Monday 12th July
Nice breakfast, although the waitress was somewhat ‘in your
face’. “You wait your turn” she barks., “There’s others before you”.
Breakfast is all we ever see of the Deck restaurant. It is fully booked out for the entire
fortnight. As we soon discover, that’s
true of everything in Bude/Cornwall in this strange Covid summer.
Our first objective is to do Harland Quay to Morwenstow –
the section we should have done last October.
We set off in convoy behind Tim in a taxi. Chris is in the taxi, I drive behind. I listen to Five Live and it’s shocking. The three penalty takers who missed are being
showered with abuse on social media.
They are all black and it’s horrible racist stuff. A Rashford mural in Manchester has been
defaced.
England – heroes for reaching the Euros final? England a racist cesspit? You choose. [it later turns out that the
majority of the racist social media stuff came from abroad, mainly America].
And there is more. Drunken mobs stormed
Wembley terrorising families with tickets.
Stewards were accepting bribes to open the gates.
We drop our car at Morwenstow and drive on to Hartland
Quay. It turns out that Tim was a bus
driver. Through most of the lockdown he
drove a bus with no one in it. The fare
is £45. He tells us that the Hartland to
Bude section is reckoned to be the toughest on the entire path. All taxi drivers say this. None of them have ever set foot on it. They are just reporting what they hear when they
pick up exhausted walkers.
But in this case, he is not wrong, especially the section to
Morwenstow. There are five steep
ascents, totalling 4,500 feet. Some of
the bits of the path are distinctly precarious.
Wimping out on that wet and windy day in October was a good call. We are not yet very fit, and we are knackered
by the time we get to the car at Morwenstow church. And so are my boots. Finally, sadly after so many miles, it’s the
end for them. I sort of knew they were
expiring and so I have brought my summer lightweights. The weather has perked up and all will be
well. It just remains to bring the poor
old hikers back to Hampton Hill for a decent and reverent disposal.
We poke about in Ronald Duncan’s writing hut. He is a much forgotten second rank poet of
the mid-20th century. One
little poem catches my eye:
THE HORSE
Where
in this wide world can
man find nobility without pride,
friendship without envy or beauty
without vanity? Here, where
grace is laced with muscle, and
strength by gentleness confined.
He
serves without servility; he has
fought without enmity. There is
nothing so powerful, nothing less
violent, there is nothing so quick,
nothing more patient.
England’s
past has been borne on
his back. All our history is his
industry; we are his heirs; he
our inheritance.
–
Ronald Duncan (1954) (lived 1914-1982)
It’s a nice little verse, but He, his? OK in 1954. Wouldn’t get away with it in our woke era.
And then, we are in Cornwall. Yay! Finally!
It feels like a destination. It
is a destination – but Cornwall is long – so long.
Back in Bude, Chris has parleyed a table at the Bencoollen pub.
The dialogue with the waiter goes like this
Waiter: Yes
Me: can you tell me what they are, please?
Waiter: No. They are
on the board
Me: Where is the
board?
Waiter: It’s out the
front
Me: Could you look for us?
Waiter: Not really
“It’s an old geezer’s drinking pub”
“And what’s wrong with old geezers, exactly?”
“And there’s a pool table”
She is immovable and we cancel our booking for tomorrow.
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