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

Cornwall Holiday 12-19 September 2015

An account of a week's stay in Cornwall with Newquay as our base, but taking in the full length of Cornwall and a bit of south coast Devon just for fun! Click each picture for the associated article.

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Polperro Watercolour

Back in September last year we visited Polperro one day during a week's holiday in Cornwall. Whilst there I did a pencil sketch of the hillside and buildings above the harbour.

For the past couple of weeks I've been dabbing watercolour at an A4 print from a scan of the sketch. This afternoon I spent a couple of hours finishing it off.

I'm no expert with watercolours but I'm trying to learn. There's bits of this I like and there's definitely more than one bit where I know I made big mistakes that I'll try to avoid in future. You can easily spot the bits where I tried to put too much colour on at once and also the bits where the gradual building up of layers of colour have worked.

Usually several months would go before I start another but I know I should push myself to cut that down to a day or two. Fingers crossed!

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Miss Franny's Fabulous Fridge Magnets

The last time I showed some of Miss Franny's fridge magnet collection was way back in July. This time I show some of the UK places commemorated on the bits of plastic that disguise our fridge.

This one covers the entire county of Somerset and was bought this year when we spent a long weekend with friends near Wells.

Whilst I'm not going to put up photos of every place mentioned on it - actually there are some places we haven't been yet on it - I'll cover the top right and the one below it. We've been to Cheddar lots of times taking photos of the same unchanging scene every time. The thing that changes is the style of cars in the car parks, so... guess the year!

Weston-Super-Mare was a regular holiday destination place during my early teens. We first went in 1967 but it's a while since we stayed there. I think the last time I visited was in June 2004 whilst on the road for work and whilst it was a June evening, it was cold and dull so that I remember the weather more than the town.

This one is for a very specific place. The British Museum in London is a fascinating place to wander round and anyone with an interest in history and cultures will find time going very fast indeed when you are in there.

I remember it with the open courtyard, but for quite a while now it has been roofed with glass. This looks even more spectacular from outside provided you can view it from a vantage point such as the 17th floor of the Centre Point building.

The King Arthur magnet could have come from any corner of England, or from the centre of it. So many places claim to be the site of his birth, his battles, his city of Camelot...

I even wrote my own version a few years ago which is available for Kindle e-readers.

The fridge magnet came from Tintagel in Cornwall, where the famous castle remains are a few hundred years after the historical Arthur was supposed to have lived. Tintagel features in my book as the home of Merlin.

A 3D sculpted fridge magnet from the Prince Regent's opulent and exotic Royal Pavilion at Brighton. A real mix of styles it comes across as an Indian palace from outside and a Chinese one inside. Well worth a visit.

My photo was taken one night whilst I was travelling for work and due to run a workshop at Brighton University the following morning.

The Polperro fridge magnet shows the entire county of Cornwall and therefore makes finding Polperro quite hard unless you already know where it is!

It's one of my favourite places in the whole of England and despite the fact that it seldom changes, my camera always gets a thorough work-out when I'm there!

A look at foreign parts in the next article about Miss Franny's Fabulous Fridge Magnets!

Polperro and Looe

Wednesday 16 September 2015. All week this had been forecast as the worst day of the week. Bright green splodges on the map threatened thunder and lightning followed by earthquakes and the rising of sea monsters. In the event by Wednesday night they had changed their mind and it was to be a pretty much rain-free day.

So after our usual hearty breakfast at the Blue Haven B&B we left Newquay and headed for my favourite place in Cornwall - Polperro.

If you were to be blindfolded and carried to any spot in Polperro, then spun round until you were facing a random direction, on removing the blindfold you would still be enchanted, no matter what you were facing. It is that sort of village.

Even the lack of sunshine fails to dampen my spirits as I wander down the long hill from the car park. The village is a collection of unique buildings, clustered one atop the other on either side of a steep river valley. The river, not much more than a stream really, runs in a channel at your side as you walk down the hill and eventually emerges into the harbour between buildings - one with an overhanging room supported, seemingly precariously on the most twisty long stilts imaginable - then under a tiny bridge into the harbour by the "House with the Lifeboat". The lifeboat was sadly absent today - perhaps the owners had had to abandon house...?

You can ride down from the car park on either a horse-drawn bus or a small electric bus - they call it a "tram" but it runs on tyres not tracks. To arrive on anything other than your own feet though is to deny yourself the leisure and time to take note of some lovely buildings. The Ship Inn has a figurehead jutting from the wall over the car park, some wall art over her shoulder, flower baskets and the Cornish flag of a white cross on a black background flying from the flagpole on the front wall.

The harbour is always colourful with boats. A small breakwater of a wall, seen towards the left of the photo behind the brown mast of the boat at the bottom creates the effect of twin harbours, inner and outer.

The outer harbour is sheltered by a harbour wall which has a couple of new huts and a collection of fishing paraphernalia along a stone seat which I always remember being crowded with people just enjoying the view. It will come as no surprise to learn that smuggling was once a way of life here. It was highly organised and financed but started to decline after 1798 when a local man was executed following the death of a customs officer.

Polperro's smuggling past is one aspect featured in the museum on the side of the harbour. There were a couple of benches in the small forecourt and I settled myself on one and got out the sketchpad.

I jammed as much detail as I could onto the paper and after an hour had more or less completed half of the drawing, roughly to the top left of a line from the bottom left to top right corner, when it started to rain. It was not raining hard, but I didn't want to risk spoiling the sketch, so we got up and went into the museum cafe for a spot of lunch. I still had the pad open and was mopping at a couple of splashes when the owner of the cafe came to take our orders. "Ooh, that's good!" she said. I blushed becomingly...

