Cornwall – The Curry Apple Orchard

This is the story of Will and his two friends who sailed to England in 1967 to see the world. Aerogrammes. letters, diaries and postcards help to tell of their adventures in this A to Z.

“Going Up the Country”   Canned Heat • 1968
I'm going up the country
Baby, don't you wanna go?
I'm going up the country
Baby, don't you wanna go?
I'm going to some place
Where I've never been before

95 Fordwych Road,West Hamstead NWZ,London. 17/5/1968

Hello! Have been a bit slow getting around to this letter but moving and finding a flat is a big job in London. I received your letter just after I last wrote and very much enjoyed the pics. You should send some more sometime. Also received my licence and news clippings – thank you.

95 Fordwych Road, West Hamstead. Will and Phil were on the First Floor (upstairs) From Apple Maps

As you can see by the address, Phil and I have a new flat at last as temporary accommodation was getting a bit expensive with the eating out each night. We’re paying £10.10 shillings a week for this flat which is just fair but at least it has two rooms and a kitchen and is central to school and to town. It’s surprising how much stuff, for example pots, pans, crockery, cutlery etc we’ve collected and will either have to throw away or hire a ship to get it home eventually. Have just settled back into school life here again and have now only 6 school days till the Whitsun midterm holidays – 10 days off altogether and at the moment are still figuring on going down to Cornwall though the weather hasn’t been too good. It will be officially summer then – I’m assured by most English that doesn’t mean a thing.

Had a few beers last night with three mates we haven’t seen for a month or two and one of them, Graeme, dropped a bombshell by announcing he’s getting engaged to an English girl. We know he’s been taking her out for some time and she’s doing Teachers College with 18 months to go. Of course, we told him how sorry we were to hear the sad news but her parents are putting on an engagement party (free grog!)

Our school (Essendine) got another mention in the paper last week as reporters came following our letter to the editor and took photos and quite a large article was published.

Part of the letter written by Essendine Staff

We are the multiracial staff of a multiracial school and we are wholeheartedly united in opposition to Mr Enoch Powell and to the irresponsible and ill-informed way in which he made known his hatred and fear of coloured immigrants. Our Junior School is not unusual. As to numbers we maintain a very fair balance. About 50% of our children are boys and about 50% are girls. It so happens if one is looking at it in that way that about 50% are white and 50% are immigrants, mostly West Indians. It also so happens that of our immigrant children very many were born in London and have lived in London all their lives. London is their home. We have worked together side by side creating a community in which colour of skin is of no more importance than the colour of your jersey and now from outside comes the undercurrent of hatred and fear, ignorance and prejudice and a restatement in a very alarming way of the age old myth of racial superiority. We are teachers in a deprived area and so we are of course very much aware of all the many many problems which exist, social, educational, economic. How can we hope to solve the problems on the basis of Mr Enoch Powell’s obnoxious philosophy? He has made it that much harder for ordinary people to try in an ordinary and common-sense way to sort these problems out. As teachers we are desperately concerned that boys and girls in our care of whatever colour shall become infected by racial disease which can solve nothing. In this school we have already experienced repercussions. The children are worried, disturbed and hurt as a result of the explosion of racialist sentiments so freely expressed after Mr Powell’s disastrous speech. On our first morning back in school several of our West Indian children came to teachers asking in perplexity , “Is it true that we are all to be sent back home?”

Signed by sixteen members of Essendine staff May 1, 1968

Cilla went for an interview today for an Air Hostess with BOAC and there’s a chance she’ll get it. That’s the way to see the world – get paid to do it.

POSTCARD

Greetings from Cornwall.

At this moment we are seated in the most southerly car in England as we’re parked on Lizard Point, the last car in the car park! Weather’s not so good but its a change to be out of London. Hope the cliff doesn’t collapse! Checked out some cute villages, pubs etc and just casually pottering about in the countryside.

95 Fordwych Road,West Hamstead NWZ, London.10/06/1968

Hello, received your letter this morning. Did you get my postcard from Cornwall? Pleased to hear you received the rug and like it. It is actually a Scottish tartan but I can’t remember which clan it was.

