As I sit here I want to tell you the details of my winter
solstice walk, but I am lost in thought as to where I have ended up at the
climax of all of this. One day in January 2016 almost exactly a year ago a
voice akin to my own said, “You should do a seasonal walk to celebrate each of
the old earth festivals”. I immediately accepted this was what I would do and
proceeded to plan the first one. I set out enthusiastically, optimistically and
full of the promise of unknown adventures. I had no idea at the time as to what
a profound map it was to provide for the journey of my year. Walks made to
celebrate the turning of the seasons and as Stevie Nicks sang, the seasons of
my life. It was something so simple, self-directed and freeing. From the warm
night stroll on the beach to the ninety-mile pilgrimage along the Ridgeway facing
hail and snow, this has been an epic year. The sense of achievement is only
just starting to sink in and touch me.
Yet I don’t feel sad its over; it’s more just a chapter in a
longer story about many more explorations through the landscape. It has set me
up to find out more about the land into which I was born, to better connect
with its hidden trackways, old drovers roads, coastal paths and green lanes.
Many are intersected and overlaid by roads and motorways now. Yet many remain unscathed
to be walked too.
For this, my final seasonal celebration I went home. Not to where
I was born, but to my spiritual home in West Cornwall. Here is a place where I
feel like I am at fully alive and at peace; with its wild coastlines, far
ranging craggy moors and ancient stones. The constant flux and movement of the winds and the sea. Its hedgerows are
full of flowers in the summer and its remote lanes are windswept and muddy in
the winter. Somewhere I feel I just disappear into the landscape and merge with
the elements. With so many beautiful aspects to the land here I had considered
all the areas that I used to roam. There are many ancient stone circles,
monoliths, fougous and quoits in this part of Cornwall. I felt that I might
design my own circular route between two or three of these places, creating my
own sacred hoop. Whilst I loved this idea, when it came to it I totally threw
it out of the mix and did something completely different. I just couldn’t drag
myself away from the sea. The great roaring, restless ocean calling me back to
its side.
My friend Abbie actually served to link it all together for
me by inviting me to stay in her beautiful beach side home. She suggested we go
up Trencrom Hill which provides a wide 360 degree panorama across the moors,
fields and coastline. We sat up there taking shadow photos, talking, eating
snacks and admiring the view until the lure of our favourite cafe in Penzance
dragged us down. I was able to take in all the scenery of this part of West
Penwith, which encompasses some of my recent past and holds the stories of
thousands of lives of people who have settled here before me.
And so it came about that the next morning I arose in the
dark and dressed in the quiet before dawn. I pulled two skirts on over my old
leopard print leggings and with the sound of the sea crashing in my ears I tiptoed
out of the house and down towards the beach. I lingered on the steep steps down
to the water, staring in the direction of the sunrise. Although cloud was
massing out to sea it looked like there might be enough of a clear sky for a
sunrise. The tide was right up the sand and there was no chance of starting out
along the beach so I took the coast road running parallel to the shore. In
parts I could stray off into fields of springy coastal grass dropping away down
the cliff sides, and in other parts I had to take on a bit of tarmac, but not
for too long. The road soon petered out into the coast path.
At this point I could see what appeared to be mysterious smoke
drifting out to sea beyond the headland. I trotted on, greeting a solitary
jogger. I then wound down from the headland towards the beach and Looe Bar. Looe
bar is a huge shingle ridge separating the sea from Cornwall’s largest
freshwater lake, Looe Pool. Cornish legend has it that the bar was formed due
to the actions of one Jan Tregeagle, a man believed to have lived in Kernow in
the 17th Century. He was purported to be a man who committed many
heinous acts and was set a variety of impossible labours after his death to
keep him out of hell until Judgement Day. After having to empty a large pool
upon Bodmin Moor using a limpet shell with a hole in it, Tregeagle was dragged
down to the south coast. Here he was tasked with moving all the sand from
beneath Berepper, across the estuary of the River Cober to Porthleven. A labour
that due to wind and tide would see all the sand steadily shifted back to its
original location as he worked. One day as the beleaguered man dragged another
enormous sack of sand towards Porthleven demons saw fit to increase the
difficulty of his task. They split his sack spilling its contents across the
estuary, forming the sand and shingle ridge now known as Looe Bar. The
unfortunate man is purported to be still labouring at Porthcurno Cove trying to
shift it around the corner. When the winds screech and howl in a storm his
anguished voice is said to rise above it all.
