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.

Cornwall 1992 Holiday Index

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...

Cornwall 1992 Holiday Index

Sidmouth and Budleigh Salterton

Saturday 26 August 2023. After the excitement of finding the Red Arrows were giving a display a couple of hours after arriving at Sidmouth, we woke early the following morning with time for a sniff of air before breakfast.

Sidmouth early in the morning before breakfast. There has been a little rain but it is brightening up. Our room was on the second floor with windows across from the bed with a view of a brick wall 6 feet away and another window on the right hand wall with a view of a car park where apparently there had been a fight during the night. We never heard it. In fact there was screaming and shouting a few doors down from us. We never heard that either...

There are a few people wandering about and even a few brave, or stupid, people swimming in the sea. We were to find that about half a dozen people were swimming every day in the sea around this time.

Breakfast over, our first excursion takes us to Budleigh Salterton, a small village with pebble beach and a stream running down the main street down a culvert. It's still early enough that some shops and cafes are still closed and we opt to walk down the hill from the bus stop to the beach.

Just about everybody else had headed down a side street from the coach drop-off to the cliff tops, seen in the middle distance. We reached the beach and found some colourful kayaks high up on the shingle and we have to take care walking because of the wire cables used to winch boats up the high shingle bank of pebbles from the sea.

Lobster or crab traps are piled up waiting to be baited and taken out. As they sit on the sea bed they are attached to floats, balloons or empty plastic containers painted bright colours.

Other assorted bits of fishermens' gear was on the beach, tubs, various sticks, bits of tarpaulin and a barrier to fool the fish/crabs/lobsters into taking any signed diversions into the traps...

We had a cuppa in a cafe as we climbed back up the hill from the seafront and then spent the few minutes left before the coach came to pick us up, sitting on the nearby cliff top overlooking the sea. I had forgotten my hat and the sun was fierce on my stylishly bald head. I put my hood up and did my monk impression - I'm a green monk - a recycledtine...

Coach Trip to Sidmouth, August 2023, Index

Perranporth and Camelford

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.

Return to Cornwall 1989 Index Page

Newquay Harbour Wildlife

Sunday 4 August 1996. It's lunchtime and it's taken all morning to get from Porth to the centre of Newquay.

We've managed to leave the shops and we've reached the beach at Towan Beach, noteable for the island which has an art galllery on it. I've only just climbed down the cliff, I'm not climbing back up it!

But the family are quite happy to sit on the beach or go splash in the sea. I go for a look at the harbour which is just the other side of the road down which we've just walked.

There are no large ships here, just fishing boats and small rowing boats used to get to the larger boats that are moored too far from a wall to jump or climb onto. There's not much in the way of pleasure trips in evidence here, you can hire a boat to go fishing, but the harbour does have some boats that go out with tourists. They must have all been out, or perhaps the owners had realised it was lunchtime and had stopped operations. There are even trips to go looking for marine life. Newquay is visited by the odd dolphin or even huge basking sharks or sunfish at times.

You may even find the odd bit of wildlife following the fishing boats back into the harbour, hoping for a few escapees! A seal was swimming about in the hope of one of the returning fishing boats dropping something overboard! One or two people were paddling or swimming (in the oily waters of the harbour when there are beautiful beaches literally 50 yards away!) and there were several screams as the seal surfaced near to them.

A sign was warning that seals are wild animals and shouldn't be approached, though why anyone would want to paddle or swim in the oily waters of a fishing harbour is beyond me anyway. The harbour has much significance for Newquay - in fact the town was called Towan Blystra until the new quay was built in the 15th century. It's a little uncertain that the name changed as early as that. Newquay doesn't appear in written records as a place name until the 17th century.

A fishing boat returns and the chap aboard proceeds to chop up mackarel onboard with a machete. He tossed the fish tails into the water, but the seal was obviously of the more discerning type!

