All along the coast, each village or small town had been a welcome break from the wilderness of the cliffs: places to rest, buy a cup of tea or top up my small stock of food in packets and tins – more beans, more noodles, more bread. But Newquay, that foul Balearic wannabe, was excruciating. I hoped to pass it as quickly as possible, but I had forgotten how big it was. It just kept going, beach after beach – Fistral, Towan, Great Western, Tolcarne, Lusty Glaze – and then, further on, others which were places in their own right – Porth, Watergate Bay, Mawgan Porth – though they seemed to have been subsumed into the Newquay leviathan. I had unpleasant memories as I walked through: this was the catchment area of a school at which I had been bullied.
Newquay was always charmless and dreary, but at some point in the eighties the retirees and the bathers abandoned it either for or because of a new breed of tourist. Which came first, the holiday camp or the family of drunken parents and screaming children? The five-storey nightclub or the stag party? The chain pub or the street brawl? Such questions are immaterial, the result is the same. Newquay, historically depressing, has somehow become more depressing: a claustrophobic vista of bellies, breasts, Daily Star readers, testosterone, and sunburned flesh. It is the saliva fleck on Cornwall's cheek, the drunken punch-up of the wedding.
It was already mid afternoon by the time I reached Mawgan Porth; the clouds had cleared, the sun blazed, and so did my feet. I had covered the least amount of miles that day, and I could not go much further. I resolved to eat and rest a while before making camp a few miles along the cliffs.
Mawgan Porth was a cavernous beach, the steep valley sides ensnaring the heat so that it felt like flames licked across the sand. The bars and cafes, the single pub, were filled with tourists, and queues streamed from the fish and chip shops and ice-cream stands. All the men seemed to be skinheads, all the women had too much make-up around their eyes, and all the children were sunburned.
It was quietest at the northern end of the beach, where subsidence had left a shallow cave exposed in the overgrown cliff face, like a bite from an apple. I weaved through the windbreaks and deckchairs, the surf schools and semi-naked septuagenarians, to the privacy of the far corner, where I stretched out on my bed of soft, hot sand. With no wind, I cooked quickly and then, feeling drowsy, lay back with my book, asleep in minutes.
I believe I slept for over an hour, though it was one of those slumbers which pass in an instant and feel like a blink. Letting my book fall to my side, I had closed my eyes to nothing but blue sky. When I opened them again, three men stood over me.
They each looked no older than twenty, had dirty hair and hands, and that strikingly indicative sartorial combination of jeans and no top. Their expensive trainers were coated in sand. They were drinking and they were drunk: cans of lager poked out of pockets and dribbled from hands. One dangled my camping stove, which I had forgotten to pack away, over my face.
'How much for this?' he asked. I stared at the silhouette of his head, trying hard to discern his features against the bright sky. An orange and white passenger jet flew from his ear.
'It's not for sale,' I said, pulling myself to my feet. I was taller than each of them, but, though they were lean, there was a look of self-confidence in their eyes which I did not like.
'Come on, mate, we'll give you a good price,' another said. I knew their accents. They were not tourists, but local boys.
'How much?' I asked out of curiosity, beginning to gather my things.
'I'll give you a fiver for it.'
I laughed. 'No, thanks,' I said, reaching out to take the stove.
The man holding it stepped back as I reached forward, and his friend took a step closer to me.
'Come on, mate,' he said. 'You look like you could do with the money.'
He was too close to me now: he meant to be threatening. The one who held the stove stared at me. The third did not make eye contact, looked uncomfortable, but his feet were firmly rooted, and an appeal to him would be useless. The nearest family were too far away to hear anything, but close enough to run to. Even if I did, and even if these men gave chase, would the tourists here even care? Maybe they would simply stand back and watch. A story to tell back home. The Tramp versus the Chavs.
'I don't need the money,' I said, shouldering my knapsack. 'But I need that stove.'
'Bet you do,' he said, and then: 'fucking tramp.'
A number of very odd things happened at that moment. First, a cascade of emotions surged through me: base fear was primary, but behind it I noticed an inappropriate flash of elation. He had called me a tramp! I looked the part! Following that came a sense of absurdity, and then finally fear again.
The second odd thing: the man holding my stove lit it, and pointed the flame at me. The surrealism of it all overwhelmed me: threatened with my own camping stove.
I had enough will left for one last attempt. 'Can I have that back?' I asked.
There was no reply. Instead, the man played with the single dial, turning the gas output up to maximum. The flame roared.
That was enough. I walked around the man who still stood so close to me I could smell the alcohol on his breath, careful not to barge him with my shoulder or knock him with my bag, and headed towards the nearest family as quickly as I could without seeming panicked. There were times in travel when this was the only answer, and I felt no shame in the action.
'Oi!' a voice shouted from behind me. I continued walking. 'Oi!' it called again, and I heard feet thumping on the sand. I stopped. Turned.
'You forgot this, you twat.' He threw the camping stove, still alight, towards me. It landed harmlessly in the sand a few feet to my right: his poor aim had, I think, been deliberate. That made me feel better. These boys were keen to intimidate, but not drunk enough for violence. I bent down, turned the gas off, picked up the stove and then continued to walk back towards the masses of people. The coast path lay in the opposite direction, but I wanted to lose the three of them before climbing up on to it, alone.
