When I first lived in Penzance, my next door neighbour was a tiny, seemingly ancient lady, who scarcely spoke in more than a whisper, and considered herself very aristocratic in her manner. Unaware of how impractical I was, she used to ask me in to her house to do little jobs for her. On one evening, she saw me admiring a photograph of the Cornish coast on her wall. “It’s the Cot Valley”, she explained- “I went there with my husband when we were first married…it’s so nice to have done these things when we were able…” and she sighed wistfully, dreaming of her youthful adventures.
Well, for anyone not familiar with the topography of Penwith, the Cot Valley lies about twenty minutes’ drive from Penzance; yet for old Mrs D, it represented a faraway land of which she knew little. I was moved, as I think she hoped I would be- I think there was always an element of artistry in her conversation, and in her needs. To be so excited by somewhere so close-it was a glimpse into another age, before railways, the internal combustion engine, motorways and cheap flights. For Mrs D, the Cot Valley remained as exotic and remote as Cornwall itself would have seemed before the Victorians built the Great Western Railway and brought it within a day’s travel of London.
And I found myself thinking of Mrs D this afternoon. The lockdown was relaxed on Wednesday, and driving somewhere to exercise is now legally permitted. So, with great excitement, we headed north out of Penzance, the road flanked by great walls of purple rhododendrons, waiting for the moment of glimpsing the ancient village of Zennor, grey against the blue sea beyond, cosily enclosed by its iron age fields and their crooked walls. From there it is an hour’s walk, through the pinks of campion and thrift, to Gurnard’s Head, the long rocky finger stretching out into the deep blue depths. My adored novelist Mr E.M.Forster walked there in the early years of the 20h C, sat upon it, pondered an idea for a story, went away, and promptly forgot all about it. I have been there many times, but never once had an idea for a story, and today was no different, although had I written one it would have been full of larks, who were carolling enthusiastically, and kestrels, circling with their familiar quiet menace.
Driving back, it occurred to me that I was probably more excited by Gurnard’s Head than I’d ever been, after two months of not leaving Penzance. As the motorways empty, and the skies quieten, we’re all, it seem to me, turning into versions of old Mrs D, our sense of the wonders of nearby magically restored, and with it perhaps a little bit of our inner Romantic.
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