Dogs are good conversation starters. Even if the person you meet doesn’t happen to
have their dogs with them at the moment, they have some somewhere. If they have a cat, see the discussion on
Celtic influence below.
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| And Many of Them are Cavvies |
Kernow is Cornish for Cornwall. Saves lots of confusion.
Cornwall is sort of the ‘Florida’ for the English. Not that it’s necessarily warm or dry—just
generally warmer and drier than the rest of the country. Generally. And it does have a fair amount of
sandy beaches, at low tide.
Speaking of tides—not like Florida. Really high and low swings of 10-15
feet. Don’t go to sleep on that sandy
beach for very long.
Fishing is now mainly for the restaurant business, pleasure
fishing, and so forth. No more giant
nets of pilchards. Ditto mining. No more around here. Only in museums.
Cornwall has a distinctly Celtic flavor, which shows up in
thinly-disguised May Day fertility festivals like the ‘Obby ‘Oss in Padstow and
the Furry Dance in Helston (helpfully spaced a week apart so you don’t have to
miss either one). Worth considering the
timing of those if you’re planning a trip over.
Also evidenced by an impressive ‘Museum of Witchcraft’ in Boscastle . Mixed in with the gardening books in the
cottage are a fair number of herbalist tomes, (not to paint the herbalists with
the pagan brush or the pagans with the witchcraft brush or whatever). Just a
pretty broad appreciation for the role and knowledge about the natural world
and whatever supernatural world one is most drawn to. In this world of dogs, cats may be familiars. Not sure about that.
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| And Doc Martin is Big |
The food is good to great.
There are fresh fish of multiple kinds, fresh shellfish, beef and
lamb. We assume the chickens are fresh
although we haven’t seen many chickens. Salads
are all fresh greens, root veg all local.
Even in the discount grocery one can buy a block of leaf lettuce still
growing in potting soil. Just sit it in
the window and cut off what you need.
How civilized! Iceberg lettuce is
unheard of. The use of herbs for cooking
is quite sophisticated, and extensive use of chilies, probably brought in by
sailors originally. You can eat a pasty
just to say you did it—otherwise they are underwhelming but inexpensive. This is big dairy country, so Cornish ice
cream is famous, but also something called clotted cream, which is halfway
between butter and whipped cream, generally used as a dessert topping. I had my first baked Alaska in many years out
here in the ‘wilds’ of Cornwall. And,
yes, it was great.
About root vegetables.
We’ve had carrots, parsnip, turnip, and ‘swede’ which is explained to us
as halfway between carrot and turnip.
We’re not sure about all of this.
Perhaps there’s a sort of interbred continuum of
carrot-parsnip-swede-turnip-potato that happens out here. But still, all good.
Beer and cider are local, plentiful, and very good. The
preferred beer style is a light ale, with the red ales being our favorites. We’ve
personally tried at least ten different ales from several different brewers,
St. Austell’s being the most prevalent out here. Cider is available in the
local groceries by the bottle, case, or two-liter plastic bottle. Coke,
on the other hand, is served in what appears to be 10 or maybe even 8-ounce
bottles in restaurants.
Ice is still a novelty.
The cube makers in the fridge are tiny.
Bars are likely to not have any at all.
Beers served cool, not cold. But
honestly, when the prevailing temperature of a stone cottage is about 60
degrees, one hardly needs to refrigerate the ales. One must ask for a glass of tap water at a
restaurant and then a pitcher of water with lemon slice and glasses are served.
Plan on rain and be grateful when it doesn’t. That said, it has rained and shone every day
except two here, and one of them we went out in anyway. Today we are in, as it has poured steadily
all day. Here’s to fireplaces, wine and
cheese and crackers. Most days it is
light showers, even floating kinds of fog.
We did, briefly, break out the shorts one sunny afternoon. Then it rained. Then the sun came out.
The “Public Footpath” sign means “You can walk here if
you’re brave enough, but we’re not doing any maintenance in a cow pasture. Good
luck and watch where you walk.”
On walking, generally.
All walking is uphill in Cornwall.
It will get you fit after a couple of weeks. Or really sore leg muscles that you haven’t
used in a while. Cider and beer help
with that in the evening.
