I think we must have been in Cornwall for a fortnight considering how many trips and visits we packed in while we were there. Porthpean beach was nearest, and we also went to Newquay (where I was knocked over by one of its famed breakers which probably contributed to my lifelong “respect” for the sea) and nearby ports of Fowey and Charlestown. I think it must have been the latter where a regatta was being staged. I don’t remember any of the boating events, but the highlight for me was laughing and cheering at “the miller and the sweep”, two men in rowing boats pelting each other with bags of flour and soot until one ended in the water.

One day we took a long drive to St. Ives, the only Cornish town I’d heard of from the rhyme about the man with sack of cats. I remember wishing the car journey would end, but not a thing about our destination.

Even when we weren’t on outings, exploring the Manse and its big garden was fun. At the top end of the garden was a wall, and on the other side the railway line to the west with frequent steam trains going up and down with holidaymakers we could wave to. These days of course there was no way a six and a four year old would be allowed this close to a railway line unsupervised – but this was the nineteen fifties. The railway was a constant presence, because our bedroom window looked out onto one of the arches of the Bodmin Road viaduct which carries trains to this day.

We also visited Uncle Malcolm and Auntie Maddie, who were living in a cottage in the little village of Sticker, a few miles out of town. Malcolm was Dad’s younger brother and we’d been to their wedding earlier in the year. Until very recently I’d been under the illusion that their wedding was in Cornwall, and that’s why we must have taken two holidays there. But you can’t argue with wedding records, and they tell us that the wedding took place in Horsforth, just outside Leeds. It was quite an event as it happens, which I’ll save for another story.

Maxine had a Cornish boyfriend, a dark, Poldark-lookalike named Martin (I’ve forgotten his surname) who accompanied us on most of our beach trips, bought us ice creams, and impressed us by swinging a full bucket of water in a vertical circle without spilling a drop. He, or more likely his father, was a manager of one of St. Austell’s many China Clay mines, and one day he organised a visit to the mine office where we could look into the open cast quarry where a high pressure hose operator was washing the white clay from the walls into a white torrent far below leading to settling tanks. We were shown samples of clay at different stages of processing and may have been given some to take away. Seventy years later the industry is gone, of course, but this may (or may not) have been the quarry in which the Eden Project was built and attracts thousands of visitors every year.

Return home

I’ve no idea of the relative costs of coach and train travel in the fifties, but for some reason Mum and Dad decided we’d return by rail, which meant a longer but faster journey via London.

The first leg was on the “Cornish Riviera” express from Penzance, which stopped at St Austell and presumably other bigger towns before heading non-stop to the capital. My only memory from this train ride was of looking out of the window at a white horse cut into the hillside – not the Uffington White Horse so close to where we live now, but probably the Westbury White Horse further south, which is very definitely “horse shaped” and still visible from the London-Penzance railway line.

Arriving at Paddington, you’d think we’d have taken the Circle Line to Euston but I do have a recollection of seeing the River Thames and the Houses of Parliament – maybe even Tower Bridge – so possibly we went into central London and did a bit of sightseeing. If so, I’ve no idea what happened to our luggage. Maybe we left it at Paddington and had to go back. It was my first experience of the Underground anyway, especially the terrifying rumble and the gale of wind just before the front of the train shot out of the tunnel. And of course escalators. In those days they came down to the platform and I clearly remember watching people going up them through the train window.

When we finally reached Euston, my only memory is sitting in a big waiting room, with tiered seating, watching a departure board for the name of Liverpool (and presumably a platform number) to appear on it. I’m fairly sure that this wasn’t in the station itself, and that when the time came we had to  walk a short way along a street to get to the station itself. By this time it was dark, and the “clickety click” of the wheels soon put me to sleep. I was wakened out of a dream to find strangers in the compartment looking at me and smiling.

And that’s it for memories of the big Cornwall holiday! I don’t think I remember quite so many details of other single childhood holidays or the journey taken to get there.