The Opening Door

Boscastle,
Cornwall
When I set out for Lyonesse,
A Hundred miles away,
The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
When I set out for Lyonesse
A hundred miles away.

From When I set out for Lyonesse (1870), Thomas Hardy

The sea always draws me, especially where cliffs soar and plummet and birds are like shooting stars against dark rocky chasms. I'm at Boscastle in Cornwall, with a salt tang in my nostrils. The rhythmic company of wash and breaker, and the estuaries tamed by the retreating tide into mud flats seem to remind me of something. Perhaps it's my sea-faring ancestors, the Drakes and Chichesters, who from 50 miles east of here at Braunton ran the last sailing coasters of the early 20 century, delivering coal and slate.

But for now I turn my back on Penally Point, the gnarled headland that guards the serpentine entrance to Boscastle harbour. I leave the view out to the surf-skirted black bulk of Meachard to which ships too large to navigate into the harbour were once moored. I turn away from salt towards freshwater.

The Valency Valley beckons me inland, eastwards, across what I remember was a meadow behind the row of shops, and is now a car park. The ground is tightly netted and gabionned against the vandalfingers of water. I'm soon walking through an aisle of trees, alone on a quiet path that follows the north bank of the river. A duck flies low and fast ahead of me, embodying purpose. Like the jets I see skimming lochs at home, it adjusts its angle in expert increments to steer the central course of the winding river, then disappears around a bend. But this flight defines the landscape as miniature; a narrow valley with secret corners. A scale and nature that I'm here to re-learn.

The area of land defined by these waters and paths has swayed the course of English literature, and also shaped my own track. At least one love story gleams within its lush green crevices.

* * *

In 1976 I arrived in Boscastle for a week's painting holiday with the sullen steps of a post-glandular-fever, first-time-in-love seventeen year old. 'I've got here but feel terribly lonely and depressed,' I complained to my diary on the first night. 'Everyone is so cheerful and friendly but I'm very isolated. It always takes me so long to get used to a place.'

Bringing with me a 1:50,000 Ordnance Survey map and an instinct for exploration and recovery, I was soon enchanted. Over the week, letters to my boyfriend became less frequent as I wrote more lengthily in my diary, and at the end I complained: 'I really wish I could stay another week, to go on some more walks, and meet more people ... I can