The afternoon wore on, tea time approached but inexplicably the rest of the family decided to head back to the B+B, away from all the cafes and restaurants, meaning we had to take to the cars and drive round looking for somewhere to eat. No pubs seemed to open for food until later and it was with relief that we found a pub around 7:00pm and some 30 miles away that wasn't fully booked already.

Return to Cornwall 1996 Holiday Index

Cassis Beach

Wednesday 29 August 2007. We are in the French Riviera town of Cassis and after walking around the harbour with its pastel houses, colourful boats and Gallic atmosphere we set out to walk to the beach.

Cassis beach was a clean sandy beach and from the looks of the lines running across it, it had been raked or smoothed out by a tractor. A row of buoys marked out a safe bathing area and there was a row of towels, beach umbrellas and sunbeds, with an equal number of people either under them or lying on them. Well... under the umbrellas and lying on the towels or sunbeds. We didn't see anyone lying on top of an umbrella...

It wasn't gorgeously sunny, but it was bright and it was very warm, well up in the 30s and certainly enough for us to look for somewhere to sit for a while in the shade with a long cool drink. We found this place, a small cafe sitting on the beach by the harbour and we ordered a drink and settled down for a while to watch the total lack of interest in the row of pedallo boats lined up along the sea's edge. We lingered for a while and then decided to use the loo before moving on. There were two wooden doors marked "Privé" and two rather large keys hanging on the wall outside. A chap from our coach had taken key No.1 so Fran therefore took key No.2. "Non! Non! Les Hommes en deux!" came a cry from the cafe.
"He wants us to swap," said Fran. So they did. However they didn't swap keys and these were needed to lock the doors from inside! "I had to sit stretched out holding the door shut!" Fran complained.

I found out later why men had to use No.2. It had a hole in the ground and a porcelain surround with two places for your feet. Ugh! But someone might have piddled over those little raised platforms! I stood behind the porcelain and piddled over them myself, feeling vindicated when the flush failed to wash over the foot platforms...

Return to Mediterranean Explorer Cruise, 2007 Index

1930s Photo Album Includes Blackpool From 1931

Several years ago I bought an old 1930s photo album from an antiques shop with a view to scanning the photos and using them on the blog. In the ensuing years with around 100 photographs waiting to be scanned, cleaned of scratches, dust marks, tears and scuffs, it got shelved in favour of me scanning my way through my own collection of negatives.

Anyway with all the excitement of 2020 I've dug it out and have today finally scanned the last of the 98 photos, breathing a short sigh of relief that the other 27 pages of the album had not been put to use!

Each page that had been used contained multiple photographs, though luckily for me most were arranged side by side as the above right hand page and not in a format like the left hand page where each photo required jiggling the album around on the scanner bed.

I have no idea who these people are. That they lived in the North West of England I am in no doubt, as the album was bought in Lancaster and the places depicted - which in most cases are labelled - range from the Lake District to Lancashire seaside towns, the Yorkshire Dales and coast, North Wales and in a rash and singular photograph: Shropshire. Perhaps the air so far south made the family a bit giddy... Anyway with absolutely no bias being shown at all, I'll start in Blackpool!

Out of all the people depicted on these photos there are a few who regularly crop up and who must have been the proud owners of the camera. By the time of these photographs, Eastman Kodak Box Brownie cameras had made photography a popular, if rather expensive, hobby. Even when I got my mitts on a Kodak Instamatic in 1966 my parents would admonish me at the start of a summer week's holiday: "Now don't go mad with that camera - save some film for Christmas...!"

So on this particular set of photos, although I recognise it as Blackpool - I lived there for 40 years and am not that far away now - we won't be seeing any photos of the Tower, piers, or Pleasure Beach. Just the family on the beach somewhere to the south of the Foxhall and Manchester pubs. And yes, that is a large chimney sticking up in the background, probably the one at Rigby Road gasworks.

