The Lane To The Beach

A Memory of Lower Tregantle.

As a boy of thirteen, with my family, after the war, I spent all my school holidays in Cornwall. Six weeks with my Uncle Arthur and Aunt Mabel in a tied cottage on Lower Tregantle Farm near Torpoint.
The very air was different; how many times since those days has a certain fresh breeze and smell conjured up the Torpoint Ferry and once again I am leaning out over the side watching the bow wave and hearing the rattle of the chains, my heart pounding with excitement at the thought of the long holiday stretching ahead.
A steep lane led up to the gates of Tregantle Farm from my aunt and uncle's cottage, huge hedges high on either side where the chickens laid their eggs, fields beyond climbing into the blue sky; even steeper still the lane to the beach bore left at a little triangle of grass and hawthorn. Here where the sun was brighter and warmer the hedges left the ferns and shade loving plants behind, bursting with flowers, red campion, stitchwort, buttercup, cow parsley, sorrel and primrose. The air now would be filled with the scent of the sea and wild honeysuckle and a fresh breeze; Either side were fields of golden corn and newly cut hay, bound and placed in little stooks, each bundle leaning companionably against its neighbour. Rabbits tumbled into the safety of the grass verge and the hedge, white tails bobbing; it was here that the yellow hammers and the whitethroats sang and the larks climbed into the azure blue sky. Soon the sea sparkled in the distance as the lane evened out and began to drop gently towards it.
Tregantle Fort, Napoleonic stark and grim hugged the cliffs to the right, where my father practised on the ranges in the First World War; a long path, a series of steps, led down to the beach below it.
Sometimes if the tide was in, an alternative way to the beach had to be sought, a steep precipitous path that dropped off the edge of the cliff into seemingly empty air but once ones feet was safely on solid ground then it became less daunting, bramble and hawthorn proving a safety net as it twisted and teetered down to the sand and rocks below. Halfway down a cave was carved out of the rock and small indentations in the face of the cliff was thought to be where the wreckers of old placed their lamps to lure the sailing ships inshore and onto the jagged rocks. The beach here, in those days that I recall, was wide and empty even at the height of summer; perhaps a small group or two in the far distance with their picnics.
We would gather firewood from the tideline and soon the huge black kettle that my Uncle Arthur had carried down, filled with water from a spring that ran down the cliff, would be boiling merrily and with a makeshift bat and wicket a game of cricket with my brothers, sister and uncle would commence, my parents joining and even sometimes my Aunt Mabel although she preferred to sit and read.
Later after our picnic my father would bathe in the sea, but my mother preferred the deep warm pools that had formed with the outgoing tide. Uncle Arthur his trousers rolled up to his knees would sit companionably with his wife, a floppy hat pulled down over his eyes. As for the rest of us we would climb the huge rocks and explore the rock pools. The days were long and it was forever sunshine. When walking through the short grass on the cliff top, myriads of blue butterflies would rise at your feet, skylarks high in the sky above. The cliff road wound its way to Rame Head, high above Kingsand and Cawsand, then on to Plymouth Hoe where, as my Uncle Arthur said, you could hear the band and see the Sound, the vast stretch of water below the Hoe
Ignoring the lane to the beach and walking straight on past the lovely stone gateway to Tregantle farm, with its iron gate topped with roses, that my father made into a beautiful small painting, and pausing a moment to look back down the lane to the cottage, I can see my mother waving out of the top bedroom window. In my memory, I wave back, innocent and yet unconcerned what the future might bring, the sadness and loss, turn, and walk on.
Halfway to the little shop on the Torpoint Road, an iron pipe protrudes from the hedge issuing forth the most clear and delicious water from a spring higher up in the field. I stoop, cup my hands and drink the cold delicious nectar. A gate near here led one up a path, to a rather incongruous red brick house, positioned starkly on the hill against the skyline. This is where Bill Sparks lived, very aptly named because he worked as a blacksmith at Devonport Dockyard. He kept ferrets and some Saturdays I would go rabbiting with him and my Uncle Arthur.
First we would be sociable and sit with his elderly mother and wife, in the dark kitchen where the Cornish range churned out heat, even on the hottest of days, and drink tea; often, to my delight, there was a cake or two.
It was here that I learnt, in my innocence, that girls took an interest in boys, long before boys even noticed them! A caravan had appeared in the field next to Bill Spark's cottage, on one of our visits. The occupants were dark and Spanish looking; gypsies my Aunt Mabel called them, rather scathingly; a man and a woman and their daughter; she was about my own age, possibly thirteen, startlingly beautiful, black hair, huge dark eyes and sizzling with pent up emotion. We walked and talked - what we said to each other then, I have no idea now, for it has all disappeared in the mists of time. I have always felt more at ease with girls. I must have been kind and shown an interest in her, for, over the next few days, she would wait for me to appear, outside the cottage in the lane, patient, beautiful and mysterious, my aunt and uncle gently pulling my leg. Girls were mysterious creatures to me then; unfathomable exciting beings, that I was drawn to, yet did not fully understand - perhaps their mystery remains still. Reading Lawrie Lee's 'Cider with Rosie', years later, I was able to recognise her - she was my Rosie, although there was never any cider! The family moved on quite soon and she went out of my young innocent life.
A while ago I wrote a novel, influenced very much by my childhood memories of Cornwall. It is about the love between two thirteen year old girls during the 1920s and the consequences of that love, which becomes far reaching into the next generation.
The shop has long gone, as if it had never existed, Bill Sparks cottage long ago changed into a holiday home and my aunt and uncle's cottage razed to the ground, back in the sixties. Where the two huge horses were stabled, Beauty and Bess, who I rode astride as the hay wagons rolled into the yard, there are groups of houses and neat gardens invading my uncle's vegetable garden, a concrete tide, where he fed the ducks with boiled up limpets knocked off the rocks on the beach. The farm has become part of a huge conglomerate. I took my older brother there just before he died. He wanted to see Rame Head just once more.

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