Practically Perfect Polperro

Wednesday 19 August 1992. Today we are in Polperro. You can go the boring way on roads which is around 36 miles or go via Fowey and take a ferry from Fowey to Polruan as part of the journey which diversion extends the distance to 47.6 miles but includes a car ferry ride. This alwys goes down well with the kids and as we are all kids at heart we always go that way!

I always think of this as the prettiest village in Cornwall. There are other contenders, but for me Polperro wins hands down. Cars are only allowed in the village if you are either living there or staying in accomodation there. The streets are so narrow that driving through them is a nightmare anyway as delivery vans can block the roads to any other traffic and streets can also be full of pedestrians unconcerned by your need to pass them.

By the time we got there it was dinner time or lunch time if you're posh. We found this cosy pub where the tables had been made for treadle sewing machines and still had the working treadles beneath the table top, which was indeed a table and not a Singer... We made sure the place was filled with the music of squeaks and groan of ancient metal joints as we practised our treadling prowess whilst eating and drinking!

We came out to find the tide had done the same - gone out... This is Polperro's inner harbour, beloved of artists but ignored this time by myself. It was only two years since taking up a pencil again and I wasn't ready for this amount of detail. See later visits to Polperro, you'll find a few etchings done here at Polperro!

The House with a Lifeboat. Well you would if you could, wouldn't you? If tempted, first ensure your house is close enough to water as lifeboats look a bit silly dangling from an inland back-to-back...

Halfway through the afternoon we found a cafe that looked ok so we all trooped inside. As we sat at the table waiting for someone to appear we were a bit surprised at the number of flies that were whizzing about. "Cor, there's a lot of flies..." I said. "Can I help you?" asked the woman at the next table. Oops...

Mum said the dwarf was about to hit her. The dwarf said she had turned it to stone with a single glance...

My brother, Frank, never a stickler for the conventions of colour co-ordination, but easily spotted due to those socks...

We have an ice cream from the Land of Legend. This is the entrance to Polperro's model village. It is well worth a look because it is not just a collection of buildings but is an actual model of the village of Polperro. Look closely and you can actually find a model of the model village!

We took the bus rather than walk back up the hill due to my foot. The lady who can't be seen but who is holding the ice cream said "Weren't you walking back from St Michael's Mount on Monday?" Obviously once seen, never forgotten! Can't understand it myself...

Miss Franny and Gill by the waterwheel at the top of the hill. In the dark days before indoor plumbing, this was where you took a wash. Tied firmly to the wheel as it turned, you were dipped in the stream three times before being released. Oh, alright... I made that bit up...!

Index to come

Porth Beach and Trevelgue Island

Tuesday 18 August 1992. We stayed away from the cars for the day and although the weather was not overly warm, we spent time on the beach at Porth and exploring the island. There was a little bit of sunshine!

Porth is a small village just to the north of Newquay and has a large camping site behind the bay. It was a regular stopping place for us around this time. There was a cafe just out of the campsite entrance and on occasion we would buy food locally and cook it ourselves over a camping stove.

To the southern side of the bay the ground rose quickly to cliffs with a paved walk leading to Newquay itself. There was another small cafe here and Miss Franny is more or less outside it - we must have been for a morning brew!

The eastern side of the bay was a long headland, the end of which was an iron-age promontory fort. When the tide came in it rushed through a gap between the end of the fort and the cliffs and thus the fort became an island. It is known either as Trevelgue or Porth Island, both names being happily recognised and accepted by the locals. There are some pretty large ramparts protecting either side of the gap, which is bridges with a wooden bridge allowing access to the fort. There isn't much to see apart from the ramparts these days but there were roundhouses and a couple of barrows there.

We spent the morning playing on the beach, cricket, catch, wondering where Mum had got to...

My photos make a rapid jump to the evening. I suspect that not a lot happened in the afternoon to take photos of. We may have stayed on the beach. We may have gone back to the tents to sit and read. We may have gone for a walk somewhere... The last sentence brought to you from my soon to be published book: How to make a boring afternoon sound full of excitement. I'm not expecting great sales to be honest...

