All the Feels in Camelford

I wasn't sure how I was going to feel, returning to the small Cornish town in which I grew up, 30 some years ago.  Turns out, I was still fond of the old place.

And now I feel sad.

For a bit of background, we moved from a fairly posh London suburban town (Godalming, darling) when I was 6 yrs old to Camelford in Cornwall, where Mum ran a guest house called Kings Acre (ably assisted by our cousin, Janice) while Dad commuted back & forth to London as a Station Officer in the London Fire Brigade.  It made for a rather unique childhood, helping Mum to check guests in each week and building obstacle courses in the back garden (which was a least an acre... hence the name) for the more adventurous of our residents.   Like most things, it was a bit of a mixed bag - the fun bits of having a giant house as your entire playground, off season, plus that huge garden with trees to climb and explore (we kept two goats to keep the grass down).  Offset with the not so fun bits of having to move out of that giant house come the summer season plus a bunch of strangers taking your Mum's time and attention away from your Very Important 7yr Old's Needs.  We would decamp into one of the 3 caravans in the grounds - no plumbed in loos, so if you needed a wee in the middle of the night, it was either the Pee Bucket in the cupboard or you took your chances with stepping on giant, orange-frilled slugs on the path over to the house.  That sensation, of a slimy slug popping and schmearing underfoot, is one that is not easily forgotten.  Shudder.

As my sister and I got older and started secondary school, Mum wanted to spend more time with us so we sold the guest house when I was about 11 or 12, and moved into our place on Mill Lane, a regular house on a little, quiet cul-de-sac, built into a hill overlooking the town park, Enfield Park.  It was a lovely place and had the quirk of being an upside-down house where you entered the main living space from the front, then went downstairs to where all the bedrooms were. Built into and at the top of a hill, it also had a large back garden - this time, a little bit that was level, before the main part of it descending in a steep slope from the house, all the way down to the park.  It was pretty much wild and I remember hacking my way through chest high ferns (the ones with the little coppery nuggets on the back of the leaves) to get from our house, down to the little wooden sty gate right at the bottom, and into the park.  In that same steep garden is the tree I used to have to climb up to escape the psychotic goat, Billy (I know), that HATED my guts and used to charge at me, full pelt, from the top of the hill as soon as he saw me enter in the field at the bottom.  It was a race to the tree in the middle to see if I could get there first before he would headbutt the shit out of me.  Our loathing was mutual.  Even today, I hate all goats - and they hate me too.  Stupid goat.  But its OK.  I'm over it now.  Really. 

I left Cornwall at the age of 18 to go to University.  I'm sure I probably did come home a few times for holidays after that but by the time I started my PhD, I'd pretty much left for good (and soon after the rest of the family joined me in Cambridge, so that was that!).  So it's been a minute since I've been back and I was very curious to see what had changed and how I would feel about it all.

Nom nom nom.

We started the day with a full Cornish from the Scarlet Hotel to round out our very enjoyable experience there.  I'd booked a taxi to pick us up at 9.30am to take us back to the airport to collect our rental car for the next few days (yes - that does mean I have 2 car rentals running concurrently RN - bizarrely enough, it was actually cheaper to do it way!).  First decision point of the day - do I go with the smaller, manual transmission car (helpfully pre-scratched this time) or the larger automatic transmission SUV?  Two competing factors at play here - 1) the roads in Cornwall are even smaller, steeper and generally more AAARRGGHH than those we'd enjoyed so far on this trip.  2) I've been driving automatic cars for the last 20yrs since moving to the US, so was not sure how rusty my clutch control skillz were.  In the end, I plumped for the smaller car - and I'm glad I did.  My driving skills were just fine (I'm clearly tapping into my residual UK driving mojo) and the roads feel even narrower than I remember.  I've obviously been spoiled driving on fat American roads.

Today's itinerary was a bit loose, with a vague intention of exploring a bit of the North Cornish coast before heading over to Camelford at some point.  Driving up from Newquay, I decided first to take ManpanionTM to Polzeath, a lovely beach where we used to spent a lot of time in the summer as kids.  It was just as I remembered it - especially the bit where you park on the actual sands themselves, paying attention to the signs that urge you to make sure you get your car before the tide comes in or it might get washed away!  We also go to another beach next door called Daymer Bay - this one was smaller, less touristy and equally as lovely.  I'm not a huge beach fan (I don't like how the sand gets everywhere) but my sister was always in her element on the beach and in the water, so I have very happy memories of time spent at Polzeath and Daymer Bay (not forgetting the Mr Whippy ice-creams, of course).