A couple of the photos feature buckets and spades - the staple activity at the time was digging sandcastles, or holes to Australia or scale models of Kilimanjaro which was oft just a by-product of the hole to Australia. Buckets and spades were made of metal at the time. If you jammed a spade into your bare toes by accident you would most definitely know about it as your Mum washed the blood and sand off with salty sea water and your Dad uttered something like "Well let that be a lesson to you to be more careful!"

If you were lucky, the reward for a decent stab at Australia was an ice cream. There was a choice of vanilla or plain if the ice cream seller forgot the vanilla... Ice cream stalls on the beach didn't have refrigeration so ice cream tended to be frozen solid at the start of the day and contained solid lumps of ice until several hours had passed.

The men of the family. Or friends, or whatever. None of your slovenly t-shirts here - they were something that US soldiers would wear under their shirts ten years later during WW2 to stop the unwashed shirts from smelling. Here we are all dressed in suits with a waistcoat and tie and hankerchief showing from the top pocket. Trousers have turn-ups to catch any fluff or coins and keys they might inadvertently drop.

Likewise the ladies are looking their best. Cloche hats, suits with skirts, silk stockings, furs and pearls - the perfect gear for a day at the beach. This album was put together by a fairly well-to-do family, you will have noted by now. Indeed, they owned a car, which we shall see once or twice during future dips into the album. However, it certainly would not have held all the people we have seen so far. We can place these photos a bit more precisely now as there is a (mock) windmill on the Promenade behind them to the left. This used to be just south of Manchester Square where Lytham Road joins the Promenade. It would later be moved southwards to stand opposite Waterloo Road.

Time to head back to the digs where Mrs Scott is no doubt hard at work making tea! The fact that this was more than a day trip makes me think that some of the large group of people may simply have been staying at the same guest house and the children and/or adults had made pals. So we will leave these good people to have their meal and then either take in a show or simply go out out again to walk along the Promenade and "swank". I'll leave you to guess which of them will be back in the next set of photos from the 1930s!

If by any chance you recognise any of these people, I am willing to return the album to the family. Often photo albums are thrown away by one generation, leaving the next to wish they still had them. My email address is featured on each page of this blog in the side panel. Perhaps best to wait for a couple more articles to make sure the people you have recognised do actually turn up again!

Return to Found Photos Index

Return to Blackpool Promenade and Beach Index

Snow Falls in Blackpool and District

Monday 31 January 1983. We awake to the sight of snow falling in Blackpool.

Grabbing a camera, I set off to walk up the Promenade. Usually snow in Blackpool means a few tiny flakes floating for half an hour. It is very rare to see snow actually start to settle let alone cover the ground like this.

Having lived here in Blackpool for almost half a century, this is the only time I can remember snow covering the sand on the beach! Although on saying that, we only lived close to the seafront for five years, whilst my parents had a hotel on Trafalgar Road.

The White Church in St Annes looks a little whiter amidst the snow. It doesn't take long for traffic to start turning the snow into dirty coloured slush on the roads! And sadly, that is it. Why I didn't take more photographs that day I really can't remember. Either I had to be somewhere else or I was too skint to buy film (photography was an expensive hobby back then!) or I was afflicted by a fierce desire to be back in the warmth of home... I'm not sure. Whatever the reason, these were the only record of the day that I was to make.

Return to Blackpool Promenade and Beach Index Page

John Burke's Blackpool

Way back in 1994, when the Internet was somewhere only nerds went, this particular nerd started a web page about Blackpool. I was allocated a magnificent 5Mb of space by my then Internet Service Provider, Demon who pointed out that this should be sufficient to store around 50 books of text. Or was it 15? No matter!

Photographs though, made a huge dent in the amount of web space I had and all the photographs were a tiny 147 pixels wide. Through the years the web pages moved from place to place until I started this blog in 2007 and slowly, the Blackpool pages have been recreated and added to here. After 12 years they were becoming hard to find. Hence this index.

Each topic has an index of its own which can be accessed by clicking or tapping the photographs below. A link at the end of each index will bring you back to this main index page.