Motor Tours in the West Country 14

Motor Tours in the West Country 14

The last part of this road is bad, but the wild green slopes remind us

still of Dartmoor till we run down the long, steep hill into the town

of St. Ives. This is quite as good a centre as Penzance from which to

see the western end of Cornwall, for the Tregenna Castle Hotel, with its

park and walled garden and its lovely outlook over the sea, is one of the

most charming in the Duchy; and the place itself is unspoilt. Indeed,

these little fishing towns of Cornwall seem to understand very well that

their face is their fortune, so to speak; that their welfare depends, not

on bandstands and esplanades, but on the beauty of their harbours and

fishing boats and narrow streets. Here at St. Ives are the simple charms

of Newlyn and the rest: the same little piers and clustered masts, the

same contorted streets and the same artists.

 

It is well that Mr. Knill, when he set up his crooked pyramid, did not

place it too near the town. If we look back as we drive away we shall

see, upon the skyline, the empty mausoleum of this unconventional mayor,

who built his own tomb and arranged to be mourned with music and dancing

at its base, but omitted to be buried in it. Some say he did not mean

it for a tomb at all, but for a landmark to smugglers. This may be so,

since at one time he certainly indulged in privateering--an enterprise

into which, he explained, “he was hurried by the force of circumstances.”

Perhaps the same explanation applies to his burial in London.

 

[Illustration: ST. IVES.]

 

We drive on through the pretty, straggling village of Lelant to the port

of Hayle. The rich colouring of the harbour and river here, the red and

green flats, the brown and yellow sands, the crooked posts reflected in

the water, and the flocks of gulls, are the last pleasing sights that we

shall see for many miles; for the country through which we have to pass

cannot have been beautiful in its best days, and is now made hideous by

pit-heads and chimneys. Camborne is big and ugly, with trams: Redruth is

big and ugly, without trams: there is no other visible difference, nor

any gap between them. But the compensation that motorists so often find

in dull country is ours: this is the splendid highway that leads to John

o’ Groat’s. We leave it when it turns towards Truro, but by that time

our surroundings are less depressing. Above Zelah Hill we take the road

that crosses Newlyn Downs, where the close carpet of heather somewhat

restores our spirits, though nowhere till we reach Newquay is there any

hint of the beautiful things that lie hidden in this neighbourhood. After

crossing the railway we should not take the first turn to Newquay, but

should wait for the second, where the signpost stands. We shall thus

avoid two bad hills.

 

Newquay must have been a glorious place before its shores were black

with people, and its steep red cliffs crowded with lodging-houses, and

its jutting promontory crowned with a huge hotel. Even now, in spite of

these things, its wears something of a queenly air. We have left behind

us the slow ripples of the southern sea: the fierce blue waves sweep in

upon this grand coast with quite a different kind of dignity. But Newquay

is too world-ridden to be really lovable. “How beautiful she must have

been!” is a sad saying, whether applied to town or woman.

 

[Illustration: TRERICE.]

 

In its neighbourhood, however, are several noteworthy things. We have

only a few miles to drive, by leafy lanes and frequent splashes, to a

spot that the world has left untouched and that time has only made more

beautiful, the house of the Arundels. The best way to Trerice is the lane

by Kestle Mill. John Arundel of Trerice is a proud name that becomes

monotonous in the annals of Cornwall, and is not unknown in those of

England. It was here they lived, those warlike Arundels--old Jack of

Tilbury the Admiral, and John-for-the-King, who made so gallant a fight

at Pendennis. Though the Arundels owned Trerice even in Edward III.’s

time, I do not think Old Tilbury ever saw this Elizabethan building, for

he was an old man in the days of Henry VIII. It was probably his son who

built this lovely house at the foot of the hill, with the huge mullioned

window and the moulded ceilings, and the oriel that overlooks the walled

garden and its yew hedges. But John-for-the-King, we may suppose, has

warmed himself before these splendid fireplaces, and has looked out

through these windows at the flowers and pines, and has eaten his dinner

at the great oak table now in the drawing-room. Some say he was a hard

man. Possibly: for he lived in hard times. Yet one who knew him well

called him “equally stout and kind.” “Of his enemies,” says Carew, “he

would take no wrong nor on them any revenge. Those who for many years

waited in nearest place about him learned to hate untruth.”

 

There was another branch of the family who, for their greater

possessions, were known as “the great Arundels.” We may see their house

at St. Mawgan. When approaching, from St. Columb Minor, the deep wooded

hollow in which Lanherne stands close beside the church of St. Mawgan,

one should take the most easterly of the two by-roads that lead to it.

This hill, it is true, is steep enough; but the other is steeper--one

in five. Those who are going on to Bedruthan Steps or elsewhere will do

wisely to climb out of the hollow on this same road, and go round by

St. Columb Major, for the hill on the further side of St. Mawgan is the

steepest of all!

 

Here in this seclusion, guarded by a triple defence of hills as well as

by the dark woods and by their own high wall, live the nuns of Lanherne

in the house of warriors. Not much of their dwelling is visible, of

course, but the chapel may be seen, and one wing of the old house looks

down, with many mullioned windows, on a gay little garden that all may

enjoy. Below Lanherne is the church, with turreted tower and painted

screen, and brasses and bench-ends, and shields of the Arundels.