Despite this, some idiots STILL get swept away.

Polzeath beach

Next up on my Childhood Reminiscence Tour was a stop at Port Isaac, an historic fishing village that has gained recognition more recently for appearing on the UK series Doc Martin.  We parked up at the main Car Park (4.50GBP to park!!) and walked down into the village.  Ay carumba!  This was ManpanionTM's first real exposure to the insane steepness of Cornish roads and a reminder for me!  It was SOOOOOOO steep!!!!  And ridiculously narrow!!!  Just brilliant.  ManpanionTM was in a bit of shock, I think as he kept saying "well, thank goodness it isn't raining..." - the combination of both verticality and slipperyness would have been too much for his little American legs!  

One of those stupidly named cars!  In the wild!!

Anyway, after only about 10mins, we reached the bottom and the lovely harbor - with all those attendant harbor smells.  The tide was out when we were there (it was about 11am at this point) so there were just two fishing trawlers lying beached in the harbor, anchored with big rusty looking chains.  I'm sure all the shops are different from my day, but otherwise, it didn't feel as if it had changed much.  There were quite a few visitors around and its now more of a tourist destination than active fishing port but it had a certain timelessness to it that I remember well.  I'm not sure why I used to like Port Isaac so much (or even how often I used to go there, tbh) - I think in my mind it was the quintessential Cornish Fishing Village, so it was emblematic in some way.  

Let's go!!  First stop on our 
coastal tour...

Oh yes.  Now I remember.
Cornish hills.  

ManpanionTM was getting increasingly
squeaky about the narrowness of these
streets

All the smells with the lobster pots

Tides out, sun's out.

View of Port Isaac harbor

Just loving the fish handshake logo!

We wandered about for a bit, enjoying the sights (and smells) before starting our slog back up the hill.  It really wasn't too bad (just one foot in front of the other) so it didn't take us too long to get back to the car.  Next to the car park was a recreation park, where some swarthy chaps were dismantling three red-striped pointy circus type tents - apparently we had just missed the Port Isaac Sea Shanty festival, which had taken place over the weekend.  Shame, really as that would have been an amazing experience for ManpanionTM.  But never mind.  By this point, it was coming up to lunchtime, so I decided to shift our intended visit to Boscastle and Tintagel to the next day and instead head for Camelford, to check out the place, maybe get some lunch in one of the pubs and then pay a visit to George & Pat, old friends of the family.

Look where we are, Mum!!!

It was kinda weird picking up the familiar road signs and places, so there was a LOT of squeaking from me as we got closer.  "OMG - DELABOLE!!!  The place with the HOLE!!"  "Wadebridge!"  "BODMIN!".  You get the idea.  As we start getting closer to Camelford, I turned to say to ManpanionTM "well, depending on which end of Camelford we are coming in, we should see Kings Acre on the left hand side".  No sooner had those words left my mouth, then I spotted twin peaked rooftops poking up above the trees on my left - and we were there! 

Hello, old friend!

It was quite surreal and I was pleasantly surprised by the fond feelings that the sight of the old place brought up.  In my memory, it had this rather stately air about it, standing proud and resolute - now, with it in front of me, it evoked those same impressions - but it did feel a little bit, well, smaller than it did when I was a kid. Not quite as imposing as I remember.  Some of it was the same - the main house, the garage next door that Dad had converted into a living/play space for me and my sister (but which we were a bit scared to use because of all the GIANT brown wolf spiders that stubbornly refused to leave) and the front garden.  

Moving round the back and sides of the property, though, it had all changed.  There were multiple new buildings and extensions and fences. The caravans we used to live in had all gone (understandably - they were a bit knackered when we lived in them) and the back acreage of land was unrecognizable from the wide open space that we used to play in and get chased by our goats.  The little raised bed garden that used to be off by the side of the house was no more - and I wondered whether they had discovered all the pets we had buried there (RIP Kimmy).  I didn't see the bank with the line of ash trees we used to climb in so I think they had been cut down - but the old well was still there.  Unfortunately, we didn't get to look round the main house but we did meet a lovely lady called Linda who had bought the place from the people we had sold it to.  So it was nice to reminisce with her a bit.

