Cornwall Calling

*books train ticket for saturday* *faints*

Did you pay with shirt buttons?

blood darling ... BLOOD

Tony, I've always done it from Padstow to Port Isaac. The walk along Rock beach to Polzeath is made all the better by stopping at the Oystercatcher for lunch before following the cliff path to Pentire Point, my favourite spot in all England. In recent years they have installed a park bench there and I've spent hours just gazing across the Camel estuary watching fishing boats bobbing on the tide, puffins whirling overhead. Then on to Port Quin, location of the hexagonal building used as the doctors cottage in Poldark. Jesus Christ, why did you have to remind me of that walk? I've been going to Padstow for Mayday on and off for over 30yrs now but haven't been in recent years. I feel the need to go next May, damn you.

Train fares are exto...........a lot of money aren't they?

Ah Missi, I have done that walk so many times. One of my very best friends is the wonderful Mary James (sister of Oliver) whose family had a house at Daymer Bay. When we were students at Exeter we were able to use the house during the winter months from time to time. We'd get down there in blizzards, gales and desolation and walk for hours. I'd sit atop Brea Hill, play darts with a young Rick Stein in the Rock Hotel and go round to Pentire Point and on to the Rumps with alarming regularity. Since then we have been back many many times - Mary and Adrian had kids of the same age and we'd play with them on Daymer Bay beach, watch them surf at Polzeath and do all that North Cornwall stuff at least once a year. Pasties from the Rock bakery are amongst the best foods in the universe. It always was a touch hooray henry round there but we went out of season and avoided those people most of the time. Nowadays it's Eton en masse. The Oystercatcher is full of braying fools. You have to step carefully to avoid the detritus but it is still possible. If you return Missi be warned - it may not be just as you remember it! Mayday in Padstow is still a gas though!

Oh and I just remembered, I always stopped off at the little stone church with the bent spire on the golf course at St Enodoc at the end of the beach, and sitting by John Betjemens gravestone whilst I recalled his descriptions of Cornwall. For over a 100yrs it was buried under the sand dunes and was eventually uncovered by a violent storm, or so the legend goes. Whenever I had to leave Cornwall and come home I used to get terrible withdrawal feelings as I drove back over Exmoor past the Jamaica Inn.

Padstow, you mean Padstien! He has taken over the Bakery and a small ice cream shop as well. His son is now working on taking over Newquay opening up a beach cafe cum restaurant! Ah! Watergate Bay and a 63 splity parked in the lay by all night with me 8 foot Malibu! Those were the days! A pint of Scrumpy or two at the Bowgie Pub and you can’t remember your name! Ha! Arrre! Jim Fish Lad!!! Let me take you surf canoeing in a single seater! It’ll be fun lad! Ha!are! The North Coast is favourite Fish, real Daphne du Maurier's country, although what have they done to the Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor? It’s probably not worth stopping for now I guess. You'll love it Fish. Try Whitby next (my favourite place) on the North Yorkshire coast, where old Bram Stoker wrote Dracula! another great place. Have a nice trip Fish. Creek

Ah! Fish forgot! If you are into things spiritual, there is a Carmalite Convent in St Mawgan and I think they may have started letting people inside! It is a silent order and it is bloody interesting to go inside and have a look round if they have opened it up! Mawgan Porth is a nice little beach too. We sat on top of the cliff there during the lunar eclipse, that was spooky! I envy your trip.

oh yes, i think i can just see fish in a convent... what a splendid idea creek.

How about two in a single seat canoe?

Silly me, of course Jamaica Inn is on Bodmin moor not Exmoor, I was daydreaming again. Another great time can be had hiring a pushbike from the place at the end of the old station yard in Padstow and cycling along the old railway route to Wadebridge and on to Bodmin. The Bodmin Folk club used to meet in the old prison there, what a setting for songs and ballads of murder and debauchery! I know Rick Stein has split the population of Padstow, half of them hate him for taking over every damned catering facility he can, whilst the others are grateful for the extra trade he's brought to the town. Personally I always preferred the London Inn and would eat there at every opportunity. It only seats about 15 people in a little room at the back of the bar but the food is always terrific and the prices sensible. I hated it when they installed that bloody harbour gate. It changed the character of the harbour and made it look 20ct. whereas it had until then, retained it's period appearance in the main.

i am readying my wimple ... you know sometimes the thing you most need to do is the thing you can least afford ... but bugger it ... i have a strong barefoot doctor style instinct that this is the very best thing i could do right now ... and i can take the laptop and work on the novel (*lights candles and burns incense to appease agent*) ... a change of scene ... a healthy blast of sea air ... and my friend is an acupuncturist ... it's been a shitty year folks ... but i get the feeling all that is about to change ... *glitters*

It's weird reading you all writing about places that are on my back doorstep, though it's a little strange because Fish is going to Penzance, which is sixty miles away from the Camel estuary! It's true that there are hooray Henries about everywhere around the estuary, but it is easy enough to avoid them. Rick Stein's restaurant may be in Padstow but it is so expensive as to be like an enclave of London, and, yes, the London Inn and the Custom House, and several other restaurants in Padstow, are good enough places to eat fish dinners at a reasonable price. (I'm too poor to have ever been to Rick Stein's, but something in me resists the idea of paying much for seafood. I mean, it comes out of the sea by the net or potload and needs little cooking or dressing.) In my opinion there are better cliff walks than Pentire Head in the area, but that's just me being a clever Dick. (I prefer the moor, anyway.) d.beswetherick.

Forty miles, I mean.