Well, we got back the day before yesterday from our week’s jaunt into the country and had an enjoyable week despite pretty miserable weather as we only got patches of sunshine. Although it only rained for two days it was overcast and cool for quite a bit of the rest of the holiday so of course not warm enough for swimming. We headed out west via Bath and found the spot Captain Arthur Phillip is buried in a little church there (the founder of Australia’s first settlement).

We went on to Cheddar where of course the cheese was beautiful and visited some caves not as good as Jenolan but nevertheless interesting – checked out some quaint little villages with thatched cottages, old manor houses and 12th century pubs etc, visited Castle Combe which was voted last year as England’s prettiest village – the town in which the expensive film Doctor Dolittle was filmed.

We found England’s surfing West Coast wasn’t so bad. Sandy beaches in places and even a surf and surfboards but still too cold for me to swim. Tasted all the local food specialties which are Devonshire teas (scones, clotted cream, strawberries) and Cornish clotted cream, pastries, mussels, crab, fish etc and apple cider plus the local brews of beer ( just about every town has its own local brewery). We returned via Penzance (didn’t see any pirates), Dartmouth, Plymouth (Drake played his bowls here when the Spanish Armada came), slept one night in Beer which is good to drink but not so good to sleep in. It’s near the town of Seaton. Wasn’t that the name of Nan’s house, Dad?

There are some pretty steep hills down Devon and Dorset way and the mini boiled a couple of times but otherwise in 1000 miles went very well. We returned to London via Dorchester and Salisbury where there is a fantastic cathedral built about 1300 and really remarkable architecture inside and outside. Also visited Stonehenge which caveman “ran up” 14,000 years BC as a sort of temple.

When you could walk right up to Stonehenge

The weather improved yesterday and at last are getting some good summer weather so went rowing on the lake in Regents Park and checked out the view from the Post Office tower which at just over 500 feet is still the tallest building in London and has a good view of the city.

Today we were back at school again and only six weeks in this half term anyway and one of the weeks I think I’m off to camp for seven days with the kids down in Surrey or Sussex

I’ve been listening to the First Test most of the day (the noise doesn’t bother the kids so long as I tell them the score now and then). I am quite relieved to know Australia is doing so well because the boss is a fanatical cricket fan and I’d get roasted if we were beaten.

Pleased to hear Andrew behaved himself at the christening. I quite like the name.

#AtoZChallenge 2021 April Blogging from A to Z Challenge letter G

Our proposed destination was Penzance, but we diverted to the hilly town of Ilfracombe. What astonished me was how developed this town was. There were rows and rows of terrace houses all the way up the sides of the hills. The harbour is very tidal so when we arrived all the boats were sitting on the bottom. You could see how much the water would rise, about 4.5 metres, so it would look quite different at high tide.

The next diversion was Boscastle, famous for its television show about a female Methodist minister who produced a discrete male ‘nude’ calendar. The lower town is an old fishing village set in a rocky inlet. Later that year it again made the news as an enormous flood washed away much of the village. Unaware of its impending doom we explored the village with its shops displaying witchcraft and the occult and suffered in the freezing wind as the sun disappeared behind the clouds.

A little further along the road is Tintagel, where a ruined castle, reputedly the birthplace of King Arthur, stands on a promontory. It can’t be seen from the town, which was crowded with visitors and road works in narrow winding streets so we kept going.

It was then that we found a rare sight in the English countryside. It was a layby with tables and chairs. The sun was shining as we cooked toast and soup on the new gas burner. We must have been quite a sight for the passing motorists as we did not once see anyone else picnicking by the side of the road.

After settling into our hotel in Penzance we ate at The Union which had a Nelson Bar and a Hamilton Restaurant. The meals of fish pie and salmon with prawns were tasty. After dinner we came across another inn, The Admiral Benbow. I wondered if it had a connection to Treasure Island but discovered that this Admiral Benbow was fighting the French, his ship was wrecked and he was washed up on the Scilly Isles. The woman who found him smothered him in the sand in order to get the rings off his fingers. Because they didn’t come off easily she bit off his fingers. I wonder if karma ever caught up with her.