The back of Kings Acre - everything to the right of the 
fence (including the fence) was new

Converted garage that is undoubtedly STILL
full of giant child-eating spiders

So that was Kings Acre.  And then it was time to head into Camelford itself.   We made our way past my old school on the left ("there's Sir Jims!") and to the top of the high street, it all came flooding back.  I remembered these roads like the back of my hand.  No GPS required.  As the Co-Op at the top end of the high street came into view (past the village hall on the right) the first inkling that Something Wasn't Quite Right starting to surface.  I had spent a summer working at the Co-Op as a teenager on the check-out tills and stacking shelves (and also getting interviewed by the police after having been falsely suspected of theft - FUN) and while it was never as fancy as Waitrose (the UK version of Whole Foods), it was nice enough and always busy.  Now, driving past it, it looked downtrodden, a bit dirty and old.  As we continued to drive down the hill, through the town, it became apparent that a lot had changed in my 30 years away - namely, where are all the shops?  Where are all the people?  Where has the life in this town gone?  It was a Monday lunchtime and the town was dead.  Hardly anyone around and, of the few shops that remained, most were closed. 

Everywhere, boarded up shops and hardly any people.

I discovered then that I had more affection for the place that I realized as it was heartbreaking to look at what had been such a vibrant, lively town and see the hollowed-out husk of a place it had become.  The SPAR shop was still there - but inside it was now more like a service station or 7/11, rather than the proper little convenience grocery store it had once been.  It was symbolic that the largest, most prominent storefront on the whole high street was, in fact, an undertaker and funeral home.  Talk about depressing.  Also depressing was the state of our second house in Mill Lane - it wasn't super fancy before, but the street was nice and well kept when we lived there.  Now, the road was full of pot holes and all of the houses on our old street looked tired and a bit run down.  Our old house had weeds growing in the driveway, mildew on the walls and the amazing view of the valley and park below were obscured by an ugly brown fence.  That also made me feel sad.  The park was still nice, though - so that was something, at least.

Former site of many a great Pooh Stick battle.

In my childhood memory, this 
part of the river was a raging torrent.

Enfield Park is actually, genuinely really nice.  
Not sure who that weird creeper behind me is, though.

Back garden of our old house on Mill Lane (which you can 
just make out) - mid way up this tangled mess is the tree I used 
to seek refuge in.  Fucking Billy.

Our secret entrance to & from the park
as kids.  A woodland douche pass, as it were.

Do some fucking weeding you slobs!  Grrr.

My old school.  Didn't look around too much - but many happy 
memories playing badminton in the covered court with 
Mr Durham (aka the Pirate King)

We looked in vain for somewhere to have lunch but the two pubs I remember fondly (the Mason Arms and the Darlington) were now both shut.  Talking later with George and Pat, they gave us a breakdown of how the town started to die out after the three banks left, each within a few months of each other.  We ended up taking a short little trip out of town, to the Old Inn at St Breward, on the fringes of Bodmin Moor.  I had a sausage and egg bap and ManpanionTM had his first Ploughmans (with a side of chips fried in beef dripping - yum!).  I also bought him a pack of Scampi Fries to try later - so I'll let you know what he makes of that gastronomic experience.  

The weather was still glorious (THANK YOU, weather gods!) and after lunch we headed back into Camelford to visit with George and Pat for an hour.  It was so great to see them - we had spent many fun hours with the Brown family growing up (especially playing charades at New Year) and G&P were in the same house that I remembered, so it really was like stepping back in time 30yrs!!!  They were both doing great and we heard about what everyone was up to, so it was a really nice way to finish out our time in Camelford, reliving some fonder memories and offsetting the sadness of seeing the town's decline.

After our visit, it was time to head over to Bodmin where we were going to be spending the next two nights, and check into the Bodmin Jail Hotel!  I've stayed in many interesting and unusual places over the course of the years - but staying in a converted jail is going to be a new one for me!