The Cornish Riviera

The southeastern coast of Cornwall probably has more tiny seaside villages than anywhere else in the British Isles. It also has a rugged coastline, particularly for the first 10 or 12 miles into the county, with high, jagged cliffs, and in winter, boiling seas with a ferocity unseen anywhere else on our shorelines.

The Cornwall coastal path now extends right around this sea-surrounded county, and to walk it is to embrace all that is best of Cornwall: the wildlife, the scenery, the people, and ,of course, the ever-changing elements. They say in Cornwall, " If you don't like the weather, then wait 15 minutes..."

The Cornish Riviera extends from the beautiful, sprawling beach expanse of Whitsand Bay in the east, down through Downderry, Seaton, Looe, Polperro, Fowey, Charlestown, Par, Porthpean, Pentewan, and Mevagissey.

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There are few major roads into Cornwall from Devon: just the A30, the A38, and a couple of others further north.

By far the most dramatic approach is to cross the Tamar via the A38 from Plymouth to Saltash, the first town in Cornwall. The river is 400m wide and 25m deep here and two magnificent bridges carry both road and rail traffic, one a little over 40 years old, the other well over 140 years old.

The road bridge was finished in 1961, and, prior to it's completion, all traffic had to enter the county via the A390 at Gunnislake, about 12 miles upriver. A ferry for foot passengers had existed in Saltash for hundreds of years, but this was laid to rest upon the opening of the new bridge.

Recently the bridge has had two additional lanes added by way of a cantilever extension on either side, thus improving traffic flow at peak times. The total length of the road bridge is about 670m with the central span measuring 350m.

The other bridge is of course Isambard Kingdom Brunel's magnificent Royal Albert Bridge, constructed of iron and opened for rail traffic in 1859. Indeed, it still carries main-line trains into the Duchy, such is the quality of its build.

The first stages of construction involved the building of the massive stone caissons for the deck supports, bearing in mind that the only practical points to build from either side of the river neccesitated a clearance of well over 100 feet which The Admiralty also insisted upon. Next, the stone deck supports were built up to deck level. The entire deck structure is supported by the two, enormous, hollow tubular trusses, each weighing in excess of 1,000 tonnes from which the deck is suspended by huge, iron stanchions and held together by the largest nuts and bolts you will ever see.

It really is a wonderful creation and a lasting tribute to the greatest engineer in this country's history.

Of course, being an iron bridge in a maritime climate, it is a neverending job to keep the bridge in good shape, and a team of death-defying painters are constantly repainting the structure in it's battleship-grey livery.

No doubt there are bridges elsewhere in the world that can claim to be easier on the eyes, and countless that are longer, higher, wider and so on, but for sheer engineering prowess from the Victorian Era, this bridge is as beautiful as you will ever see.

Like many fishing villages in Cornwall, Mevagissey sits at the bottom of a steep hill with tiny, whitewashed cottages huddled around a bustling fishing harbour.

The village is situated about 5 miles from St Austell on the B3273, a twisting minor road that takes you through the oddly named village of London Apprentice.

The place itself is typical of a Cornish fishing village and is rather similar to Polperro, although arguably not so commercialised. Most of the local people have spent all their lives in the place; many of them tracing their ancestry back over many hundreds of years. The village boasts its own saltwater aquarium and a number of tea shops, restaurants, and pubs.

It still has a reasonably sized fishing fleet; although, like everywhere in Cornwall, this industry is in sharp decline due to quota restrictions and lack of competitiveness with the large factory ships that seem to plunder the fishing stocks at will.

Mevagissey is a lovely time warp type of a place, and to sample all of its charms will take you around half a day, unless you decide to linger longer.

Before you begin the climb around the headland to Mevagissey, turn left into the charming hamlet of Pentewan.

