Motor Tours in the West Country 13

Motor Tours in the West Country 13

This Furry Day has been corrupted into Flora Day; but Gilbert derives it

very plausibly from _foray_, and declares that it celebrates a defeat of

the Saxons, who attempted a raid on this coast. The original ceremonial

included a foray on the neighbours’ houses.

 

From Kenneggy Downs we may turn aside on a very bad lane to see

the curving sands of Prah and the grey tower of Pengerswick, the

hiding-place, in Henry VIII.’s time, of a certain homicidal Mr.

Milliton. Some say he built it, but this seems an improbably risky

thing to do. It is more likely that he occupied his enforced leisure in

painting the elaborate pictures and moral verses that are now defaced.

Few travellers will turn away from the fine high-road across Kenneggy

Downs to attempt the deciphering of Mr. Milliton’s reflections; but

it will not delay us to remember that John Wesley, exasperated by the

“huge approbation and absolute unconcern” of the people in these parts,

preached a sermon on the Downs, with a rare touch of humour, on the

resurrection of the dry bones. In a few minutes we run into Marazion,

and from the top of the hill first see, through a gap in the hedge, “the

great vision of the guarded Mount.”

 

In starting forth upon a tour in Cornwall there are two things, I think,

that one especially sets out to see; and in looking back it is the same

two things that one especially remembers to have seen. One is Tintagel;

but the spell of Tintagel is largely a matter of the imagination. The

other is St. Michael’s Mount; and here, though the imagination has much

to feed upon in calmer moments, it is chiefly as a delight to the eye

that it appeals to one in those first moments that are so far from calm.

Little we care for Edward the Confessor and his monastery, or for any

tale of battle and conspiracy, or for any legend of archangels, while the

Mount shows as a blur of blue upon the pale, hot sky and in the mirror of

the wet sands, and Penzance is veiled in a cloud of gold-dust save for

the tall church-tower that rises from the mist, and the hills beyond the

bay melt one into the other, and the rocks lie in a long red line across

the foreground with a streak of piercing green at their feet. Yet it is

hard to choose a moment and a point of view, and say, “This is the best.”

At high tide or at low, in sunshine or at dusk, from near or far, from

Marazion or from Newlyn, or framed between the red stems of the pines

upon the hill, the Mount is always stately, mysterious, strong--always

the Mount of the Archangel.

 

[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNT.]

 

It is reached from Marazion by boat at high-water, or on foot by the

causeway when the tide is low. From the little harbour we climb, on a

winding cobbled path among the trees and hydrangeas, the steep hill that

so many have climbed on sterner errands: Henry de la Pomeroi, serving

Prince John while the Lion was still safely caged; Lord Oxford and his

men, disguised as pilgrims, entering the monastery with the help of

pious words and seizing it with the swords they wore under their habits;

the angry adherents of the Old Faith, charging up the hill with great

trusses of hay borne before them, “to blench the defendants’ sight

and deaden their shot.” Unfortunately there have been modern visitors

nearly as turbulent as these; for which reason there is not much that

we are allowed to see here to-day. We may go into the chapel where the

monks once worshipped, and we may stand on the little paved terrace and

look out over the parapet towards the shore, thinking of Lady Katherine

Gordon, who surely stood here sometimes while her husband Perkin Warbeck

was on his mad adventure. What were her thoughts of him as she stood

here? Did she know him to be an impostor? Did she think he was the King?

Or did she only dream, and dream again, of that quick wooing up in

Scotland by the boy of “visage beautiful”? “Lady,” he had said, “… what

I am now you see, and there is no boasting in distress; what I may be, I

must put it to the trial.… If you dare now adventure on the adversity I

swear to make you partaker of the prosperity; yea, lay my crown at your

feet.” To which the lady had made answer: “My Lord, … I think you, for

your gentleness and fair demeanour, worthy of any creature or thing you

could desire.… Therefore, noble Sir, repair, I say, to the master of the

family.”

 

It was here at St. Michael’s Mount that they found her, when Perkin’s

little fight was over and her own little bubble had burst.

 

A wide and level road takes us round the bay into Penzance, and up

the hill whence Sir Humphry Davy looks down upon the street where he

was born, and past the spot--now covered by the market-house--where

Sir Francis Godolphin once tried in vain to make a stand against the

Spaniards, and on, beside the sea, to Newlyn. This is a name that is

known wherever pictures are painted or beloved; and no wonder, for there

is nothing in this harbour that an artist might not turn to good account.

