Entrances, opening, and doorways

All over town we’ve noticed the importance of doorways, gateways, and entrances to keep things organized, to tell us where to go and where not to go, what spaces are and are not to be used for, or what they used to be used for, or what they might have been or still are used for. There are doorways to homes, of course, but also entrances that direct people into streets.  There are exit doors to let rescue boats out of garages, and slipways to get them into the harbor in a hurry.  There are the breakwaters that form the entrance to the harbor, or to the sea, depending on your purpose. There are doorways to let the fish catch into the fish cellars so they can be cleaned and/or salted down and cured.  On the other end of the building is the entrance to direct people in to buy the fish.  There are landlocked doorways with inexplicable boat portals installed, until we learn that the ocean broke against that door for 200 years, before the breakwaters were built, so perhaps a round portal was a good idea, not a vanity.

There is the flowered path that barely admits entrance to the Coastal Path, and the less intimidating flowered path up to a stately home.  There is the darkly ominous, (or promising, if you’re a pirate), opening to a cave in Port Gaverne harbor (or any number of similar caves up and down the coast).  They drip and gleam, lined with shellfish the size of a British Pound, waiting for the ocean to wash up to their stoops again at high tide.  And there are dark, neglected stone arches on derelict old buildings that we can only guess at: perhaps a lime kiln?  Something else?  Speaking of darkly ominous, there is the doorway to the old school, now a bar, restaurant, and hotel.  Hooray for adaptive re-use!  There are some that are frankly confusing, such as “Pilchards Corner” sign on the wall.  It’s unlikely any pilchards could read the sign.  On the other hand, few pilchard shoals come to call at the ports anymore.  Perhaps it was the people of the village who couldn’t read the writing on the wall, as the shoals dwindled from overfishing.  

Pilchards Corner

The Pirates Cave

In the end, Port Isaac is less a network of paths and more an intricate system of entrances and exits.  Only a few steps in any direction yields a myriad of opening and doorways, some of which are meant for you, and some of which are emphatically not. Deciphering them at the walk is amusing.  Doing so at driving speed is best left to the natives.  It is no wonder that Napoleon, frustrated in his inability to understand the narrow nooks and crannies of Paris, blasted great avenues across the city.  We celebrate those great avenues today, but duck out of them at the first opportunity, to explore the little corners created when people built their towns an inch at a time.  Down near the harbor, Port Isaac is still this complex, intense space. Outsiders come here just to wander around in it.  It alters their view of the world, for a little while.  It is strangely delightful to be in a place that is organized in a way that we, as foreigners, don’t quite yet understand.  It’s like working out a crossword puzzle, one entryway at a time.