Finally for this article and for your great relief, I stand between the ramparts on the far side of the wooden bridge to the island. It goes dark a bit.

Index to come

A Walk To and a Slosh From St Michael's Mount

Monday 17 August 1992. We had been down and up the old tin mine at Wendron Forge near Helston (where they do the Furry Dance every 8th of May) and decided to visit Penzance where we spotted the island of St Michael's Mount just off the coast at Marazion.

"Oh we'll have a go at that" the family decide, leaving me wondering if I can hobble that far... This is a day long remembered in the Burke family, for reasons that will become apparent later!

Now someone (I forget who - but not me!) had said the beach had the sort of stones that crystals or fossils could be found in. Frank had actually brought a chisel along to split the rocks but didn't have a hammer so we used another stone. We didn't find any crystals or fossils and strangely it always seemed to be the stone we were using as the hammer that split in two... I remained somwhat aloof from all this as bending over to pick up rocks when you are on crutches is not easy...

Mum baulks at a minor puddle whilst Frank and Gill ford a major river and I wonder how I'm going to get all the gritty bits of sand out of my bandaged foot...

We walk over the causeway to St Michael's Mount. "What time does the tide come in?" I wonder. "Oh it was 9 o'clock last night!" said Mum. Yes - but that was the north coast and we are now on the south and it's already halfways through the afternoon.

We got to the island and went to have a look round a gift shop. This seemed to take an amazing amount of time. We weren't going to be climbing up to the top of the hill, that's for sure!

But we came out eventually and looked back at the harbour and causeway. I checked my watch... No... still not 9 o'clock... The only photo I had time to take on St Michael's Mount before: "Oh my God! The tide!" Some of the group were still in the gift shop and took some convincing that we needed to come out and scarper.

It wasn't too bad when we first set off back but I was soon at the back of the family group, soaked foot and bandage and hoping all the grains of sand would be washed out...

The walk back... The marks on my trousers show how deep it got whilst we were walking over. WIth a bandaged foot I was unable to walk barefoot and for an hour after we got back to dry land I squelched horribly...

Halfway back and therefore at the deepest point, some idiot on a quad bike roared past everyone, going far too fast and the bike was throwing up quite a wave to soak everyone. Frank dragged his foot sideways sending a shower of seawater all over him, gaining a round of applasue and shouts of support from other waders. Half an hour later we watched a boat turn back two people who were holding their belongings over their heads whilst the water reached their chins.

We found a chippy for tea which had a "dining room at the back". This turned out to be a shed with a shelf and some bar stools. We were all a bit unimpressed with the food and when I bit into a pie and found it all black inside, we complained and left. We ended up at Penzance instead where we kept the cafe owner and other customers egging us on to tell them more about our day's adventures...

Index to come

Poldark Mine at Wendron

Monday 17 August 1992. We have a run out into the darkest depths of Cornwall - literally as we are about to go traipsing down an old mine.

We are at Poldark Mine, suitably named after the TV programme and the books by Winston Graham. It had earlier opened under the name of Wendron Forge and the tin mine originally Wheal Roots Mine that had been unused since the 1700s.

I had fallen down stairs at home a couple of weeks ago tearing a muscle or tendon or something that went TWANG! as my foot landed. Hence I am dependant on a crutch to walk and the family have lovingly (I think...) christened me Hopalong

Behind us is the spendidly named Greensplat beam engine last used in 1959 for pumping water out of a clay pit in the village of Greensplat near St Austell.

You could go down the mine suitably equipped with a hard plastic helmet and there were three levels of agility or ease.

So of course it was decided that we were going to go down it, up and down slippery slopes or tight corkscrews of steps and when it came to the choice of routes of course everyone chose Route C, the hardest route through the mine...