Here are fishing-boats reflected in the ripples, and piers hung with

dripping seaweed, and lobster-creels and nets upon the shore; and beyond

them is the high sea-wall with flowers in every cranny, and the steep

street curving round the harbour, and the people whom so many painters

have taught us to know. For all its charm and fame it has changed little

since the sixteenth century. It is still a place with a business in life;

still, as then, mainly a “fischar towne,” with “a key for shippes and

bootes.”

 

[Illustration: NEWLYN HARBOUR.]

 

Rejoining the main road to Land’s End, we pass through some pretty but

very hilly country to Lower Hendra. Those who wish to see the Logan Rock

must turn to the left here, and run down to the sea through St. Buryan,

and finally walk for some distance across fields. Most people, I think,

will keep to the high-road; but lovers of old churches will wish to turn

aside to the sanctuary of that “holy woman of Irelond,” St. Buriana.

From this high ground, where the tall tower stands as a landmark visible

for many miles, King Athelstane saw the distant Scilly Isles, and here

he vowed to build a college if he should return safely after making the

islands his own. This Perpendicular building dates, of course, from a far

later century than his; but it was the church of the college he founded,

and there were parts of the college itself still standing in Cromwell’s

day.

 

St. Buryan is only four miles from Land’s End. They are rather dreary

miles, by undulating fields and stone walls and the intensely melancholy

little town of Sennan; but they end, all the more dramatically for their

dulness, in the granite walls that guard our utmost shore. There is no

dulness here.

 

Here there is no carpet of sea-pinks, nor splash of flaming lichen as at

the Lizard, nor rocks fretted into fantastic shapes by the sea; but an

imperturbable front of iron, an unyielding bulwark, a stern England that

rules the waves. This is a fitting climax to our coast. On each side of

us cliff curves beyond cliff, and headland stretches beyond headland. To

the right are the blue waters of Whitesand Bay, where Athelstane landed

from the conquered Scilly Isles and John from unconquered Ireland, and

far away Cape Cornwall bounds the view. With swelling hearts we stand

on the cliff and look out over the buried land of Lyonesse, and beyond

the Longships Lighthouse, to the wide seas on which Drake and Raleigh

sailed away to the Spanish Main, and Rodney to victory, and Grenville to

the death that made him deathless, and Blake to Teneriffe, and Nelson to

Trafalgar. The salt wind blows in across those seas and sings in our ears:

 

“When shall the watchful Sun,

England, my England,

Match the master work you’ve done,

England, my own?

When shall he rejoice agen

Such a breed of mighty men

As come forward, one to ten,

To the song on your bugles blown, England--

Down the years on your bugles blown?”

 

[Illustration: THE LAND’S END.]

 

 

 

 

NORTH CORNWALL

 

 

SUMMARY OF RUN THROUGH NORTH CORNWALL

 

DISTANCES.

 

Land’s End

St. Ives 19 miles

Newquay 33 ”

St. Columb Major 7 ”

(Bedruthan Steps and back 14 ”)

Bodmin 15 ”

Liskeard 14 ”

Launceston 20 ”

Back to Bodmin 22 ”

Wadebridge 7 ”

Tintagel 17 ”

Bude 19 ”

Morwenstow 11 ”

---------

Total 198 miles

 

ROADS.

 

Some very steep gradients, but hills on the whole less constant.

 

Surface: main roads mostly good; lanes rough.

 

 

V

 

NORTH CORNWALL

 

“I believe I may venture to aver,” wrote Tonkin of Cornwall two hundred

years ago, “that there are not any roads in the whole kingdom worse kept

than ours.” This is not the case now. The main roads of Cornwall are

excellent, and are far better kept than the average road of Somerset,

for instance. No doubt the quickest way from Sennan to St. Ives is by

Penzance and St. Erth Station; for this road, which is in the direct

route from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s, leaves little to be desired.

But the more interesting way is through St. Just, and Morvah, and Zennor.

We cannot expect so good a surface here, yet from Sennan to Morvah, where

the country is so much disfigured by mines that we are glad to hurry,

th