I thought a small prawn sandwich would suffice after our large breakfast... This was spectacular! Whilst I munched my way through this tiny repast the rain decided to go off somewhere else and although someone had taken my previous spot, I was able to sit on the next bench to finish my drawing. I could have gotten very big-headed at some of the overheard comments, but only one person had the courage to actually talk to me and paid some very nice compliments. In the end this drawing took around two hours, way beyond the amount of time I usually devote to an A5 sketch, but it did perhaps pay off.

Miss Franny had gone off around the shops whilst I was doodling and I texted her that I was finished and set off for the bridge under which the stream still gurgled its way down into the harbour. Once there I dialled her number, rounded the corner and ten feet away Fran raised her phone to her ear... We had another wander round the village before walking back up the hillside to the car park which by now was brimming with cars.

It was mid afternoon when we left Polperro and we thought about where to go for our evening meal and decided to try Looe. It was just a couple of minutes before four when we got there. The car park attendant pointed out that the charges stopped at six o'clock, so I paid for 2 hours parking and for that could have stayed overnight. It would have been an uncomfortable night though, so after eating and looking round we went back to our B&B in Newquay!

A music festival was due to start in the town, though nothing seemed to be scheduled before nine o'clock and they were still busily setting out stages and barriers by the side of the river. The river and town have the same name - Looe. In the Cornish tongue Logh is a deep water inlet. The river separates the town into West Looe where we parked and East Looe where we went to look for somewhere to eat.

We had a walk round the town (well the East Looe half of the town) before settling on The Golden Guinea restaurant as a likely looking place for good food and drink. After the tiny lunch I was in need of some substance to my sustenance... We had a roast beef dinner each and jolly good it was too!

A large sign tells how the Golden Guinea got its name:

The Golden Guinea is so called by reason of a vast treasure hoard of gold found on the premises. The treasure was probably gain (sic) from piratical exploit and it is recorded that it was taken to Liskeard by horse and cart. The building known throughout Looe's recent history as "Ye Olde House" was completed in 1632, is of historic interest and is scheduled and protected by the Nation.

I asked if there was any likelihood of there still being a trace or two of gold hoard still left lying about. "I'm afraid not..." came the reply. In the next article we set off for Falmouth but without looking at the map. So we'll have a look round Plymouth instead then...

Cornwall Holiday Index

Picturesque Polperro

Ages ago... 11 months to be precise (blush) I somehow managed to get diverted from a series of entries about our 1989 holiday in Cornwall, the south western bit of England that juts out into the Atlantic.

So for all you readers that have been waiting patiently for the next instalment - here it is.

Thursday 10 August 1989. We found ourselves in the gorgeous village of Polperro. It didn't come as much of a surprise because we had deliberately set out to go there...

Polperro, for anyone not familiar with it, is a village of ancient shops, inns and cottages clustered around the hills and cliffs surrounding the harbour and is reached down a long sloping road from the car park at the top of the hill. The only cars allowed down the hill are those of residents, whether permanent or tourists staying in accomodation in the village.

It has a tradition of smuggling in the past. In the 17th to 19th centuries this place was full of short bow-legged swarthy men in black and white striped t-shirts with barrels of illicit port and rum over one shoulder and a parrot on the other. They probably had a pipe in the corner of their mouths and only one eye. Or was that Popeye I'm thinking of...?

Fran and Gill have a look at the smallest shop in England. Didn't take long... The place is full of inns, fascinating nooks and crannies, inns, tea shops, inns, boats bobbing in the harbour, inns...

It's a wonder the inhabitants were ever able to go down to the sea to do a bit of smuggling - they must have been permanently three sheets to the wind... Well I suppose they had to do something with all that smuggled brandy...

Oh, and scrumpy of course! From Wikipedia: "Scrumpy" is a term often used for ciders made in South West England. Scrumpy can be dry or sweet, however tends to be stronger in alcohol and more tannic than most commercial ciders.

The modern equivalent of a barrel isn't anything to write home about, however the nautical nature of the village is well captured here! Buy a gallon of Dead Dick's Scrumpy! Drink a gallon and join Dead Dick...

The Old Forge no longer fires up the bellows, but instead forms the entrance to the Model Village. This isn't your ordinary collection of model houses which starts as the gentleman of the house's way of justifying his outdoor model train set, but a faithful recreation of the entire village of Polperro in miniature. Worth seeing, if only for the model of the model village... seriously...

There are two harbours at Polperro - an inner and an outer, which leads to the sea. We see the outer harbour above with boats to take tourists for a half hour cruise along the rocky coast. (Don't get on the wrong one, you'll find yourself expected to help carry brandy barrels up a winding cliff pathway...)

The inner harbour has a fish landing stage and a house which has a lifeboat hanging from davits over the harbour! Not that the house has ever had to be abandoned that way as far as I know... But if it did ever sink in a storm, the inhabitants could rest easy in the knowledge that they'd be able to get out safely!

The Pottery Shop has a novel sign above the doorway! Polperro also throngs with artists during the summer. You will find plenty of them slapping Dulux onto canvas boards. Whilst I only started my own sketching efforts the year after this trip, I have returned to do a few pencil sketches which you can find in articles from the Sketching and Artwork Index on the blog.

Did I mention there were inns? Here's one that advertised a Childrens' Room on the first floor. I nipped up to look at the sad sight of all those 5 and 6 year olds, sleeping off the effects of a half pint tankard of Dead Dick's Scrumpy...

There was a shout... Fran and Gill had climbed onto a horse-drawn bus which would take them back up the hill to the car park. I had to trot along behind them wearing my legs out (no wonder they are short!) and taking pictures to prove their laziness...

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