After which I reappeared into open air, dishevilled, out of breath, bandage trailing from around my foot and ankle - never let it be said that I don't put effort into these blog posts you know... I should be well on the way to a nobel prize for documentary literature if I didn't keep skipping through my lifetime in a sort of yo-yo fashion! So we sat at a table for a refreshing drink - where are they by the way? - avoiding the wasps and a blue bum with a well-practiced swaying dance...

Holiday Index to follow

Newquay's Wonderful Beaches

I'm digging into the past - 34 years into the past to be precise - to bring to you, my dear readers, yet another example of the daft exploits of the Burke family on holiday. This time we are camping in what was to be a fairly dull if not altogether wet week in August 1992. Blimey! That was last century! Oh well, lucky that I'm not aging in any way then [cough, splutter...]

Saturday 15 August 1992. Yes, once again the Burke family head Cornwall way. Only this time there's an injured soldier along for the ride - yes I'm on crutches (well... "crutch" in the singular to be precise) having fallen down the stairs a few weeks before and torn the muscle on the back of my leg. It hurt at the time, it's not too bad now unless I have to bend far enough to pick something up...

It's a greedy little place is Newquay - not content with having just one beach, it has a whole string of them, divided into small bays by rocks or, in Towan Beach's case by the harbour and headand to the south.

Just up the road, we stop off for a drink. Not sure really why Gill looks so moody, but bear in mind she was 15 at the time! At the back is my mum and dad and opposite Gill is my nephew, another John, so generally known as "Little John". Thirty years on it doesn't quite sound right somehow... Missing from the photo (but not the holiday) are: me, wife Miss Franny, and my brother Frank. Camera shy - that's us...

The view from a bench on top of the cliffs near the harbour. From here you can see what I meant about many beaches enclosed by rocks into small bays.

Due to the hop-a-long foot we had a few more sit-downs than usual! Look, I'm suffering for my art here, juggling a crutch and wielding a camera all at the same time... Behind the harbour is a large headland with Fistral Beach behind it, famous for being one of England's best surfing beaches. I have been known to get on a board myself but found that standing up was nigh impossible and lying stomach down was murder on the old six-pack due to the sandpaper effect of board and sand!

Ignoring the piteous bleats of pain and hardship the family drag me down once again to beach level to have photos taken and to laugh at my efforts to climb up again to pavement level...

Walking back along the cliff tops of Newquay towards our campsite at Porth, only a few scant miles and no more than 287 steps to go up and down (what do you mean I'm exaggerating?) Well we had to stop on a few more benches to test the comfort and sprininess of wooden slats before we got there.

In this case the stopping was blamed on my foot, but the real reason was that Mum was ogling male bum cleavage down on the beach through binoculars as some chap on the beach below showed off the crack of doom by bending over to tie his shoelace or something...

Holiday Index to come...

The Geoff Burke Photographic Collection No.3

Delving for the third time into the photographs taken by my uncle, Geoff Burke. Perhaps a little background information might not go amiss here. Geoff was born in 1933 in Rochdale to John (my grandad) and Annie Burke. The first family home was on Church Street near the Rochdale gas works and despite the steep hill the smell from the works never failed to make me gag a bit whenever we visited my Great Grandma Brierley who was Annie's mother and who still lived on the street into the 1970s.

John and Annie however moved with their two children Allan (my Dad) and Geoff to a large house on Fenton Street in Rochdale not far away from the railway station. Geoff never married and spent many years caring for Annie after John passed away. Following her death at the age of 90, he moved to Blackpool, following Allan and his family who had moved there in the 1970s.

Despite the move he never sold, nor cleared out, the house on Fenton Street and this task fell to myself with my brother Frank and our families. Despite his claims that there were no old family photographs, we found many such albums. Whatever his motives were for denying their existence I have no idea.

It could be said that Geoff was a keen photographer. I tend to think of him more as a keen collector of photographic equipment that seldom got used and even then no one ever got to see many of the photos he had taken. He had a large collection of cameras and each one saw him go to his favourite spot to retake photos he had taken with every new camera, perhaps to compare them. Favourite spots were Broadfield Park behind the town hall and beyond to the parish church of St Chad.