Pentewan once was a tiny exit port for china clay, but has long since fallen by the wayside with its minute harbour, now derelict, and the small channel to the sea now silted up and totally impassable. It is possible to walk the old railway line from St. Austell to the hamlet, the walkway mirroring the B3273 to Mevagissey. This line once roared with the rail traffic ferrying the kaolin from the major pits surrounding St. Austell to Pentewan at a time when fortunes were to be made.

Nowadays, Pentewan's tiny resident population relies on the passing tourist trade. Although on my visit there a few days ago, it was sad to see another local business had folded forever.

The hamlet has a tiny square that backs onto the old harbour. These days, there is no longer a village shop or post office, just a small gift shop-cum-tearoom and a pub, The Ship Inn, which I can say provides good quality fare in a comfortable environment.

Other than the lane back to the main road, there is one other exit from the village to Porthpean, this via a true Cornish hill, a hair-pinning (and hair-raising!) climb up to the cliff top.

Pentewan's main claim to fame has to be its glorious beach, which is now, unfortunately, owned by the large holiday park adjacent to the village. You can, however, avail yourself of its facilities for the princely sum of £3 per day. To see the truly majestic scale of the beach, it is best viewed from the road going over the headland to Mevagissey. (See picture.)

Most people would drive on by, blissfully unaware that Pentewan consisted of any more than they could see from the main road. But take a few minutes, turn off, and sample the peace and quiet of this very Cornish village.

I have written about much of Polperro in my Ex resident's journal, but no write up of the Cornish Riviera would be complete without a few additional words of this most lovely and traditional of fishing villages.

Polperro grew wealthy on fishing and smuggling, the latter now reputedly in decline! Pilchards were staple diet for most Cornish households in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the oil was used for lamps to light the cottages.

The pilchards were also in sharp demand in Italy and Spain, where they were called by their alternate name, sardines.

However, as with most forms of commercial fishing, governments and bureaucracy have ensured that noone is really able to make a living these days from this, and as such, the fishing industry is in sharp decline, along with all the associated industries that worked alongside (curing, packaging, and others).

Polperro today is a somewhat (but not overly) commercialied village dependant almost solely upon visitors and the cash they have to spend. Rocketing house prices, inflated by wealthy country buyers purchasing second homes, mean that very few local-born folk can afford to remain in the village, with the corresponding leeching away of the younger generation seeking work and more affordable accommodation outside of the county.

Whether villages like Polperro will ultimately survive hangs on a very fine balance. Which way that balance will come to settle, is very uncertain.

St Austell is a bustling town of around 32,000 inhabitants situated in a large, horseshoe-shaped bay that has many smaller inlets to tiny coves and fishing villages.

Although it has no beaches or coastline as such, it is only a mile or two inland with several beautiful and not-too-crowded beaches within a few minutes drive. It is the administrative centre of the Restormel Borough Council and is centrally placed to explore all of the Duchy.

St. Austell grew wealthy in the 18th and 19th centuries from the vast deposits of Kaolin (china clay) that were to be found all around the area. Townships such as Foxhole, Nanpean, and St. Stephen developed alongside these quarries, and at at one time, before health and safety legislation dictated necessary action, the whole area would be coated in a white, "snowy" deposit as a result of the extraction and refining processes.

China clay is still much in demand for a whole range of industries as diverse as medicine to pottery-making, and each day, many hundreds of tons of clay will be transported from the area up to the pottery towns in Staffordshire, such as Burslem and Stoke-on-Trent.

The visitor to the area will no doubt see the huge spoil heaps that litter the landscape, these being the leftovers from the various processes of refining and known locally as The White Pyramids.

Around St. Austell are several lovely small harbours, such as Charlestown (see my first Cornish journal), Fowey, Par and Mevagissey, all tourist traps in high summer and well worth exploring.

St. Austell now is an expanding town with its own retail superstores and multiplex cinemas (much of the recent influx bought about by the decline of the clay trade in the smaller, less profitable pits in it's rural hinterland).

As you move further down into the county, clay gives way to the long since abandoned engine houses that once provided the lifts down to the tin and copper mines that provided Cornwall's fortunes from an earlier time.