HOME AGAIN...

I started this blog getting on for five years ago now and one of my first posts was in praise of Sir John Betjeman, his poetry, his love for the north coast of Cornwall, his home in Trebetherick and his resting place in St. Enodoc churchyard.

Last week we stayed nearby in St. Minver churchtown with its church dedicated to St. Menefreda, supposedly one of the 24 children of the Welsh King Brechan.   The church is the mother church for chapels at Porthilly and St. Enodoc itself and this photo I took (click on it for a larger image) shows St. Enodoc with its twisted spire, surrounded by its tamarisk trees, in the middle of a golf course and within sight of the glorious Camel estuary.   Never mind Betjeman, I quite fancy it myself as a final resting place, for what could be better than to be between a golf course and the sea.   But not just yet!

Little has changed since we were last in the area.   Maybe a few `developments` at Polzeath, whose attractiveness seems to decline in direct  proportion to its rise in popularity.   But  we like to get away from  all that on the coast path along the Greenaway to Daymer Bay and on to Rock and Porthilly.   Or from New Polzeath up to Pentire Head, along to Lundy Bay and on to Portquin.   Bite sized chunks, savouring the atlantic air, the cleansing breeze and always something around the next corner.

It`s an area we have visited before, that we know and love and enjoy to the point where it`s almost like going home.   To somewhere familiar, where it wraps itself around you and makes you feel that you belong.   But now I`m  home again here in deepest Kent, slowly readjusting to the old routine but knowing that in a couple of months time we`ll be back in Cornwall doing it all again.   I can hardly wait.  

Then roller into roller curled
And thundered down the rocky bay,
And we were in a water world
Of rain and blizzard, sea and spray,
And one against the other hurled
We struggled round to Greenaway.
Blessed be St Enodoc, blessed be the wave,
Blessed be the springy turf, we pray, pray to thee,
Ask for our children all happy days you gave
To Ralph, Vasey, Alistair, Biddy, John and me.

 (Sir John Betjeman - Trebetherick)