading, in his prisoner’s stripes; and thought about homogenization of culture, and about the vanishing of true national character due to global ugliness. Past Reading, the countryside grew prettier, with herds of cattle and hedgerows and blossoming wildflowers, yet even there I could see traces of homogenization.

We ran for train connections and sweated over timetables all day, after having run for our flight in Indy and again at Newark. I tried to phone Frank with a credit card but was turned down by the machine. I found that I was sick of schedules and itineraries. If I ever do this again, I want spontaneity instead of regimentation. Long live my own spontaneous spirit of adventure, untrammeled by global standardization.

Later—near Exeter, which was pronounced “Axter” by the heavily accented conductor—the countryside drew increasingly beautiful. Maddy slept on the train seat beside me, head forward, mouth open, breathing the heavy slumbering breath of the truly exhausted. We passed old churches, ruins, farms; an estate filled with probably at least a hundred spotted deer moving about grazing in clumps like pale African gazelles; a farm field filled with huge lolloping rabbits; and briefly (just around Dawlish) the train ran at the very side of the sea. At first I saw on the left what looked like an exceedingly muddy marsh, then I realized it was a tidal estuary with the mudflats exposed; then suddenly the train window was filled with gray ocean and small whitecaps. Then we went inland again, the train going slower and slower the closer we came to Penzance. Finally we reached the end of the line and we climbed out, half-dazed by weariness.

Train running along the Dawlish estuary, courtesy http://www.railmagazine.com

I don’t remember when I’ve been so tired, except perhaps the last time Frank and I went abroad. All the way on the train, my head kept nodding as I sat beside Maddy, and I’d begin to fall asleep, only to jerk awake again with a start. If I had fallen asleep I would have missed the alpaca farm! and the huge plateau that looked like an enormous Iron Age hillfort! and the ruined tin mine buildings! and a castle! and a huge brown bird that I later learned was an English buzzard. Packs on our backs, we trudged into town, following the written instructions I had for our B&B, Camilla House. We arrived, I rang the bell, and our host, Simon, opened the door with outstretched hand of welcome, expecting us. He sat us down in the parlor of his 1836 house and plied us with tea, and answered questions. We washed up, combed our hair, and went down again for dinner. I was famished in addition to being mortally weary, and tucked into a meal of sautéed fresh sole, new potatoes with homemade butter, and steamed green beans, carrots and summer squash. I drank about four glasses of water, being dehydrated. I had had no food on the airplane, no breakfast, and almost nothing to eat all day. We went to bed by 9:30 or 10 and slept like zombies. Or at least Maddy did, whereas I woke at 2:30 to pee and then suffered insomnia due to being excited to wake up and remember that I was in England, not my home. I took half another Ambien and slipped back to sleep peacefully.

The handsome front of Camilla House, courtesy http://www.camillahouse.co.uk

June 1

In the morning we had breakfast and then went on a “Harry Safari” hosted by a local personality, raconteur and singer-songwriter named Harry. We were the only ones in his tour van this morning and received a personalized tour. “What do you girls want to see?” he asked, and I said at once “Ancient sites!” He took us first to Sancreed holy well, where the mossy hole in the ground was rock-lined, filled with ferns, and topped with a hawthorn tree covered with strips of cloth tied on by neopagans. On all the crevices of the stonework inside were little offerings (including a small plastic dinosaur). I left an American quarter, sorry I had nothing better. “See the flowers floating on top of the water?” Harry said; “they’re recent offerings. Usually there are many more pieces of cloth tied in the tree but there was a baptism here two weeks ago and the Christians removed them all. These have been tied on since then.”

Offerings in the hawthorn tree beside the well.

He showed us stonework in a rough square which was the ruins of Saint Creed’s monastic cell. “This was the local water source, so people would come to get their water, and the saint was living right here and could see who was coming and going, and he’d talk to them and convert them,” said Harry, who appeared to be warm on neopaganism.

