A week in Cornwall
I am on a train again, this time going in the opposite direction, back to the Netherlands. It is Friday morning at 10:49 and the sun is shining and there are whispy, paint-stroke clouds in the sky.
I wanted to write this as a week note, to remember what happened and how it felt.
Monday
When staying at my parents house, the morning walk opportunities open up infinitely. I could choose to walk down to the cove, past the geese and onto the Todden. I could go across the fields and along the coast path. I could go down the road to Poltesco. I could go to St. Ruan, Kennack, The Lizard...the choices are plenty.
I choose to go down to the cove. I am still on continental time so awoke early, earlier than the geese whose field remains empty apart from a couple of wood pigeons who are pecking at the soft ground. It's threatening to rain and sure enough after I begin to trudge back up the hill, the rain comes down first in misty droplets and then heavier, thicker globules of water.
I work in the morning, in preparation for the workshop on Tuesday whilst everyone goes for a walk to Kennack. I don't really mind missing it as I'm happy to have space to focus and go over some final workshop details.
In the afternoon we go to Falmouth. I meet up with an artist I've been wanting to speak. She gives a new perspective to living in Cornwall, something I need to remember. In the evening I climb at Tide, I like the atmosphere of this climbing gym, it's more relaxed than Monk.
Tuesday
The day goes by in whirlwind in the way a one-day workshop always does. The small group is a pleasure to work with and the fact that it's small eases my nerves to a certain degree. I notice I still don't really like talking about myself.
I get the bus back to Helston in the evening and crave calm music with no lyrics. I listen to Cosmo Sheldrake all the way and crash out in the evening.
Wednesday
I need to do a small amount of work in the morning, just to make sure I don't have a pile up by the time I'm back and, importantly, I won't have to think about these little things whilst here.
I go with my parents to the Botallack Mines. It's an hours drive north-west from the Lizard. I haven't been there for several years but the place remains vivid in my imagination. The pump and winch houses balanced precariously on the stoney outcrop facing the full emotional power of the Atlantic. There's a howling westerly wind that greets us as we arrive, the kind of wind that wares you down like sand if you are subjected to it's sound for short while.
We walk down to the ruins of the mine and spend time touching the rock, imagining how the world might have moved at a different time. I feel in awe of the mines, the shafts of which go out under the sea bed. I heard once before that the miners who worked these shafts could hear the waves breaking above their head.
After lunch we catch the end of a tour of the site and the guide, a man who spoke so eloquently and poetically and with the rough warmth of a Cornish accent, brings the place alive for us. We hear about economies, cultures, geology, labour conditions, and suddenly I feel like I've been fed a slice of time. I am alive with curiosity and a desire to understand.
I watch Youtube videos in the evening of "souls braver than my own" (as our guide phrased it), who enter into the abandoned mines to show us these archives of mud, and stone and of human capacity and cruelty.
Thursday
I am reading George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier and my mind is still in the mines. In the morning I take a trip with my parents to Kynance Cove. The tide is lower than I've ever seen it and, after clambering over the rocks to the beach, we explore the beach at full capacity. Knooks and crannies are exposed everywhere we look, cave mouths open up and with mining on the mind I spend more time in the darkness of the cave than the shining sun.
In the afternoon I go along for a house viewing that brings up complicated feelings amongst all of us. After a debrief, I get a lift into Helston to pick up some goods for the return to the Netherlands (tea and welsh cakes). Thinking of going back pains me and I try to distract myself by going for a climb at Tide.
They've begun the reset of a wall that leaves it half empty, with only the chalky residue of many attempts remaining.
Friday
I write this as I sit on the train, feeling slightly weepy and wishing I could turn around and go back. I wonder what the mines look like today, is the guide there and will he bring the landscape to life for others? Is the wall at Tide still empty? I feel an urge to go back and clean the chalk, to fully reset.
Today I realise the purpose I might find in week notes.