Getting Along in Cornwall

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. 

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.

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. 

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'.