Seagulls in the Attic (28 page)

That’s what I’ll make for our dinner this evening. We’ll have sorrel soup and fresh bread, with local butter, cheese and tomatoes.

I couldn’t get a recipe from Edna, though, when I asked her she looked bemused. ‘Recipe, dear? Goodness, I merely throw in whatever I have to hand – maybe onions, or mushrooms, or whatever. Anything.’

I set about making the soup while Ben kicks a ball around with Will and Amy. All that energy, after a long walk this morning and swim this afternoon, not to mention climbing back up from the beach. But we all had a siesta after lunch, Mediterranean style. The weather is so incredible we could be in Greece, Italy or the south of France.

I chop up the sorrel leaves as finely as I can with the one sharp knife I brought, toss it in a saucepan with some butter and onions and let it cook for a few minutes. From the farm I’ve bought local potatoes so I throw some of those in, cut into small pieces, add water and let it all simmer. When it’s cooked I add a few herbs I’ve brought along, some salt and pepper. As the family gathers around for dinner I taste first, just to make sure.

It’s not that tasty. It’s too bitter for a start. For a moment I’m stumped then remember how often, when the spinach soap tastes too strong, I add a little cream to it which dilutes that strong spinach taste. We’ve got some of that homemade clotted cream on hand, so I slowly add a small portion to the soup before pouring it into bowls. As I stir it in carefully and not too quickly, I’m horrified as it starts to curdle. This never happened, ever, to my spinach soup. My sorrel soup is now nothing but a curdled yucky mess.

‘Never mind,’ Ben says as he looks at it. ‘We’ll have bacon butties instead.’

He doesn’t look at all disappointed and the children are positively beaming with delight. I have to admit that my face lights up too and in moments we’re all grinning in glee at the thought of our new dinner plans.

The smell of cooking bacon on a campsite is pure heaven and after we’ve rushed to the shop (which luckily never seems to close) for more bacon and fresh rolls and eaten our meal, I decide that bacon butties are my favourite camping food. I could never be a vegetarian, if for no other reason than bacon butties.

I’m chided affectionately about my occasional foraging disasters while we eat but I have the last laugh. I produce a few handfuls of wild strawberries that I also found on our walk and picked while the others hiked on ahead. They make a wonderful dessert, sweet and perfect. Everyone goes to sleep that night happy, peaceful and satisfied.

What follows is the most horrendous camping night imaginable. It begins to rain. Softly, gently, at first, so that I wake and hear soothing drops on the tent and think how cosy and dry we are inside. Then the drops get heavier and the wind comes up. Our tent moans, blows and yes, the worst scenario, it begins to leak in the children’s section. They wake up and pile into
our side and none of us get any sleep. I’d had the idea of making contingency plans for sleeping in the car if a storm came up but realistically it couldn’t be done. Minger is old, small, and far too uncomfortable for four people to bed down. Besides, it’s a dog kennel now. Jake was restless in the tent, keeping us awake, but he loves sleeping in the car. We’ll just have to stick it out in the tent.

The storm is fierce with thunder, lightning, the works. I begin to worry about being struck by lightning but before my worries get too out of hand the storm seems to pass. It doesn’t stop raining though, even when the wind drops. It drones on and on.

When daylight dawns having somehow found our waterproofs we stagger out in the wet to inspect the damage. We’d put the tent up at home in the front garden and left it out during a rainy day to check for leaks but it seemed fine then. Now Ben finds that the trouble is a slight tear, probably caused by the wind. It’s an old tent and not as durable as some of the modern ones we’ve seen on the campsite. But Ben has come prepared with the stuff needed to patch it up. The trouble is, it won’t stop raining. Most of the children’s clothes that I couldn’t rescue from the leak in time are soaking, and I have no clue where to dry them. At least they have some to last them a day or so and surely it must stop raining soon.

