"Land's End 2018- New York 3147, John O'Groats 874." Even the Land, where it ends, proclaims the fact, that the The End is only a Beginning. You can begin a whole new journey, and can go many ways. Sail away 3174 miles to New York, or if you're a landlubber, go to the other end of the Land, aka the Starting Point, John O'Groats 874 miles away. Land's End is also where the English Channel converges with the Atlantic Ocean. So really, there are lots of options.
"On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d'abord et longtemps, tout rivage." or "One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, of all shores, first and foremost." So said French Nobel Prize-winning author André Gide.
That being said, the shore is constantly changing, and just as one never crosses the same river twice, one never returns to the same shore. Life moves on, and the world is constantly changing. Any person who has been away from their motherland for some length of time can testify to this actuality, which however, is a discussion necessitating its own blog.
Anyway, to return to the point on hand, one has to but reflect upon the numerous times in life, when after much misery and dejection, ultimately we dust our injured egos, and get up and move on. Each beginning has an end, but not without an opportunity to open other doors. Metaphorically too, therefore, we make new beginnings from the endings we encounter in our lifetimes.
The last five days in December, found us in Cornwall, in an attempt to escape the colder Midlands. We rang in the New Year at a cozy, and comfortable modern Airbnb apartment, built into a converted stone Manor House, in Bodmin, having decided on the town as our travel base, due to its location being central to the places we had wanted to visit.
We started with Land's End, furthest South, and being "Doc Martin" fans, Port Isaac of course, and The Eden Project, which we never got to, because the outdoors were quite seductive, and Oh! the Energy, especially in Port Isaac, is both intense and magnificent, like an embrace from the Universe, bringing you the 360-degree horizons, and then wrapping them around you, lulling you to Joy.
Port Isaac seemed to have a heartbeat all its own. The cove, with its thickly pebbled beach, the Ocean stretching far out, the cliffs, in places richly browned to black, and in some places interspersed with green, and one craggy cliff in particular, unobtrusive, yet inviting the eye to linger, seemed like a nesting area or nursery for mama seagulls congregated there haphazardly, like large groups of women looking for bargains in a Sunday bazaar.
Then there is the backdrop of the mountainous hilltops, with homes nestled sparingly on the hillside. A large white Mansion, called "Khandala", possibly in reminiscence, after the hill station of the same name in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra in India, is built from the spoils of Tea Gardens. It calmly overlooks the modest house down the hill, which serves as Doc Martin's surgery when the British TV show shoots in Port Isaac between March and May.
There are other midsize homes, and tiny homes, and large homes, and Bed and Breakfast places, and larger hotels, and churches, and nooks and crannies, and stone walls, laden with thickly growing moss, and paid public toilets in an old stone building with a slate roof almost at street level, narrow lanes, cafes and Cornish Pasty shops, and cawing seagulls overhead, all gloriously coexisting in these awe-inspiring and stunning surrounds, as if each blade of grass, every blob of moss, all the flying seagulls, the slate tiles on the roofs and the doors and windows of the houses, with their flowering window boxes, the roughly hewn stones on buildings, the steeples on the churches, the signs outside the shops, the formidable cliffs, and the swaying wheat in the fields as we drive into town, was all meticulously painted in place by a divine brush, except they are so real, that you can reach out and touch them. I did. I caressed the bright green moss on the side of a stone wall on my right, as we walked downhill from Doc Martin's Surgery, feeling the lush rich emerald green thickness bursting with life. Having lingered while I felt the moss, I happily walked on, but then all too quickly, returned to take pictures. I wished I could have stumbled upon this thick carpet of moss on the ground, in a tree covered secluded spot so I would have laid down and closing my eyes, rested my head upon its comforting robustness.
We spied a little shop called Just Shellfish, hidden into a side wall, of what looked like a deep boatshed, with fishing materials and lobster traps lying around in heaps at the back. Lobster traps are seen everywhere around town, and there was even a Christmas tree sculpted with them. There was a sole woman in the Shellfish shop and her sign said she was "Open from 10:00- 2:00ish," with "till 2019" for added wit. She was holding a large strainer and was pulling out a crab from a boiling cauldron. The contents of her strainer were still steaming as she carried the huge lobster to her work table, and almost immediately starting working on it, plying the instruments and a sharp, long pin-like thick needle to nudge out the meat, with surgical precision, donning blue gloves.
