My mother owns a small cottage in Tregony, Cornwall, which she rents out to friends on an ad hoc basis, along with disappearing down there herself with the dog and a camera whenever she needs a break from living in a houseful of men. I’ve been going down there most summers since I was 13 or 14, when she first bought the cottage.
Tregony isn’t the prettiest of villages – it’s inland and is definitely somewhere that people live rather than take holidays – but it’s become like a second home to me, with the added bonus that it is so much more peaceful than home. It’s somewhere I go when I need space to breathe and I am more than happy to spend weeks on end there without speaking to a soul, save the local shopkeeper. September is always a good month – the children have gone back to school, the holidaymakers have gone home, the weather is beautiful and the sea has had all summer to warm up to a decent temperature.
One place I always make sure to visit is St-Just-in-Roseland, where there is a beautiful little church, at the water’s edge, surrounded by semi-tropical gardens. There is a local legend that Joseph of Arimathea brought Jesus to England and that they landed here in St Just creek. Who knows if this is true or not – but there’s something about the feeling of the place that makes me think it could well be. It’s something that I would like to believe, anyway. There is also much older, pagan magic at work here, I’m sure – this is a place that weaves a spell over every person that visits. I never fail to leave there feeling balanced and at peace.
Another of my favourite places is Porthcurnick beach, near Portscatho. The town beach at Portscatho is rocky and dogs are banned, but if you take a walk along the cliffs you find a wide, sandy beach where dogs are welcome and there are plenty of rockpools to explore. Many is the evening I have spent there rockhopping with Tipsy, the now sadly deceased Jack Russell terrier. It’s wonderfully peaceful being on a beach at sunset, searching for shells and stones, or maybe just sitting on a rock and looking out to sea. It’s at times like these that I am truly at my happiest.
(Originally published June 2006)