He drove on through impossibly narrow lanes lined on both sides with hedgerows, and stopped so we could see the masses of wildflowers growing naturally at the bottom and sides. Navelwort is a sedum-like plant that grows in cracks between rocks and has round conical leaves with a gentle indentation in the middle, like a belly button, with little spikes of colorless flowers; English bluebells drooped their little blue heads; Queen Anne’s lace was a different sort altogether than ours, being juicier, with a different sort of umbel at the top and a similar but distinctly different leaf (Harry claimed there were over 10 types of Queen Anne’s Lace); foxgloves – digitalis purpurea – with huge fat inch-thick stems [including some that stood as tall as myself]; wild alliums with white clusters at the end of a triangular stalk; Herb Robert; and yellow buttercups. Harry wadded up an herb that looks similar to sweet woodruff and showed how swains used to toss it at their girlfriends, and if it stuck to their clothes (as it always does, like natural Velcro) their love was returned. He showed how the hedgerows in Cornwall have stone at the bases, and he showed us a fox run that went over the wall and down the bank, across the road, up the opposite bank and over the opposite wall, the hedgerow rising up on both sides of it but kept from growing by the constant comings and goings of generations of foxes.

Fox traffic keeps this part of the hedgerow free of plant growth.

He showed us rabbit scrapes excavated between stones in a wall near the holy well. He showed us English buzzards soaring in the sky above a field, an English buzzard being not a vulture at all but a large brown hawk almost the size of an eagle. We drove to see the Merry Maidens stone circle, where we met with a family who were hiking along the public path. Harry went into his tour guide spiel for the strangers and told us all about how there are many things that stone circles could have been – worship places, astronomical observatories, public markets, or gathering places for tribes; and how the number 19 may have been significant since it appears over and over again across Cornish circles, but how we can’t know for certain.

The Merry Maidens.

He produced dowsing rods and let everyone try their hand, claiming that when you walked along the path to the center, the rods would jump in your hand when you passed the spot where the two ley lines crossed. (Maddy refused to try, being completely annoyed with Harry’s constant teasings about how he was going to divorce his wife and marry her.) I tried the dowsing with great interest, having read of this many times, but although one rod twitched strongly, I attributed it to mishandling the rod combined with wanting to feel an effect. Harry said that some people can do it, while others can’t, and expounded a theory of the earth covered with a complex network of lines of magnetic intensity, pulsing invisibly. The strangers were happy with the free show. I put a buttercup blossom on the top of a stone, since neopagans had done the same on many of the rocks, and we moved on and examined the nearby standing stone called The Fiddler (as opposed to The Pipers on the opposite side of the stone circle) and the nearby stone burial chamber, now despoiled by destructive early archaeologists and almost bisected by the road. The tomb was a round circle of rocks with a capstoned round burial of the Beaker Folk in the middle, a neat and symmetrical bull’s-eye. Harry told us how the existing stones across the top had been pilfered from a nearby stone wall and were not original, and how the multiple-holed quernstone in front of the tomb was simply a lichen-encrusted cement replica, to deter thieves. “Hmphhh….inauthentic,” I sniffed to myself.

Harry took us to a lovely 1400s church at Sancreed with the most beautiful graveyard I’ve ever set eyes on, the sort of place I’d like to rest in myself had I not already planned on cremation. The church was locked and Harry was disappointed since it was nearly always locked nowadays to deter theft. “Thieves took the carpets out of the church at Tre——-,” he told us, shaking his head, “and they took the furniture from the church at ——.” The key-keeper for the church saw Harry’s van parked in front, and came next door to unlock it for us, which we thanked him for. Inside it was musty, damp, and with a slightly dank odor, with green patches on the wall from too much disuse and not enough human activity. The pews were handsome but of a later era; the spectacular window was turn-of-the-century; there were indeed original carvings left at the base of the medieval carved screen, which had been cut down to table height much later, and the roof was exactly like an upturned boat hull. It makes perfect sense for a seafaring people to build rafters like that.