It doesn’t. Not all day and not the next either. I finally make Will and Amy some sort of bed in Minger, one on the front seat the other on the back, and bring Jake into the tent. The rain beats on the canvas all night and Jake whimpers. Our air mattress deflates in the middle of the night, for no reason we can think of other than pure dejection. It’s probably feeling as soggy as we are. But we’re used to Cornwall and know that the weather can change dramatically in a couple of hours, so while the rain lasts we decide to explore a bit more of the
Penwith area and head for St Ives not far from our campsite. The only parking places are way outside the town and we’re soaked by the time we have walked in. When we finally get there the place is packed with sodden holidaymakers; you can’t even get into a café for a cup of warm hot chocolate, which is great for business but not for us. We look around the Tate gallery but it’s packed with visitors as wet and steaming as we are.

Outside the Tate we stand in the pouring rain wondering what to do next. Porthmeor beach is right opposite, entirely empty except for the all-weather surfers. It’s a wonderful beach, crescent-shaped with golden sand, and despite the weather and the choppy water, it looks amazingly tempting.

‘We can’t get any wetter,’ I suggest. ‘So why don’t we go into the sea and swim?’

Like maniacs the four of us run to the beach, strip down to our swimsuits which we were wearing in case the weather changed and jump into the sea. It’s such exhilarating fun that we rent body boards and do some gentle surfing. Before long we’ve totally forgotten that it’s still raining.

I’ve put our waterproof jackets over our heaped pile of drier clothes and towels so we surreptitiously take off our wet swimsuits, get dressed quickly and decide on a brisk walk to warm up. From Porthmeor beach we go up the slope leading to the island, which isn’t really an island but a hilly mound of grassland surrounded on three sides by the sea. We walk along the clifftop path around the island and it’s fantastic, great waves crashing on the rocks below us, purple and black storm clouds above, and the noise of sea and sky thundering above and below us. It’s awesome and dramatic, a theatrical performance just for us.

We walk down from the island to the end of Smeaton’s Pier. The tide is in and the nineteenth-century harbour, once home
to around four hundred pilchard boats, is filled with small fishing craft and motorboats. Looking over the side we’re thrilled to see a seal gazing up. It’s a big one and stares at us with huge brown eyes.

A man next to us says, ‘That ole boy’s been around for years. There be two of them seals, old’uns both, that come around every day looking for handouts from the fishermen.’ He hollers down to the seal, ‘Ain’t that right?’

The seal cocks his head to the side then sinks under the water, bobbing up again a few minutes later. The children are enthralled and so are we. We watch the seal’s antics for some time, oblivious to the rain.

We’re ready for a hot drink and food now so we wander down around the maze of narrow streets and alleyways, looking at the delightful cottages once owned by the pilchard fishermen and their families but now nearly all holiday cottages and B&Bs. The cafés are still so crowded because of the consistent rain that we go back to the car and head for Zennor, not far away. The old pub there isn’t crowded at this hour so we find a table, order soup and crusty bread, and begin to dry off. After we’ve eaten we walk across from the pub to the church of St Senara with its medieval tower, to find the mermaid that’s carved into one of the wooden pews. We’ve never heard of a St Senara but find out that she was married to a Breton king, was wrongly accused of infidelity, put in a barrel and thrown out to sea. I’m not quite sure why that made her a saint, as I’m sure she wasn’t the only ancient queen, or modern one for that matter, so wrongly accused, but what do I know?

I abandon thoughts of poor St Senara and set off with Ben and the children to find the mermaid seat. There she is, carved on a bench end, holding a comb and mirror. The legend is that a young local man fell in love with the mermaid and she lured him to a nearby cove where he drowned in the sea.
They say that on quiet nights you can still hear the two singing beneath the waves. After we’ve found the carving, we take a short walk along the cliff path at the top of the village to look down at the cove where the mermaid lured her man.

‘I wonder if it’s the same place where the Breton king threw down the barrel with poor Senara in it,’ I say to Ben.