A couple with a young son, sipped lobster soup in paper glasses while waiting on their lobster being prepped. The lady, between sips, told us they had owned a house just up the street, "but not anymore." In the glass case were signs of Sold Out, except in the top shelf corner, was a small section of five remaining little plastic cups containing 100 gms in each, of what looked like crab ceviche, but was called something else. We decided to try that, and also ordered the soup.
With the Lobster couple taken care of, we were issued a polite and unnecessary (because we had enjoyed watching her, and chatting with the couple) apology, to be kept waiting, and served the thickest meatiest yummiest lobster soup (not bisque) I have ever tasted. It still smelled of the sea.
She suggested adding some vinegar and lemon juice to the lobster meat bits, which gave it a ceviche-like taste, but this meat had been steamed. It was not something made in house, she clarified. I liked the top bits more than the bottom bits where the flavor of the vinegar and lemon juice was too strong for my preference for the purer tastes of foods.
We walked around some more and discovered gift shops and handmade goods shops, and the usual souvenir and postcard stores. On spotting a familiar looking storefront, we went in. I bought an ice cream cone inside. It is in reality, a Candy store, that serves as The Pharmacy in the TV Series! Thus the familiarity.
Still eating my ice cream, we walked diagonally across to the parking lot of the TV Show's The School House just up the road, which is a hotel of the same name, in its off-screen life. One of our party went to check on dinner reservations, while the rest of us enjoyed the views from this considerable height overlooking the harbor and the stately homes, including the imposing whitewashed Khandala, across the water on the lush green and steep hillside.
The locals are polite and used to visitors, and the tourists were everywhere on this New Year's Eve, despite it officially being the off-peak season, winter. We are told many of the houses around the town center are holiday lets, but one clearly spotted the residents, going about their daily lives; an elderly lady pruning rose bushes in the front yard, or kids calling in the dogs that ran out while the young mum rearranged some Bric a brac in her front porch which had a baskets of toys and such. An older man carried what seemed like two large black trash bags down the hill.
By the side of one of the mostly residential narrow lanes, ran a vigorously gurgling brook, which I followed down to the colorful pebbled beach in the cove, where it went and merged with the Ocean with effortless aplomb. Indeed this vibrantly flowing brook tumbled along so full of joy filled conviction, and inviting, that one felt compelled to ruffle its waters and pick pebbles in its path, both of which I did, my leather shoes notwithstanding.
In comparison, the calm waters of the beautiful cove had kids and adults both young and old, and a few dogs as well, playfully indulging on the water's edge. The cove is home to fishing trawlers, which having had brought in their crustaceans and such, lazed and very gently bobbed on the water's surface, a comfortable distance from the shore, close to the breakers, beyond which lay the emerald waters of the sea. The afternoon thus peaked towards sunset.
The eating houses were closing for a break before reopening for the evening of the Big Night with the famous Port Isaac New Year Eve fireworks. It seemed this was to be our last chance to try the 'world famous' Cornish Pasty, which we did. Both the Vegetable Pasty and Cheese and Onion Pasty were large, succulent and flavorful. So that was the end of our spread out three-course walking lunch, with dessert eaten in between the starters of soup and ceviche, and the Pasty as our mains.
It was still very early evening, and we had discovered that all the pubs and restaurants were booked out for dinner. We decided not to stay for the Port Isaac New Year's Eve fireworks and took a different path back to the car park. Instead of going back through town, we took a left diversion in the road, walking back atop the cliff face, with sheer drops to the water, and looking far out to sea on our left, and with homes on the right, perched up along the motorable service road, with cars parked in the driveways. Children's faces peeped out the windows. Out on the terrace of another home, a young couple on chaise lounge chairs, with heads covered, with faces barely visible due to the thick blankets wrapped around them, had settled in, perhaps to watch whatever they could of the last sunset of 2018, on this somewhat overcast day.
We left just as day was getting done, and the town was getting ready for the last sunset of the year. Driving out of town, we noticed the public bus ahead of us and allowed it to lead us away from this magical land, after a very special day.
