Boscastle

Friday 9 August 1996. We left Tintagel and a few miles away we came to Boscastle where we had tea.

We looked in vain for the real cottage that is the inspiration for one of Fran's models. As we were in the last shop before going back to the car I found a postcard of the cottage and we were able to ask the shop owner where it was.

Boscastle is another of those never-changing fishing villages of Cornwall. The cliffs make a natural harbour, protected from the sea by a long inlet and harbour wall.

The village winds its way down alongside the River Jordan - what? Well not the one in the Holy Land perhaps but another smaller River Jordan that flows into the River Valency, seen here. There is a Museum of Witchcraft here, apart from the gift shops, perhaps the only nod to tourism. It very bizarrely contained the skeleton of a local "witch", Joan Wytte, who died in Bodmin Jail after being jailed in 1813 for brawling. She had been known for a local healer and clairvoyant and before her death aged 38 had become quite bad tempered violent, possibly due to a tooth abscess. Her body was somehow not buried and instead her skeleton became used for pranking the locals and for use in seances and eventually spent 40 years hanging on the wall of the museum. She was eventually decently buried two years after our visit, in 1998, after poltergeist activity in the museum.

We wandered down to the harbour and its boats with the neat coils tangles of rope. They young-uns must ha' been at they scrumpy agin'...

There was an aged bridge crossing the River Valency and I sat on the river bank to do this sketch. Eight years later it was totally destroyed by the great flood of 2004 and is now an elegant, though much less pleasing steel footbridge.

There was the gentle creaking and clank of a water wheel, almost hidden in shadow. The shop on the left promises books, music, crystals, candles, arcane artifacts & pictures. I do like a good arcane artifact!

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