 

As I said before, the shortest way to Bedruthan Steps is the longest way

round--the way, namely, by St. Columb Major. The road by Mawgan Porth has

an alluring look upon the map, but as a matter of fact comes to a sudden

end in the sands; and I have heard a tragic tale of a car that stuck

fast there, and endured the humiliation of being dragged out by horses.

At the junction of roads between the two St. Columbs is a gate into the

woods of Lanherne, of whose loveliness this is the only glimpse we may

have, since motors are not admitted to them. We turn to the left in St.

Columb Major, past the grey church of St. Columba, a maiden who was, says

Hals, “comparatively starved to death” in Gaul. Her church has had a

chequered career. One of the pinnacles of the tower was again and again

destroyed by lightning and rebuilt in vain, till the builders carved on

it the words: “God bless and preserve this work.” I do not know if it

escaped in the seventeenth century, when three schoolboys, by setting

fire to some gunpowder, “made a direful concussion;” but only a few

years later the steeple was again struck by lightning “and the iron bars

therein wreathed and wrested asunder as threads.”

 

On a by-road that is of course hilly, but by no means bad, we rise on

to Denzell Downs, with a wide view to the left and a glimpse of Mawgan

Porth in the distance. When, having left St. Eval on the right, we come

to an isolated cottage, we must take the track that goes straight on;

for the one that turns to the right has an endless number of gates, some

steep hills, and a very rough surface, and is much the longer of the

two. Even on the track we take there are gates enough to try the temper,

but it soon leads to a field where we may leave the car. We walk down

across the heather to the cliffs. These have not the iron severity of the

Land’s End: the shale they are made of is friable, and has been carved

into a thousand shapes--including a ridiculously life-like figure of

Queen Bess--by the waves that fret and foam even on the stillest day. The

wide bay lies below us with all its decorative arches and pinnacles and

turrets, bounded by Park Head, long and grey; and in the distance Trevose

Head makes the skyline. Two flights of steps are cut in the cliffs: one

leading to the shore and the other to a cave.

 

And now, after all this pottering in the narrow lanes about Newquay,

there are many who will be craving for a comfortable run on an open road.

These I advise to join the Truro and Bodmin road near St. Columb Road

Station, and drive over a series of breezy heaths, on a good surface with

no serious hills, to Bodmin: thence to follow the Fowey to Liskeard and

run up to Launceston: and from Launceston to return to Bodmin across the

moors. This is a fine run and a real refreshment.

 

There is no lack of history in Bodmin, the “dwelling-place of monks,”

the burial-place of St. Petrock, once a cathedral city, and more than

once the headquarters of rebellion. Yet, save the great church, there is

little here to see. Very near Bodmin, however, though not on our direct

road, there is a place of wonderful beauty, Lanhydrock. This park is rich

in splendid trees, carpeted with fern, irregular and wild and lovely

beyond the common lot of parks. As we sweep round a curve the gatehouse

comes in view, with its arch and octagonal towers and pinnacles; behind

it is the stately house, the mullioned windows and the battlements; and

between house and gateway, enclosed within a parapeted wall, lies the

formal garden, the rows of tapering cypresses, and urns of flowers, and

blossoming yuccas. When Essex stayed here with Lord Robarts, at the time

that Charles I. was at Boconnoc, the gatehouse was not yet built; but he

saw the north wing of the house as it now stands. After his desertion of

his troops at Fowey, Lanhydrock fell into royalist hands, and for a short

time was owned by Sir Richard Grenville, “the Skellum.”

 

[Illustration: GATEHOUSE, LANHYDROCK.]

 

We drive away by a magnificent double avenue of beeches and sycamores,

and through a shady lane join the main road from Bodmin to Liskeard.

This narrow valley of the Fowey is one of the loveliest strips of inland

scenery in Cornwall. On every side of us are trees, close by the wayside,

and hanging overhead, and clothing the high hills; and all the time,

sometimes to left of us and sometimes to right, the brown stream hurries

past us through the bracken. After we have crossed it for the second time

the valley narrows and the woods close in, before we finally run out into

open country. Between Liskeard and Callington, as we have seen before,

there are some fine views, but the hilly road is rather badly kept; and

the same may be said of the country beyond Callington, which has the same

variable scenery, and the same wide but bumpy road. A long rise takes us

into Launceston through the square tower of the south gate.

 

Age after age this hill has had a fortress on it. First the Celt and

then the Saxon made a stronghold of it, and finally, when William the

Conqueror gave it to his half-brother, Robert de Mortain, there arose the

Norman castle that was called Terrible. Of its terror little is left now,

for one of its three defending walls is gone, and the ruined keep is so

unsteady that no one is allowed to climb its stairs. Yet this tower among

the blazing geraniums has not altogether lost its romance, as is the fate

of most ruins that stand in public gardens; and the Tudor gateway of the

outer ward, with its portcullis-groove and prison-cell, is picturesque

enough. If we peer through these bars we shall see a tiny cell with

mossy floor and weed-grown walls--the “noisesome den” that George Fox

the Quaker named _Doomsdale_, the prison in which he lay for months.