6
Further days and nights passed as I trudged the coast path. Already, the slow pace of long-distance walking was beginning to frustrate me: if I had driven for as many hours as I had walked, I could be in Eastern Europe by now. The going was hot and arduous, the flat straights were all but disappearing as I walked further north, and the unremitting plunges and rises had slowed me to as little as one or two miles an hour. Between Port Isaac and Boscastle, I faced my toughest portion yet: 15 miles of steep inclines and declines, one after the other. The path had narrowed to a thin dirt track, sprinkled in loose pebbles, which caused jolts of panic whenever it lay but a few centimetres from the edge of a sheer, stark cliff face. After the fifth rise, I began to grunt like a tennis player with each step up; after the tenth, I believe I stopped thinking altogether. Life became automation.
Limping into Boscastle, I spent a long while sat on a bench with my shoes removed. I had hoped to make it to Bude and the Cornwall-Devon border by late evening, but I had no energy to stay anywhere other than here for the night.
Boscastle was all but destroyed by a flood in 2004, and later rebuilt as identical as possible to its former self – with the addition of extra flood-prevention measures, of course. I had been in Abu Dhabi airport that day, and I remember almost dropping my glass of lager when on the bar's TV screen, below the images of what appeared to be yet another tragic catastrophe in the developing world, the name 'Boscastle' flashed up. It was not the Mekong or the Yangtze or the Amazon which was tearing down those buildings like paper, it was the River Valency, just a few miles from my home a quarter of the world away.
Unlike its Devonshire flood-cousin Lynmouth, Boscastle is not filled with plaques denoting heights and depths. There are framed photographs on shop and pub walls of the river surging over cars and into windows, but these seem accepting, boastful even, rather than sad or recriminating. Perhaps this is because, unlike Lynmouth, nobody died in the Boscastle flood. Alongside the mouth of the Valency at the
harbour, four large stalks of driftwood lie as rudimentary benches. Across them is inscribed a poem of admiration rather than fear:
Ledrow a dherow ow nedha
War-nans golans glas Velinji
Dhe borth saw Atlantek garow
Giver ow kwoffi a fros rybon.
Twisting oak slopes
Down verdant Valency
To harbour haven Atlantic swell
Rising river rushes by.
The sun had scorched the back of my neck all day, but at Tintagel clouds had wafted in from the sea and the temperature had dropped. The night up on the cliffs would, I knew, be a cold one, and so, after a dinner of soup, I walked into the village for a pot of hot tea to warm my blood. It would cost money I did not want to spend, but the sacrifice would be worth it.
The Harbour Light Tea Garden had been destroyed by the flood but, in its rebuilt condition, with its bowed roof and lopsided slant, it could easily have been mistaken for its former sixteenth-century self. There I fell to talking with Michael, who was staying at the youth hostel next door and had come in for dinner. Michael was one of those men in their sixties who believe everything they say to be of the utmost fascination. These men do not digress or go off on a tangent: moreover, they bludgeon a subject remorselessly until every last vestige of it, and of the listener's interest, is spent. These men will rarely look you in the eye while they speak – for, if they did, they would surely discern their companion's boredom or desperation to leave, and would thereby shut up.
Michael was also on a grand trip, cycling the entire British coast on a recumbent trike: a three-wheeled, fluorescent-yellow hive of flags and horns, upon which he sat back and pedalled, steering from handlebars by his hips. His monologue was one of numbers, gradients, obscure place-names and incomprehensible jargon.
'Passing through Blaencelyn, on the road between Nanternis and Penbryn, I was on a four-in-one, then a two-pointer incline, easy enough at a ten-mile-an-hour constant and with my derailleurs and dual-pivots, though I should have got V-types, but that's by the by, when my lumbar support dropped, sending me into a spin of about eighty, maybe even ninety, no, not ninety, eighty-five max, smack bang into a road sign, not your average flat-top sheeting, but reinforced concrete, about six point four. Luckily, I was able to buy a new top-tube from a parts shop in Blaencelyn, second-right off the main street, between the Gregg's and the PDSA charity shop, which only cost me eighty-seven pounds, when I know that my guy at home, who hasn't ripped me off once, couldn't get it for less than ninety-three, and that's only if he does it off the books, which he does sometimes, but not as often as I might like. Now my trike's fine again, and I've added some nice six by sevens.'
'Can you do a wheelie on it?' I asked.
It would have been pleasant to spend the evening in the Harbour Light with my tea and a book, but Michael was dull and his monologue devoid of lengthy pauses, so I escaped when I saw the chance – at the conclusion of a twenty-minute description of his tent.
I wanted to call my wife to let her know how far I had walked, but both public payphones in Boscastle only accepted credit cards, and I did not have one. Instead, I entered a restaurant and asked the teenage waiter if he knew of any cash payphones in the area. The manager, a quiet and superior fellow, appeared, and the waiter asked him if I might use the restaurant's phone. The manager stared at me, contempt discernible on his pudgy face, and then turned and walked into the kitchen.
