Tuesday 8 August 1989. We wake in bright light. Alarmed we check the tent roof, but no... it's coming from outside. High in the sky is a strange glowing circle of light, we later find out that it is called the sun and it is something that we are not often troubled with in the north of England...
We have breakfast and discuss what to do for the day. It is eventually decided that we will go to Perranporth where going out onto the beach for a swim or paddle doesn't have to include a climb down a cliff to get there and a climb back up a hundred or so steps afterwards.
Besides, Perranporth is an attractive beach, bounded by cliffs to the south and a lower promontory to the north. The cliffs to the south house mine workings. There's a square adit visible in the top photograph, these were access points leading to the mine where water could be drained out or ore removed. There is also a huge arch formed by the sea in the rock.
The beach is very popular, perhaps because of the easy access and has lots of small pools filled with exciting life forms such as crabs, tiny fish and crustaceans and falling children...
Along the beach away from this bay are sand dunes and the scant remains of a tiny chapel said to have been the church of Cornwall's patron saint, Saint Piran. He was expelled from Ireland, tied to a mill stone which was rolled into a stormy sea. The sea immediately became calm, the mill stone floated (or he held his breath for a very long time whilst walking on the sea floor) and he ended up here in Perranporth where his first disciples were a fox, a badger and a bear. It's a wonder that Christianity ever became a thing really, but set against this is the fact that if you expressed doubt you were burned at a stake...
Away from the beach is a long shopping street where we found this barrrel on wheels, the delivery van of a local greengrocer.
We spent the full day at Perranporth, eating in a local cafe before heading back to the campsite.
It's not exactly on the way back, being some way in the opposite direction from Newquay and Porth, but we decided to visit Camelford. At this time I was still finishing writing my book about King Arthur (available here) and Camelford is one of the contenders for both Camelot and his final battle at Camlann. I (and most historians) don't subscribe to a Cornish connection even if he really were to have existed, but I set out in the book to try to give fictional reasons why all these local legends might have originated.
The church is the modern church of St Thomas of Canterbury and dates only from 1937/38.
The River Camel. With the benefits of hindsight, the children playing in it may have been at some risk as, the year before these photographs were taken, some 20 tons of chemicals were accidentally released into the local water supply at the water treatment works.
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