Very special indeed, the day, the place, the people, the heightened and all-embracing powerful Energy of Port Isaac which effortlessly hijacked this post from Land's End. So, we go with the flow, that's what a balanced Energy is about. Plus, isn't the end only a beginning, which will bring us back another day?
"On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d'abord et longtemps, tout rivage." or "One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, of all shores, first and foremost." So said French Nobel Prize-winning author André Gide.
That being said, the shore is constantly changing, and just as one never crosses the same river twice, one never returns to the same shore. Life moves on, and the world is constantly changing. Any person who has been away from their motherland for some length of time can testify to this actuality, which however, is a discussion necessitating its own blog.
Anyway, to return to the point on hand, one has to but reflect upon the numerous times in life, when after much misery and dejection, ultimately we dust our injured egos, and get up and move on. Each beginning has an end, but not without an opportunity to open other doors. Metaphorically too, therefore, we make new beginnings from the endings we encounter in our lifetimes.
The last five days in December, found us in Cornwall, in an attempt to escape the colder Midlands. We rang in the New Year at a cozy, and comfortable modern Airbnb apartment, built into a converted stone Manor House, in Bodmin, having decided on the town as our travel base, due to its location being central to the places we had wanted to visit.
We started with Land's End, furthest South, and being "Doc Martin" fans, Port Isaac of course, and The Eden Project, which we never got to, because the outdoors were quite seductive, and Oh! the Energy, especially in Port Isaac, is both intense and magnificent, like an embrace from the Universe, bringing you the 360-degree horizons, and then wrapping them around you, lulling you to Joy.
Port Isaac seemed to have a heartbeat all its own. The cove, with its thickly pebbled beach, the Ocean stretching far out, the cliffs, in places richly browned to black, and in some places interspersed with green, and one craggy cliff in particular, unobtrusive, yet inviting the eye to linger, seemed like a nesting area or nursery for mama seagulls congregated there haphazardly, like large groups of women looking for bargains in a Sunday bazaar.
Then there is the backdrop of the mountainous hilltops, with homes nestled sparingly on the hillside. A large white Mansion, called "Khandala", possibly in reminiscence, after the hill station of the same name in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra in India, is built from the spoils of Tea Gardens. It calmly overlooks the modest house down the hill, which serves as Doc Martin's surgery when the British TV show shoots in Port Isaac between March and May.
There are other midsize homes, and tiny homes, and large homes, and Bed and Breakfast places, and larger hotels, and churches, and nooks and crannies, and stone walls, laden with thickly growing moss, and paid public toilets in an old stone building with a slate roof almost at street level, narrow lanes, cafes and Cornish Pasty shops, and cawing seagulls overhead, all gloriously coexisting in these awe-inspiring and stunning surrounds, as if each blade of grass, every blob of moss, all the flying seagulls, the slate tiles on the roofs and the doors and windows of the houses, with their flowering window boxes, the roughly hewn stones on buildings, the steeples on the churches, the signs outside the shops, the formidable cliffs, and the swaying wheat in the fields as we drive into town, was all meticulously painted in place by a divine brush, except they are so real, that you can reach out and touch them. I did. I caressed the bright green moss on the side of a stone wall on my right, as we walked downhill from Doc Martin's Surgery, feeling the lush rich emerald green thickness bursting with life. Having lingered while I felt the moss, I happily walked on, but then all too quickly, returned to take pictures. I wished I could have stumbled upon this thick carpet of moss on the ground, in a tree covered secluded spot so I would have laid down and closing my eyes, rested my head upon its comforting robustness.
We spied a little shop called Just Shellfish, hidden into a side wall, of what looked like a deep boatshed, with fishing materials and lobster traps lying around in heaps at the back. Lobster traps are seen everywhere around town, and there was even a Christmas tree sculpted with them. There was a sole woman in the Shellfish shop and her sign said she was "Open from 10:00- 2:00ish," with "till 2019" for added wit. She was holding a large strainer and was pulling out a crab from a boiling cauldron. The contents of her strainer were still steaming as she carried the huge lobster to her work table, and almost immediately starting working on it, plying the instruments and a sharp, long pin-like thick needle to nudge out the meat, with surgical precision, donning blue gloves.