The cliffs are high and the sea with its sandy beach looks a long way down. Will and Amy are getting too close to the edge and I call, ‘Get back, you two. There’s been enough drama in this place to last for ever without you adding to it.’ But I have to admit it’s another spectacular view. The thundering rain has turned into a kind of horizontal drizzle and the waves are now more frothy than fierce.

Walking back to the car at the edge of a field, some Jersey cows follow us part of the way, intrigued by Jake as he darts along beside us. They look benign and complacent, as if nothing bothers them, not the rain, the wind, nor even our tiny group of bedraggled humans and one wet spaniel. As we walk away from them one of them moos, a deep sound that seems to amplify in the wind and follow us all the way to the car.

The next day the rain stops. It’s not exactly hot and sunny but at least it’s not raining. We fall out of the tent, feeling like Noah must have felt tumbling out of the arc with his animals. The children run shrieking around the campsite, despite the soggy grass and mud everywhere. The woman at the farmhouse kindly said we could dry our walking boots, saturated from days of walking in the rain, by her kitchen Aga overnight so we collect them, put them on and go for a long walk. The air smells fresh, clean and tangy. The sea is choppy and the sky is grey but it’s exhilarating. There’s a sharp wind now but that’s fine as it’ll dry out the campsite and our tent.

The weather gets better, the sun finally appears and our tent dries. As the days progress I find I’m learning all sorts of new
tricks. I’ve learned that you have to think outside of the box, be inventive and creative to survive. Simple things like clothes pegs are an absolute necessity. Now that the rain has stopped I’m for ever pegging up clothes, blankets and towels to dry or to air. Ben has rigged up a makeshift clothesline between the tent and Minger. I’ve also learned to always carry a torch after tripping over the guy ropes while stumbling about in the dark one night.

Our air bed seems fine now and we never do find out why it deflated so mysteriously that night of heavy rain. As a precaution we make sure it’s pumped up before dark and that our beds are all ready. I learn all sorts of tricks that seasoned campers know, like keeping a stock of 20p pieces for the shower, sticking wet clothes in the dryer next door so that when I jump out of the shower, I can jump straight into warm, dry clothes if I judge it right and there’s no one around as I madly dash with just a towel wrapped around me from the shower to the laundry room.

The early mornings on a campsite are magic. Since becoming a postie I’ve learned to love this part of the day so still and silent, with the rest of the world asleep, or so it seems in that pre-dawn calm. On this campsite we have a wake-up call from the nearby cockerels who are vying with each other to produce the loudest cry. The dawn chorus seems louder on a campsite somehow and it’s pure bliss, hearing it first thing in the morning. The only part of camping I haven’t mastered yet is getting the right sleeping temperature. It’s too cold at night to keep arms and legs outside the sleeping bag but too hot if it’s zipped up. It’ll probably take a few more camping trips for me to master the art of sleeping-bag comfort.

In the evenings we sit around the fire pit under the stars, talking, sharing stories, jokes and songs. It feels primeval, as if we’re a part of a human chain that has been doing this for
centuries. The fire sparks and smokes, the adults drink jugs of Scrumpy from the farmhouse and the children play games around the campsite with the new friends they’ve made.

On our last night I manage to make a seafood risotto on our camp stove, a feat I’m very proud of. With it we have lightly steamed marsh samphire, which I found growing in a muddy bit of ground near an estuary on our morning walk. I couldn’t believe my eyes, when I spotted the bright green patch in the middle of the marshy ground; I’d never found it before. It was growing plentifully and I picked enough for a delicious accompaniment to our risotto for this last meal.

After everyone has drifted off to their tents except Ben and me, we sit watching the embers of the dying fire, a half moon and starry sky above us and the sound of the sea not far away.

‘Home tomorrow,’ I say contentedly.

And for the first time on holiday, home is not London and a completely different life but a short distance away on the other side of Cornwall.