Broadfield Park gave a fantastic vantage point, looking high above the town hall and town centre. Rochdale was well known in those days for having a very attractive town centre and had proudly named the road quite grandly as The Esplanade. It was home to the town hall, an astonishing number of banks, the main post office, Remembrance Gardens with a large cenotaph and a generously wide road.

The road was in part wide because it was one of the widest bridges in the world, covering the River Roch which disappeared somewhere near the main library at one end and only emerging some 446 metres later at the far side of the town centre. On its way it replaced no less than seven earlier bridges.

Broadfield Park was set against the steep slope towards the parish church and had the local nurses' home at one end. At the other end the terraced paths converged towards the junction of The Esplanade with Manchester Road. It had a large pond and a huge chunk of stone with a sign that said the stone had been moved here from somewhere in the Lake District by a glacier in the ice age. Bloomin' stone age men leaving their rubbish all over the place...!

Of more interest are the odd photos taken around the town. This is Oldmill Street either in or around the Lower Falinge district of Rochdale. I'm afraid I never did get all those many districts in my head. This street is now mostly residential but this photo betrays the reason for its name.

The car is a Ford Zephyr Mk II, one of the Three Graces of Consul (the cheapest and most basic), Zephyr and Zodiac (top of the range). They were made from 1956 through to 1962.

Not quite sure just where this is. Most of Uncle Geoff's photos were either shoved into tins and boxes and even the ones in albums had few hints as to who, what, when and where... Here, one lady isn't tempted at all by the thoughts of a new mop whilst another stares dubiously into the window of Domestrix, wondering how on earth vacuum cleaners work and whether they might be dangerous.

The Salvation Army Citadel. There is no identification other than this. Whilst I know that the present day building is on Newgate, I'm not sure where this is or was in the early 1960s. Leave a comment if you know? The cars shown here are a Wolseley 15/50 or 16/60 on the left and a Humber Sceptre.

A very early example of a supermarket, here shown just around the corner from Redcross Street. My grandad on my Mum's side had a traditional grocery shop on Yorkshire Street and it was the advent of these shops that led him to have to fold up and sell.

They were a halfway stage to today's supermarkets. For the first time you had to go and find and fetch your own collection of tins and bits and pieces instead of standing at the counter whilst the grocer did all the fetching and carrying for you. As far as I remember there were as yet no conveyer belts, you had to push all your purchases yourself along a formica plastic top until they were within reach of the till operator.

However all sorts of new goods were coming out at the time with brands such as Camay and Knights Castille soaps, individually wrapped replacing the large bricks of evil smelling red carbolic and dark green Fairy soaps that if not rinsed off quickly would strip hands of any remaining flesh - well that's what it seemed like, although of course they didn't...

A church social event. Annie Burke, my grandma, is next to the last lady on the right of the middle row and her mother, Maggie Brearley, is next to her to our left. What the event was I have no idea. They went all over to whist drives playing cards and she was never happier than when rummaging through a jumble sale - unless it was when trying to persuade you that you no longer needed your favourite pullover because there were needy people who needed it more than you.

Memories of Relatives and Ancestors Index

Sidmouth with G-Line Coaches 2026

Saturday 8 August 2026. We are repeating a holiday taken three years ago, although this time there are only enough photos to warrant a single page due to the knackered demeanor of one of the participants (er... that would be me...) and the fact that my hands shake a bit much for taking all that many decent photos on a screen. Especially when I can't see what I'm taking on the phone screen in bright sunlight!

So with a quick sneaky (because we haven't got there yet) photo of Sidmouth promenade, we hop on a coach from local firm G-Line finding the same driver as three years ago, Andrew, in charge. The journey down was marred when a bad accident occurred ahead on the motorway, causing massive hold-ups. We pulled onto the A-roads but of course they were getting choked anyway and a poor chap at the front of the coach had some sort of brainstorm due to early Alzheimer’s and he started shouting that we men all needed to do something because our wives were being "attacked" (not quite what his words were).

