It is said that the delicious Cornish Pasties contribute a £150 million to the local economy. I really don’t know about that, but what is a fact is that Cornwall boasts one of the longest coastlines in the UK at around 433 miles long, featuring more than 300 beaches. So unfortunately for us solitude seekers of quiet and remote places, Cornwall is better known as the summer capital of England. Brits flock to the many beaches and the towns are being packed with tourists from March to October.

All the more reason for us not to go to Cornwall…except when we realized the Embassy was closed for 5 days for the Xmas holidays, and when we can’t go to our friends and families in Belgium because we don’t want to stick more q-tips up our noses courtesy of Corona/Covid/Delta/Omicron and last but not least when London during Xmas looks like something from a nuclear holocaust movie, completely abandoned … then all of a sudden Cornwall looked like a dream destination to swiftly and promptly tick off our UK destinations bucket list before the end of 2021.

A quick search on AirBnb for a quiet cottage, throw the dog, the camera gear and a few bottles of Prosecco – I can’t afford champagne any more from my meager civil servant allowance – in the car and off we were! By the way, travelling in England by car on December 25 is highly recommended if you’re a petrol head! We were out of London, made it past the dreaded M25, whizzed by lonely and desolate Stonehenge and before we knew it and in record time we were almost as far West as one can travel in England : Cornwall.

So I do expect one or two speeding tickets to be added to my growing collection as I might have missed a few of the 3 billion speed camera’s polluting British roads and sucking all the fun out of driving. In most of London the speed limit is now 20 Mph (30 Km) and when I’m slowly crawling along with my foot firmly stuck on the brake pedal of the Red Menace, bikers, people on scooters, in-line skaters and old ladies on mobility-scooters whiz by left and right giving me angry looks and flipping the finger at me for getting in their way and for stopping at the red signal, which apparently they don’t have to do according to the local Highway code.

And no we didn’t make it to Land’s End, give these poor Belgians a break, we just had 2 days on site. But that was enough to give us a nice preview of Cornwall and enough to decide to probably come back somewhere next year.

We stayed just minutes inland of Crackington Haven, a lovely shingle cove dominated by truly majestic cliffs. Located in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Crackington Haven is a small village on the north Cornish coast. Once a tiny harbor importing coal and limestone from Wales, it escaped industrial development in the 1800’s and is now a small unspoiled, almost secret cove, mostly known to surfers. It lies on the beautiful South West Coast Path and after your walk there is a delightful bistro, The Cabin Café and a pub The Coombe Barton Inn  where we had a lovely dinner.

After Crackington Haven we set out the next day to the tiny and historic fishing village Boscastle.

The village is built along a narrow valley that runs down to a steep and rocky entrance to the sea beyond. Very picturesque indeed but also the scene of a drama on 16 August 2004, when a devastating flash flood swept through this small Cornish village and almost completely destroyed it. Luckily and miraculously without loss of life. During a torrential downpour, some old bridges got blocked by cars washed away from the parking outside the village and by other flood debris. These acted as a dam and eventually, when the water smashed through them, there were huge surges of water as high as 5 m. A total of 150 vehicles were swept away. Eighty-four cars were later recovered from Boscastle harbor, but more than 30 were swept out to sea. Seven rescue helicopters (dubbed the Magnificent Seven by the rescued villagers) winched about 100 people to safety from the roofs of the flooded houses.

With a few more hours of daylight left, we headed towards St Nectan’s Glen to try our luck at making some long exposure photos of the very peculiar waterfall over there. St Nectan’s Kieve is a 60 foot (20 m) waterfall splashing down through a keyhole in the rocks. As you can see Sonja’s technique for long exposure still needs some working on, give her a few more years of C-19 travel restrictions and she will get the hang of it 🙂

You reach the fall after a very nice, easy walk along the river from the nearest car park. Wear wellies but also bring along your wallet beacause once you reach the glen where the fall is located and very much to our surprise, we had to pay £ 6.45 entry fee per person to get as much as a glimps of the fall. It seems that in recent years the glen has taken on the visage of a hippy theme park, with ribbons being sold for people to hang from trees, crystals to be offered to the nature spirits and metal railings to herd everyone around the site. Not quite sure what St Nectan would make of it all … I think in the future we’ll enjoy the tranquility of other more untouched waterfalls which are not spoiled by meditation rooms, yoga studios, dangling ribbons, woke hippies and dream catchers…