There is wine. Grape
wines we didn’t get to. They were next
on our list after the hundred ales and ciders.
Also fruit wines, interesting ones like gooseberry, black currant, and
more interesting ones like dandelion, nettle.
Probably medicinal in ways we don’t even understand. Possibly how the Cornish can stand to walk up
and down all those hills.
Things that don’t make much sense to us: There is an
abundance of wool produced here, yet we found no native production of woolen
clothing. No jackets, socks, coats. A
few blankets and sweaters. That’s about
it. A local clothier tells us the
Cornish don’t wear much wool or formal clothes, for that matter.
Also we are told that, because fish is so common, the locals
disdain it in favor of beef, lamb, etc.
We cannot confirm that, but it is potentially understandable. It might explain why pasties retain their
appeal, since they are largely made with some mystery form of beef. And the preference for pasties seems to help
repel the introduction of McDonald’s into the countryside, although we did spot
a KFC in Falmouth. Very disconcerting to
have the Colonel leering down at you in an English coastal port. I suppose the sailors brought him over…. In their defense, though, the Cornish do have
Kentucky correctly identified with horses and not the Colonel, unlike the
locals in rural France. Several people we’ve spoken to assumed we are from
Canada, by our accents. Hmmm
Did we mention granite?
Did we mention slate? With all
the rain (see above) wood is an unreliable building material—best used for
fireplaces and paper mills (also driven originally by water). Nearly every roof is of slate, along with
sills, awnings, siding, footpaths…anything that requires thin, durable stone is
made of slate. The oldest, crispest
headstones in the cemeteries are of slate.
In a nod to the appeal of granite, some of the stones are ornamental
granite (it can be carved) inset with a slate epitaph. Roads, curbs, moorings, posts, walls, bridges,
houses, factories, harbors—all granite. China clay: ground up granite with the
impurities washed out. The footpath tops
of some of the granite breakwaters consist of sheets of slate embedded on edge.
Some of the floor in our cottage is 2 foot by 4 foot sheets of slate.
Driving is like, well, Ireland. Wrong side of the road, narrow roads with
vertical plant covered rock walls, locals tailgaiting, you get the idea. Not fun but necessary, unless one is good
with the railroads and bus system. There is an extensive system of buses to all
the local communities, but not sure about the schedule. A respectable tour of Cornwall could be done
by rail, with a few cab or bus or ferry side trips.
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| Trucks Travel Church Street. Crazy. |
On the subject of Pasties.
Cornwall claims there is a ‘Cornwall Pasty’ or perhaps that they were
invented in Cornwall. We’ve bought them
in stands at Victoria Station in London, so they are not exclusive to
Cornwall. Since we’re not yet cultural
food detectives we can’t be sure about the whole pasty thing. It is fair to say that they were clearly the
forerunner to fast food, given that they could be cooked ahead of time, served
hot or cold, and could contain a wide variety of foodstuffs. The standard version is beef, onion, potato,
and ‘swede’, but the possibilities are endless.
The pastry itself can be a standard kind of biscuit dough, or fancier
flakey pastry dough, which ironically works better frozen. Either way the half-moon of the pasty defines
the workingman’s culture of food: starch, meat, veg in a handy package. They were miners’ food and farmers’ food.
Favorite slang word is ‘dreckly’ as in ‘we serve good food
dreckly’. Greeting is usually ‘All right there?’ and conversations and
transactions end with ‘Cheers!’.
We're traveling back to Port Isaac today, so farewell to Kennall Vale and the woods and plants and the granite and old mill wheels. We'll post again 'dreckly'.
Lots of breweries. Philadelphians point with pride to the
high proportion of breweries in town.
For my part, there was one right around the corner, under a bike
shop. In several days I never had the
same beer twice. This is a good sign of
civilization!
Gardens in every available inch. And not just flowers. Across the street someone was harvesting
Tuscan Kale from their front garden, mixed in with the roses, butterfly bushes,
and hydrangeas. Down the street was a
forest of tomatoes. Squash vines snake
through the little 10-foot-square front gardens, or pour out of pots they’ve
been planted in. Down the street someone
has managed to create a roof garden on one of the old houses. A kid couldn’t make much money mowing lawns
around here: the space is all being gardened.
And did I mention the laying hens across the alley? 