Many of the women onboard were a bit frightened at this, his poor wife told us later she thought that she was going to have a heart attack because of it. Andrew, very wisely, just calmly told us what the issue with the motorway was and that there was nothing he could do that he hadn't already. As the chap was in the front seats just behind him, he must have been wondering whether the shouting at its peak may have turned violent but thankfully no. We later heard that someone lost their life in the motorway accident, so it had been the right decision to come off onto the normal roads in any case.

Sunday 9 August 2026. The following day was a trip to Exmouth and a boat trip along the coast from there almost east to Sidmouth again and back. I didn't want to put too much strain on the legs before the boat trip so we found ourselves sitting in what in Italy would be a piazza but what in Exmouth would be best called an "avoid the drunk druggies shouting and fighting each other". They were there last time as well, so three years of spoiling for ordinary folks what could be a quiet attractive haven near the indoor market...

We found our way to the queue for the boat and sat on the upper deck and I found myself sitting next to a fairly young couple from somewhere either in or near Ely, the cathedral city in Cambridgeshire. They were a lovely couple and we spent much of the journey chatting away. They were serving cream teas on the boat but we decided the risk was a bit much on a moving platform so stuck to a soft drink. Lots of cormorants and gannets and other gulls and I managed to spot a puffin sitting on the top of one of the high rock sea stacks, the first I've managed to see despite various boat captains along the east coast claiming the place was swarming with them!

On the coach as we turned back onto the coast road Andrew suddenly said, "oh there's a cliff fall in front!" and we saw a large cloud of red sandstone dust rising into the air. After our evening meal we had a wander up the coast to see evidence of several falls, but my money is on the far one jutting into the sea.

Monday 10 August 2026. The resulting effect on the sea itself is clearly seen here as the sea turned red/brown with the sandstone dust right out almost to the horizon where a sharp contrasting blue line betrays the true sea colour.

Tuesday 11 August 2026. Even the beach itself did not escape the change in colour. Though the cliffs are sandstone, the beach at Sidmouth is pebbled. The photo looks towards the west, to the cliffs of Peak Hill. Erosion of the cliff face here has also eroded an iron age fort on the hill.

My one and only sketch for the week. It was started in Sidmouth but finished once back at home. Consequently in order to remember the scene properly I always take a photograph to refer to afterwards and in this case it was the first photo in this article. Just in case you want to compare to see the obvious mistakes...

The last morning begins with a look at the hotel for the week, the Royal York and Faulkner Hotel. Like lots of large seaside hotels these days it is more of a reminder of hotels of your youth (if you are already of pensionable age) than ultra-modern. Younger people can recoil in horror or just mild fright as the clock strikes every quarter of an hour with a decisive and unapologetic set of chimes. There is Wi-Fi provided. In some cases that is "provided you are in a part of the hotel it reaches".

They were training at least three new young staff members in the dining room but they were eager to please, in some cases more so than the older established waiting staff who glared meaningfully at a jug of hot milk when we asked for more milk for our breakfast cereal. In the event it took so long we had asked again and received a jug well before the head waiter turned up with some cold milk. By then not only had we finished with the cereals but any cooked breakfast as well.

We shared our breakfast and dinner table with a lovely Irish couple who enlivened our holiday so much - thank you Pat and Mary!

She who looks after me, Miss Franny taking a last sniff at the air on the southern coast before breakfast on our day of travel back to Lancashire.

And the old gimmer himself - bloody hell, is that *ME*??? I recently got fed up of all the adverts for these hats on Facebook but they did look good and I ordered two, this blue one and a beige one to match my head. I have to say they are far more comfortable and suitable than baseball caps for such a distinguished figure as myself. Sorry... did I say "distinguished"? I meant "barely hanging together"...

Until the next time......

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