My Most Singular & Horrific Experience in the Celtic Woodland, or the Fright of my Hitherto Short Life. Part 1.

It was a joint decision by my late wife and I, that we go on our honeymoon a year before our actual marriage.

I realise, in sincere guilt, that some of my readers may here baulk at what is a rather a bald, promiscuous and preposterous opening statement to my tale. I am fully aware, even in these days of irreligious non-conformity and of manic introspection into the many evils that life has to offer; that my memoir begs your honest disrespect. I therefore in all modesty, most carefully and earnestly ask your singular indulgence howsoever you feel I have not as yet, earned it.

My future wife was at the time, a most conscientious follower of the teachings of the Misses Nightingale and Pankhurst; yet for all that was a woman worthy of high admiration and usually to be found of a certain romantic if routine frame of mind. She insisted that a holiday would be good for, my rather poor health.

This microscopic sample of her leanings, and generally vaporous state, suitable for the notes of an errant alienist, will I hope give sufficient grounds for the reader to forgive her such minor indiscretions and affaires du secret et du coeur pleasured. Counting them not as evil but as simple lack of perhaps the necessary strengths in my lady's moral backbone.

Onwards then, as my dear old tutor was wont to say. We decided, after much consultation with knowledgeable friends and Doctor's, that we would seek out the attractive freshness and solitude of the North Cornish coast.

With this in mind, we booked a week in what seemed to be a rather pleasant if bas de gamme, little hotel right on the harbour in B. A quiet little fishing village at the end of a small fjord like harbour and peculiarly complete with its own unique tidal blow hole from out of the cliffs.

B was overlooked, we were told, by the threatening and mysterious presence of Bodmin Moor. The home, of course, of such romantic, essentially elemental legends as Jamaica Inn and the dark, twin tors of Rowter and Brown Willy.

The discerning reader will soon realise how this dark but charming little smugglers cove piqued our interest. Myself for the drawing and palentological possibilities offered; and for my affianced, the sheer breathtaking romance of the place that inspired her, and rather fired, or diverted, her classic Amazonian nature.

The reality, after a long and tiresome railway journey, was therefore even better than we had first surmised and seemed as something straight from the pages of the Strand magazine or the fanciful writings of Mr Hardy and Mr James. A romatically gothic aura pervaded the whole area as a mist around a mansion.

Indeed I had been informed prior to leaving that a certain chapel beloved of Mr Hardy existed in the woodland above the harbour. This I, of course, resolved to visit at the first opportunity.

Our first few days then, were most pleasurably employed, walking on the many cliff pathways and sitting, again most companionably, drawing and painting in the harbour itself.

It was sometime therefore, before I could, in all conscience, leave my fiancée to rest and read in her room and embark upon the aforementioned expedition to St Juliot's, as the small chapel in the woods was called.

After breaking my fast as heartily as my condition allowed, I made an early start up the valley beyond the village.

The woodland path followed a pleasant little silver, snaking, rill from the shore in the harbour, up onto the moor itself and eventually to its, no doubt, bubbling source in the Curlew haunted heights.

Although I found it, rather hot and sticky walking, my attention was drawn constantly and completely to the plethora of wildlife, both flora and fauna that abounded, wherever my wondered glance happened to fall. I was immediately entranced with this delicate and sunlit fairy world. I felt, most certainly that I had indeed entered the secret glen of the legendary Cornish pixie.

After sometime, moving steadily, if briskly, up hill I chanced to hear what turned out to be a buzzard mewing its plaintive cry above the treetops. I quickly sought the raptor in the blue arc of the sky and then looking down somewhat suddenly, surprised at a sudden drop in the temperature of the place; I realised that a peculiar sea born mist had fallen and was now in the process of crawling, rather damply, around my motionless figure. The surrounding air seemed to have taken upon itself a peculiar, sickly shade of verdigris green. Not one that would normally grace the earthy side of my pallete. There was also a rather subtle if unpleasant odour as of sour earth and rotting, far away flesh.

Unpleasantly surprised at this sudden change, in what had been, hitherto, pleasant weather conditions, I debated whether to postpone my expedition and return to the welcoming arms of my lover. However as the reader will no doubt realise, I am certainly made of sterner stuff and I emphatically chose to continue stepping forward with renewed resolution.

The atmosphere that now enclosed the woodland had taken on what can only be called a peculiar texture. It was as if I had to physically break through the thickening mist as I would through the web of some extraordinary species of spider. This strange pervading mood was also punctuated regularly by the booming, rather, eerie sound of the blow hole in the cliffs below, coming, I understood, every twelve minutes or so.

The strange but regular booming served to heighten the oppressive atmosphere and I confess to a certain trepidation as I continued my somewhat erratic path upwards.

However, as you will recall my tutor's excellent motto, I moved onward, still deeper into the woodland. Until I came, by dint of much exertion, to an extremely high and thick hedge that seemed, to my increasingly tired eyes, to completely block the path ahead.

This I surmised to be, initially, an insurmountable barrier, until I approached somewhat closer and realised that my present path turned at right angles to run parallel with the hedgerow itself.

Indeed, as I approached the thick greenery more closely, I began to hear some of the small beginnings of a sound that will now stay with me for the rest of my time on this, God's good Earth. A blood curdling growl that made, it seemed, every small hair on my body stand on its absolute and terrified end. Something, gargatuan and yet horrible, monsterous in its alieness, not of this earth, I felt most certainly, was approaching from the far side of the hedge...