Land’s End! I had to pinch myself as we drove towards this famous landmark. As we pulled up outside what looked like a run down amusement park we paid our £2 for parking and saw that the park was closed. We were too early but we enjoyed the outstanding views of the coastline under a brilliant blue sky and took photos of each other standing next to a signpost denoting the spot. When a photographer arrived he was rather cross we had used his special photo stand.

I was reciting “As I was going to St Ives, I met a man with seven wives” because we were following a winding road to that very place. The beach is yellow and sandy, reminding me of home, although it is never that cold in Wollongong. We set up the gas stove on a rock wall overlooking the sea and cooked our soup and toast. Like Ilfracombe the houses climb up the hillside and the streets are narrow and crowded. Even in February parking in the town was impossible. I kept thinking, what is it like in summer?

On our way back to Penzance we spotted St Michaels Mount. After some deliberation we jumped on board the launch (£1 a head) and headed across the bay to a castle on an island. The water level varies by 4.5 metres between low and high tide and there is a causeway for use at low tide. As we were National Trust members we had free entry into the castle, part of which is lived in by the St Aubyn family who have owned it since 1650. It was incredibly livable – we both felt we could move in tomorrow.

Going back to 495 AD there are tales of seafarers lured onto the rocks of the island. The lucky ones saw the archangel St Michael warning them of certain peril and were saved. Legend has it that Jack the Giant Killer lived in the nearby village of Marazion and lured the giant, who lived on the island, to his death.

By the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066, St Michael’s Mount was owned by the monks of its sister isle, Mont St Michel in Normandy. Since then the Mount has seen many owners. The Royalists held back the forces of Oliver Cromwell from its walls, its cannons drove a Napoleonic ship ashore on Marazion Beach, its church tower beacon warned England of the approach of the Spanish Armada. It was hard to leave but it was our last night in Penzance and we ate pizza in our room with a bottle of wine.

The next day saw us in Megavissey, a working fishing villages with narrow twisting streets and shops selling local ceramics, paintings, witchcraft and food. Although the wind was cold we found a sheltered rock near the harbour and followed the example of a cat sleeping in a waterlogged boat. It was on a ledge in the sun just above water level and was soaking up the warmth.

Charlestown was different to other fishing villages in that it had a harbour constructed with dock gates so that when the tide goes out the ships still remain afloat. It has been the setting for numerous films and TV shows and when we were there three tall ships graced the harbour.

Charlestown where the ships will not run aground

Our lunch of sandwiches was eaten alongside a rushing stream next to a medieval castle with towers and bridges all painted white. The fact that it was a homewares shopping complex detracted from the ambience but we decided against the more romantic town of Polperro in favour of getting to Plymouth before nightfall.

The holiday was coming to an end as we continued to Torquay, of Fawlty Towers fame. We gazed at the fine harbour of water unaffected by the tide as we braced against the bitterly cold wind. Of course, we asked at Tourist Information about the hotel and were told that when John Clease filmed some Monty Python footage in the area he stayed at Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay. The proprietor was so rude he based the television series on him and his hotel. The actual hotel used in the TV show was in Buckinghamshire and burnt down in 1991. Gleneagles Hotel has also made way for a modern development although it still existed in 2004. It looked nothing like the hotel of the TV series, which in 2019, was named the ‘greatest ever British TV sitcom’ by a panel of comedy experts compiled by the Radio Times.

And then it was back to Staffordshire via some interesting towns named Curry Rivel, Curry Mallet and North Curry in Somerset. John was hoping they would give some clue to the meaning of his name. Apparently Curry is derived from a Celtic word Crwy meaning boundary or then again it could derive from the name of St Cyrig, who crossed the Bristol Channel and established a small reed and wattle church in the area.

Meanwhile I had to think about returning to school but it wasn’t long before we were off on another adventure.

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Tag: Cornwall

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