As I descend onto the beach I can see the source of the
smoke. It’s not smoke at all, it’s mist drifting out to sea in a narrow channel.
It travels across the beach in a long, thick wisp emanating from the pool. It’s
a strange sensation being on a strip of land with sandwiched between fresh and
salt water.1 As I near the pool I see birds soaring and a raven flies crawking
over my head. Soon there are two birds flying from my right to my left,
circling and calling. The chill mist envelops me, moving around my face. Its
really cold compared to the surrounding air. The sun is starting gain the cliff
top, throwing light onto the reciprocating cliff behind me. It glows with
oranges, pinks and reds. My beach island is almost untouched by feet although there
are a couple of people up. I watch the mist roll past me and out to sea, more
coming, ever more coming. It’s a magical and liminal place. Another legend has
it that Excalibur was thrown into this lake and at this moment its easy to
believe.
I am suddenly vexed to hear a massive wasp overhead. On
closer inspection I see it’s a drone flown by a couple of the beach. I look at
them and the drone in rotation with a fiercely unimpressed expression. I can
look pretty mean when I want to. Thankfully for all of us they fly it away over
another bit of coast. I try not to get irritated that everyone has to be DOING
something outdoors. I’m jogging, I’m fishing, I’m dog walking, I’m bloody
drone-flying. No-one is just out and about for the sake of it. Everyone has to
be bloody DOING something. Okay rant over.
I stare back into the mysterious mist. I wonder if mist used
to be spelt with a y instead? (My favourite new pastime is reading from my battered
300 year old dictionary when I am in bed at night. I love to see what was once
in common usage and the origins of today’s words). The sea is rolling steadily in
and there’ll be no storms today, although of course it was such an event that
really grew the sand bar in 1924 with hundreds of huge waves crashing in one
after another….I turn to the east and the sun crests the land beaming across
the beach. I take a few photos with my rapidly depleting phone, unsure whether
each will work. It’s like being back to the old days of film cameras. I walk
back in the direction of the ocean and play a game of running from the edge of
the waves. My leather boots are soaked, its December but my feet aren’t cold.
Maybe its because I don’t care, I am in my favourite place.
Suddenly I spot something at my feet. A dogfish, about half
a metre long lies on the shore. Gone are its days of swift swimming, but I
admire its rough yet smooth spotty skin and shark like appearance. One of my
earlier childhood memories is of my sister and I finding a yellow dogfish
trapped in a small rock pool on a beach in Haverfordwest. We nobly bucketed the
hapless creature, feeling that it would be happier in the sea, and duly
escorted it back there were it could swim freely. Who knows, looking back maybe
it had taken itself on holiday and was enjoying the sanctuary of the warmer pool
where no bigger fish could chomp it for lunch. I think we were more concerned
that someone else might find it and not be as reverent as us and poke it or
something. Saying that I don’t recall how we coaxed it into the bucket……The
dogfish lies prone, facing out to sea, waiting to be claimed back to the belly
of the waves wherefore to lay to rest or to become sustenance for something
else. When I return it is inching nearer, pulled gently downhill by each encroaching
wave.
I walk on as far as a small headland, marking it out in my
mind as the turning point of my walk. As I get closer I see it is not one rock
but three. I pause and they become the past, the present and the future and
moving between them I weave the strands together pausing for thought before
crossing the last. The mystery of the myst merging lake and sea, sky and earth
seems to symbolise the merging of my worlds in my walks; undertaken on the same
island (almost) yet so many facets, mysteries and so much more to know. There
could never be enough time to walk all of this island’s trails but I will have
a really good go. Sometimes travelling alone, sometimes travelling together
just like life.
The Ridgeway allowed me to travel for 6 days independently,
carrying food, shelter, bedding and my wits to travel back on foot to the
ancient stones of Avebury for Beltain. Roaming up in the Malvern Hills allowed
me to use natural landmarks to navigate with ease and benefit from a friend’s local
knowledge to get me started. Vision Questing in the Pyrenees challenged me to face
myself and orientate in a hot, arid, mountainous scree landscape completely
unlike my own country. And then of course there were the gentler, softer walks.
These had no great distance to overcome, may have been completed on a sunny day
or even half a day, with no huge challenges to face yet no less profound or
touching in the experiencing. In a way, just like life itself. This isn’t the
end of my journies it is really only the beginning.