The ancient stone cross at St. Creed predates the church.

The flooring is very old, perhaps even original.

Harry was an original, and was well-informed. One pale blue eye roamed off to the side independent of the other eye, and his hair and scraggly goatee were very gray. He kept teasing Maddy mercilessly until I explained in an aside to him when we were at a teahouse having a midday break that she had Asperger’s. Then he cooled it. — The teahouse had fabulous baked goods as well as pottery tchotchkes and gewgaws for tourists. I had a big slab of treacle tart and Maddy had apple pie, both with huge gobs of clotted cream on the top. Maddy tasted hers and pushed it off to the side, but I ate most of mine. It was buttery in texture but not in taste, or perhaps I should describe it better as ice-creamy in texture but not sweet. It was thick; it was rich; it was satisfyingly schmaltzy. A bold chaffinch landed on the end of the table and begged for scraps; his song was like that of the song sparrow. An iridescent black-green magpie landed on the next table over. A tiny English robin perched on the fence and a jackdaw flew over. I was in heaven in that beautiful tree-shaded yard.

Harry took us also to Carn Euny, an Iron Age settlement with ruins of circular houses (of comfortable size, I must say) and farm enclosures, with a curious underground place called a fogou, reachable by a low passage in which we had to walk doubled over. Then we could stand inside the roomy (but damp) inner chamber, which was corbelled with heavy blocks of rock. It was used perhaps for cold-storage, perhaps for defense, or perhaps as a way to worship the womb of the Earth Mother. A curious phenomenon – when you moved and caught the light on the wall just right, the moss lit up like the reflective strips on clothing meant to be worn at night, bright green. When you moved only slightly, the green glow winked out completely. I really was struck by the eerie effect.

The unique light-reflecting moss at Carn Euny.

Harry gave us a lift over to Marazion after the tour was over, where Maddy and I went to see St. Michael’s Mount, an English version of Mont Saint-Michel in France, founded by the same order of Benedictine monks. We walked across the causeway to the island and walked up through the little village to the castle, where we paid a stiff price (£6 each) to watch a bad introductory movie and tour the castle, which was swathed in scaffolding and was having work done on the exterior. The castle was actually quite interesting despite being largely Victorian.

The view from the top, looking down at the gardens and the rocks falling down to the shore, was completely vertigo-inducing. “How would you like to be a workman up on the roof, looking down at that?” I asked Maddy. I found with surprise that in addition to being dyslexic, she has no depth perception. Although she sees the drop-off and knows it’s a good way down, she cannot estimate distance nor judge relative danger and even more interestingly, perceives no difference at all between looking at it with both eyes open and one eye shut. “There’s no difference,” she said a bit defiantly, confused as to why I was asking. “Do you see things flatly, or in three dimensions, like when you look into a View-Master?” I asked. “I can’t look through those things,” she said with disdain, “I don’t know what you mean by three-dimensional.”

View of St. Michael’s Mount.

We walked back along the causeway and all the way back to our B&B in Penzance, along the Coast Track. Maddy, being dyslexic, also cannot tell that English traffic flows along the opposite side to ours, and cannot tell the difference between the driver’s wheel being on the right as opposed to the left. “Couldn’t you tell that Harry was sitting on the side of the front seat that’s opposite to your mom or day when they drive your car?” “What do you mean? Is it different?” asked Maddy, blankly. I think, myself, that she ought not to get a driver’s license.

I went out for a little walk after dinner by myself, Maddy choosing to stay in the hotel room playing Sudoku. I felt a bit apprehensive about being by myself in a strange town, walking narrow lanes with no company, but nothing happened, and I put in another mile or so of walking. Tomorrow we begin our trek on foot around the Penwith Peninsula.

Snail on a gravestone in Penzance.

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[Part two of this travel journal is posted at https://storiesbycarrol.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/more-from-the-journal-england-part-two/.]