I haven't eaten in Steins place and I'm not sure I'd want to. The kitchen backs onto a narrow lane and as I passed by there I saw the door was open. The was a small worktop at the back with a broken tiling backsplash and a rusty vice mounted on the worktop (obviously for cracking crabs and lobsters). Two kitchen staff were loitering in the doorway puffing on fags (no Larph, the tobacco variety). The general impression I got was of a lack of hygiene, and coupled with the outrageous prices already alluded to it made MacDonalds seem like a good deal.

If you have ever been a diver you don't need a Steins restaurant, collect muscles off the rocks at low water, have to be longer than your thumb, closed to collect, open after cooking to eat! Clams out of the silt not sand, a bit bigger than cockles, mixed in hot steamy spaghetti with olive oil and garlic and crusty bread on the beach with a bottle of rough Moroccan Red! Sea Urchin not the black ones with long spines they have snot inside but the squat round ones with short spines that are purplely in colour. I used to have a special set of snippers that cut the shell in two. Take a piece of bread and wipe it in the top of the shell (throw the bottom part of the shell with the gut away) and eat it slowly paying homage to the sea.........................it's like a fruity, juicy, tangy flavour. Wash it down with a white Port cooled in the sea! It’s the ovaries that line the shell and they taste like nothing you have ever tasted! Scallops fresh, uncooked are okay but just drop them into a pan with a dribble of olive oil and just let them stick for a sec and flip over and eat straight out of the pan! Boiled rice with wild mushrooms, Ah................................................................... Dandelion leaves as your salad, white radish out the hedgerow! Grate a bit and taste it if its like horse radish you’re okay! Bitter and don’t eat it. Sea Bass gutted and cooked over an open fire on the beach. Mackerel soused in a butter and vinegar sauce fried in an old frying pan. And the Cornish night sky on a July evening! Fish! I’m coming with you pal.

But Creeky you've just eaten half of her family, i don't think she'll want you now.

Not a mermaid you idiot! You don't eat them! God Flash you invite them to dinner! I will have to take you in hand old man, I really will!

What fish is a mermaid like Darryl Hannah? Is that what you're saying?

*wishes to make it abundantly clear that this fish is nothing at all like a mermaid*

Creaky, that all sounds disgusting. *stomps off to chippy for cod and chips*

You cook it all first Missi, it's only the scallops,I'd eat raw, their really nice raw. O' well dinner on my own then. Fish, sorry pal, I relly don't see you in "that" way either! Sorry, but Mrs Creek would batter my brains out with the old frying pan. Fish, Fish! If it hasn't alredy been said the "Eden Project" go and see it, it is bloody well awesome mate! And warm inside take your script and you can sit in the warm and write all day. Creek

Hi:) Go and see Luxalyan bridge between st blazey and the eden project. worth it, magical place. Era

Hello peeps as the host in question,I'mseeing Cornwall in a new light...puffing on fags and finding muscles on the rocks,I'vebeen doing it wrong for the past8 months... Will return Fish to you replenished and rebuffed. Be afraid,be very afraid BoumBoum [%sig%]

well d.bes ... are you coming out for tea and buns?

Cornwall is beautiful at this time of year! Three of my favourite walks of all time are there - round the Roseland Peninsula (and take the little ferry from the aptly named 'Place' to St Mawes for a sit down and lunch in the little pub opposite and up the little street from the ferry dropping off bit) - or down the Helston River on the Lizard - or start at Port Isaac, walk round to Polzeath via the sensational Rumps, on to Rock and then get a ferry over to Padstow for lunch (Rick Stein if you feel rich or just the pub) and then get the ferry back to Rock and a bus back to Port Isaac (as you will have walked quite a long way). They are all sensational in an area where it is difficult to have a bad walk. The Eden Project is also great - as are the Lost Gardens of Heligan (but probably not the best time of year to go there). have fun and I hope the weather stays fine!

The Minack Theatre in beautiful, its cut into the cliffs. I once saw a production of 'In The Woods' and dolphins started jumping out of the sea, magical! Ralph

Yes, the Minack theatre is nice. Next door to it, 2 mins walk, is a museum of telegraphy, used during the war, that I found great fun. Also go to Mousehole, its pretty. What i noticed about Mousehole when I went, was the extraordinary number of cats there. Ironic, really. Lamorna cove is nice. Penzance is full of ex hippies and stuff, so quite nice too. You can get a helicopter from there to the Scilly Isles (15 mins) if you can afford it. Whatever you do, have fun.

I've just spent all day in the garden until a neighbour with a buzz saw drove me indoors. Tis absolutely lovely down here at the moment, with blue skies and warmth on the cheek. It's true that the plants are going over, but that means you can see the birds and insects, which are teeming at this time of year. Today I saw a great tit pecking blackberry seed, and a fat robin watched me writing a story. Some flowers are still out - the alizarin fuchsias and the underrated bindweed - and the berries and hips are shining red in the bushes. I must say that Penzance is one of my least favourite towns in Cornwall, but there's a cracking art gallery at Newlyn on the western outskirts of Penzance. I know you haven't any transport (unless your hosts have), but buses should take you quickly to the gorgeous coastal crannies on the Penwith peninsula (almost everywhere is perfect, but Land's End is way spoilt). A walk up from Porthcurno and past the Minack Theatre is wondeful, as is the primeval north coast near Zennor and Morvah, villages I've used for character names. I fear that you'll find Cornwall ridiculously expensive, but the best things are free. d.beswetherick. (Camelford.)

goodness me ... it sounds delightful ...