Pilchards are big, oily sardines. Their oil once lit the lamps of Victorian London. And, packs of salted pilchards kept the people of Cornwall alive through harsh winters in an age when putting food on the table to simply survive was a challenge. Here’s a peek at a secret harbor my guide, Tim Uff, shared with me. Don’t tell anyone, but it’s Penberth Cove (just a mile from the famous theater in the rock, Minack Theatre). It’s a rugged bit of Cornwall (sorry about the wind noise in this clip). From here you can imagine a hilltop watchman spotting a school of pilchards (“where the water turned purple”) and blowing his trumpet. All the fishermen would jump into their boats and charge out to encircle the fish with their nets. A good catch would have fisherwomen trudging from village to village with bushels of salted pilchards for sale on their backs, and the people of Cornwall would be kept in protein through the winter.
Cornwall’s Ancient Hedgerows
An icon of Cornwall — rightly nicknamed “The Garden of England” — is its fearsome hedgerows. For a thousand years, the hardy Cornish people have been picking the rocks off their rugged fields and stacking them along their lanes. Consisting of a stone framework filled in with earth and made vibrant with a tangle of vegetation, hedgerows also function as wildlife corridors. And, if you rip them out (as developers might be inclined to do), you get erosion. These hedgerows are part of the ancient fabric of Cornwall, where man and Mother Nature are dance partners (and man understands who is best qualified to lead).
I’m thankful I have a good local guide. Tim Uff expertly motored me through the wonders of the Penwith Peninsula here on the “land’s end” of southwest England. An expert guide with a car costs about £200 ($300, www.tourcornwall.com). For a group of four, that’s a great value. For a hardworking guidebook writer, having the help of a guide like Tim is a godsend!
Tropical England
While updating my Rick Steves England guidebook, I’ve endured some pretty dreary weather. So dropping into the Eden Project in Cornwall was a delightful chance to enjoy the tropics in England, and to explore the biggest rain forest in captivity. Here’s the description from the guidebook:
Set in an abandoned china clay pit, the Eden Project is an ambitious and futuristic work-in-progress – a theme park of global gardening with an environmental conscience. Exotic plants from all over the world are showcased in two giant biomes, reputedly the largest greenhouses in the world. The displays focus on sustainable farming and eco-conscious planting. If you’re looking for a quaint English cottage garden, this isn’t it. Rather than a flowery look at England’s past, this “global garden” gives you a sense of how the shrinking world will affect us in the future (www.edenproject.com). I haven’t experienced anything quite like this in my travels. Have you?
Beauty in the Ruins of Tintern Abbey
Tintern Abbey is one of most beautiful and evocative sights in all of Britain. And seeing a wedding ceremony inside was icing on the cake. In this clip the harpist strums while the pastor worries about the threat of rain, and the bride is nowhere to be seen (though she finally did show up).
Details Paint a Bigger Picture of a Little Cotswold Church
Buried in the Cotswold region of west England is the pristine village of Stanton, with what appears to be just another little medieval church. But, by knowing what to look at, you’ll see deeper. Follow me on an exercise that includes psychoanalyzing the patron saint (St. Michael, a giveaway that the church was built upon a pagan holy ground) to feeling the grooves worn into pews by sheepdog leashes centuries ago.