As I was going to Saint Ives

 There are four ways of going to St Ives from St Erth or Lelant: 

1) By car, along a boring road, but don't try it in high summer unless you like traffic jams.
2) By bus, on an equally boring road.
3) By train – a spectacular cliff-top journey that's worth every penny of the £4 return fare. 
4) By foot, along the coast path.

I definitely recommend the fourth option as it's a lovely walk. And who knows?... you might even meet St Ives' famous bigamist who loved pussy cats.

This is Lelant Station, a place I knew well in my childhood. Mum and dad had struck up a friendship with one my Infants' School teachers, and she lived in a houseboat called Maggie, here in Lelant.  I spent a couple of nights sleeping on-board and have happy memories of crossing the railway line to pick watercress for our lunch.

This is the only photo I have of Maggie, with my schoolteacher Miss Oliva on-deck.  She was an accomplished artist as well as a teacher and signed her paintings A.K.Oliva. I wonder what became of them?

This ageing hulk (the wood, not the woman) was, I feel sure, the remains of Maggie, which I came upon in about 1994. 38 years before this I would stand at about this spot and pretend to steer Maggie down the Hayle Estuary and over the ocean blue. 

My usual route from Lelant station is along the saltings, but this time the tide was too high, necessitating a short diversion along roads to Lelant Quays. 

Since WW2 this place has also been known as Dynamite Quay. According to an excellent website on the quays of the Hayle Estuary, it was actually a loading point for fuses, to be used with explosives. 

Here's an unusual feature that photographers of Lelant Quays seem to miss – a bank reinforced with steel plates from old ships. 

The treacherous mouth of the River Hayle. Many a boat has come to grief here, where the river meets the Atlantic waves.  The headland in the distance is Godrevy; if you click the photo to enlarge it, you should be able to see Godrevy Lighthouse on the island.

Footpath and railway line keep close company all the way to St Ives. This line had the distinction of being the last one built exclusively to Brunel's 7-foot gauge. 

Looking back along Port Kidney Sands, with the Hayle Estuary in the middle distance.

Carbis Bay has become famous this year as the location for the recent G7 conference.  To my mind, the clutter of buildings on the beach are an unsightly mess, but some call it progress. 

A closer look at the newly 'developed' seafront. Thankfully, some of it is being demolished as it was built without planning permission. (Photo: Cornwall Live)

We're almost there now – the view across Porthminster Beach towards St Ives harbour. 

A few views of St Ives and its narrow streets...

We returned to Lelant by train, and so were treated to many of those fine views again. The single and return fares are the same (£4) but we didn't mind; it had been a glorious walk. 

As I was going to St Ives

I met a man with seven wives.

Every wife had seven sacks,

Every sack had seven cats,

Every cat had seven kits.

Kits, cats, sacks and wives,

How may were there going to St Ives?

If your answer is 2802, go to the bottom of the class!

Singing for Saint George

On April 19th, a week before St George's Day, a large group of us met at The George Inn in St Briavels for a premature celebration of England's patron saint. The event had been organised by my friend Janice and I'm grateful to her both for inviting me and sending me these photos.

Janice provided songbooks from which we could all sing and play, and several of us were also ready to sing solos... and what talent there was in The George that night. 

I'd expected that so patriotic an occasion would feature plenty of songs in praise of England and the English. Well, we started with a nice English one (The Leaving of Liverpool, I think it was) but then our eclectic tastes took us to America and Ireland, before coming back to England again.

By the middle of the evening, one important land that hadn't had a song was my beloved Cornwall, so I remedied the omission with my own rendition of Lamorna. Janice knew it from previous Angie performances and we had no difficulty getting everyone joining in the 'wet, wet wet' of the chorus. 

'Twas down in Albert Square,
I never shall forget,
her eyes they shone like diamonds
and the evening it was wet, wet, wet.
Her hair hung down in curls,
she was a charming rover,
and we rode all night in the pale moonlight
away down to Lamorna.

Hats off to them all. I've felt neither prouder nor wet, wet, wetter since leaving Cornwall!

Friends will know that I've grown rather despondent of late with my ukulele experience. Gatherings with my regular ukulele group, the wonderful Ukes uv Azzard, have long been important to me but there was something missing. I now realise what it was.

This was the first time that I'd played and sung solo since the Covid pandemic. Now there's every indication that the interminable Covid Winter is behind us and the joy of singing with uke-playing friends has truly returned.