'I'll just make sure it's all right,' the waiter said, following him. He reappeared moments later. 'Sorry, mate,' he said. 'I've been told to ask you to leave.'
7
I left Boscastle through its harbour on my way back to the cliffs. A family from Yorkshire stood on the quay while their two sons dangled crab-lines into the water. They were talking to a Cornish father and son who were clearing their boat after a day's fishing. Together, they had found their common ground.
'Better living here than London.'
'You couldn't pay me enough to live in London.'
'Lot of young lads round our way head to London to make their fortune. They're soon back.'
'Streets are paved with shite.'
The sunset from the cliff-top was magnificent, but the night which followed was far colder than it had been yet, and I donned both my T-shirts and pairs of trousers along with my sweatshirt and jacket, so that I could barely move inside my sleeping bag. Sleep was as fragmented and unsatisfying as ever, and the few dreams I had featured wide and empty landscapes which dipped and rose like waves to the horizon.
The next morning remained dark and cloudy. Birds beat their wings against the brutal whips and shoves of the wind. The sun rose, but it was difficult to notice. Visibility was awful, and I was lucky if I could see the next headland. The beaches below had turned to grey shale. I crossed Widemouth Bay, deserted and moon-like, the low tide far away, its messy waves closing out under the onshore wind.
Such conditions cemented a notion that had been building for a while: that perhaps it was time to leave the coast. I had had enough of the ankle-twisting pathway, the back-breaking ascents and the thigh-bursting descents, and the omnipresent clamouring of seagulls had begun to irritate me. I would miss the sea, of course, but if I followed this path for long enough even that would morph into the gravy of the Bristol Channel.
Anyway, Cornwall was its coast, and I was about to leave it, so why not the coast, too? Until as late as Victorian times, some Londoners referred to Cornwall as West Barbary. It no longer applies to the Cornish, but it can perhaps still be said of the land. The barbarism of Cornwall is ravishing, but not when you lack a bed. Devon was different: it was rolling hills, country roads, civilisation. As I summited the final headland, the sun came out, and Bude, all low roofs, opened up before me in the valley, behind it the giant satellites of the Earth Station and, offshore, Lundy Island. I walked down into Bude, and left the coast path.
CHAPTER THREE
DEVONSHIRE ROADS
1
'Hey! Buddy! All right? All right!' He was smiling, and the smile grew broader when he realised I was going to stop. Few did. 'Alex,' he said, wrenching my hand from my side and shaking it enthusiastically as I told him my name. Often, I did not stop for charity street-hawkers, not since I heard that they earned a commission for each person they signed up to donate. That struck me as rather uncharitable. But now I had all the time in the world to stop and chat, and Alex – in his black T-shirt with 'POVERTY' emblazoned across his chest – seemed friendly. 'What you up to today?'
'Walking,' I replied.
'Just walking?'
'Pretty much.'
'Where have you walked from?'
'Sennen.'
'Wow, man, that's like miles. That's really cool. So, what, are you just staying in hostels, B and Bs, that kind of thing?'
'No,' I said, hesitating over semantics. 'I, err, I sleep rough mostly.'
Alex's smile began to fade. 'That must get pretty cold,' he faltered.
'I've got a sleeping bag,' I said, turning around and gesturing to the pouch tied to my knapsack. 'I'm luckier than most.'
'Hey, man, well good luck to you, you know?' he said. Already, his eyes were scanning the passing tourists for likely candidates.
'Yeah. Thanks.' I walked away.
Alex did not say goodbye.
I was not homeless, but by now, after over a week walking and sleeping rough, my clothes dirty and pungent, my face browned but unshaven, I looked homeless. Though I had not explicitly stated it, Alex had inferred as such, and I knew it and had done nothing to dissuade him. And, with his clipboard, his charity wristbands, his winning, altruistic smile, he had been of as little help as the Boscastle restaurant manager. There was, I decided, very little that was charitable about Alex.
2
A terrific ache had set in along my thigh muscles and, though I had not walked far from Boscastle to Bude, my feet already felt like they were going to burst from my shoes. I had pushed myself too hard the day before and kn
ew it would not be wise to do the same today. John Hillaby, who made a literary career out of walking, used to say that he treated his feet like premature twins. I had not afforded mine the same precious quality, though I should have, for there is little save perhaps the heart which is more important to the walker. Accordingly, I decided to break for the day, rest up, and continue tomorrow.
It was only midday and so I walked down to the beach to make lunch. The sun was peaking and, now that I did not have to worry about movement and drinking-water, I could enjoy it. Down at the shore, I washed my mess tin and then, feeling brave, stripped to my underwear and plunged into the waves, splashing and rinsing from my feet to my eyebrows. The exercise was psychosomatic: I was not cleaning – if anything, the stench of the sea and the crust of salt would make me smell worse – but the touch of water on my skin was blissful. Pulling the small towel from the bottom of my knapsack, I wrapped it around my waist and wandered off to find a quiet spot on the beach, where I changed my underwear, laid the saturated pair out beside me to dry, and then lay back to slip into a sleep deeper than any yet.
No Fixed Abode Page 4