OK – Fowey in Cornwall has quaint little streets.
There are delightfully quirky coffee shops (Pinky Murphys and the Red Herring) and a superb deli (Kittows)….and if you stay at Duchy Cottage as we regularly do you can pop next door to The Safe Harbour and drink as much St Austell Tribute as you want without having to worry about being breath tested.
But, above all, the surrounding countryside is….perfect….
A few years ago a lady in the small Cornish town of Fowey felt that a local bus stop shelter needed smartening up……….but instead of just sitting around and moaning she and her neighbours did something about it…
It was scruffy and horrible and the seat was broken and it is one of the first things people see when they arrive here.
All the bits of furniture and paintings have been donated by lots of different people who all wanted to see the bus stop improved
So you can wait for the bus in proper comfort – now that is what I call real community action. Moreover the shelter has an annual makeover. We took the photo above last year (we go to Fowey quite often because it is my wife’s home town) but this year, as our grandaughter discovered) it has gone all modern.
What a difference when ordinary people decide to do things themselves…..
That’s right – I married a Cornish girl nearly 44 years ago and we still often go back there.
This is the cottage where we stayed in Fowey a few weeks ago.
Conveniently it’s right next door to a pub – “The Safe Harbour”
The Lovely Mrs P was born and bred in Fowey and when this Londoner went down there do do some courting (strange, old fashioned word….) we used to go down to that pub for a quiet drink and a little privacy
Opposite the pub is the letter box…
…and almost opposite the cottage is the alleyway that leads to the church and the harbour.
The church, St Fimbarrus, is where we got married in 1967…
….and we posed before it 40 years later…
Further down the town you come to the mouth of the River Fowey, Fowey Harbour, which is a busy little port for ships large and small.
“There is nothing- absolutely nothing- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
Fowey also has a fully furnished bus stop…
While further inland are the (rather modest) Golitha Falls where the infant River Fowey tumbles down from the edge of Bodmin Moor
One day we went further down to the western tip of Cornwall where, every twenty miles or so, there is a delightful sandy cove with a beautiful natural beach set against rugged cliffs. Once there we followed the cliff path to Pedn Vounder Beach and harvested mussels for our supper from the isolated rock standing up from the sand
The cliffs look as if they have been hewn by giants to carve out forbidding ramparts
Beneath the rocks there sits a woman of mysterious beauty – does she seek to capture my heart?
She has no need for it is the Cornish girl who captured my heart many years ago…
Meanwhile the eternal sea washes against the sand, whispering the memories of people like us long departed and yet to come…