A couple with a young son, sipped lobster soup in paper glasses while waiting on their lobster being prepped. The lady, between sips, told us they had owned a house just up the street, "but not anymore." In the glass case were signs of Sold Out, except in the top shelf corner, was a small section of five remaining little plastic cups containing 100 gms in each, of what looked like crab ceviche, but was called something else. We decided to try that, and also ordered the soup.
With the Lobster couple taken care of, we were issued a polite and unnecessary (because we had enjoyed watching her, and chatting with the couple) apology, to be kept waiting, and served the thickest meatiest yummiest lobster soup (not bisque) I have ever tasted. It still smelled of the sea.
She suggested adding some vinegar and lemon juice to the lobster meat bits, which gave it a ceviche-like taste, but this meat had been steamed. It was not something made in house, she clarified. I liked the top bits more than the bottom bits where the flavor of the vinegar and lemon juice was too strong for my preference for the purer tastes of foods.
We walked around some more and discovered gift shops and handmade goods shops, and the usual souvenir and postcard stores. On spotting a familiar looking storefront, we went in. I bought an ice cream cone inside. It is in reality, a Candy store, that serves as The Pharmacy in the TV Series! Thus the familiarity.
Still eating my ice cream, we walked diagonally across to the parking lot of the TV Show's The School House just up the road, which is a hotel of the same name, in its off-screen life. One of our party went to check on dinner reservations, while the rest of us enjoyed the views from this considerable height overlooking the harbor and the stately homes, including the imposing whitewashed Khandala, across the water on the lush green and steep hillside.
The locals are polite and used to visitors, and the tourists were everywhere on this New Year's Eve, despite it officially being the off-peak season, winter. We are told many of the houses around the town center are holiday lets, but one clearly spotted the residents, going about their daily lives; an elderly lady pruning rose bushes in the front yard, or kids calling in the dogs that ran out while the young mum rearranged some Bric a brac in her front porch which had a baskets of toys and such. An older man carried what seemed like two large black trash bags down the hill.
By the side of one of the mostly residential narrow lanes, ran a vigorously gurgling brook, which I followed down to the colorful pebbled beach in the cove, where it went and merged with the Ocean with effortless aplomb. Indeed this vibrantly flowing brook tumbled along so full of joy filled conviction, and inviting, that one felt compelled to ruffle its waters and pick pebbles in its path, both of which I did, my leather shoes notwithstanding.
In comparison, the calm waters of the beautiful cove had kids and adults both young and old, and a few dogs as well, playfully indulging on the water's edge. The cove is home to fishing trawlers, which having had brought in their crustaceans and such, lazed and very gently bobbed on the water's surface, a comfortable distance from the shore, close to the breakers, beyond which lay the emerald waters of the sea. The afternoon thus peaked towards sunset.
The eating houses were closing for a break before reopening for the evening of the Big Night with the famous Port Isaac New Year Eve fireworks. It seemed this was to be our last chance to try the 'world famous' Cornish Pasty, which we did. Both the Vegetable Pasty and Cheese and Onion Pasty were large, succulent and flavorful. So that was the end of our spread out three-course walking lunch, with dessert eaten in between the starters of soup and ceviche, and the Pasty as our mains.
It was still very early evening, and we had discovered that all the pubs and restaurants were booked out for dinner. We decided not to stay for the Port Isaac New Year's Eve fireworks and took a different path back to the car park. Instead of going back through town, we took a left diversion in the road, walking back atop the cliff face, with sheer drops to the water, and looking far out to sea on our left, and with homes on the right, perched up along the motorable service road, with cars parked in the driveways. Children's faces peeped out the windows. Out on the terrace of another home, a young couple on chaise lounge chairs, with heads covered, with faces barely visible due to the thick blankets wrapped around them, had settled in, perhaps to watch whatever they could of the last sunset of 2018, on this somewhat overcast day.
We left just as day was getting done, and the town was getting ready for the last sunset of the year. Driving out of town, we noticed the public bus ahead of us and allowed it to lead us away from this magical land, after a very special day.
Very special indeed, the day, the place, the people, the heightened and all-embracing powerful Energy of Port Isaac which effortlessly hijacked this post from Land's End. So, we go with the flow, that's what a balanced Energy is about. Plus, isn't the end only a beginning, which will bring us back another day?
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