Pick up most guide books and you will see Cornwall described as the pincer, toe or tail of England. This is of course mildly offensive propaganda. It is not the anything of England. Cornwall is a foreign country.
Crossing the Tamar by Brunel’s casually stunning bridge is an unapologetically liminal journey. Rolling high across a border active since the Neolithic, the river and gulp of its estuary is glimpsed in flickers between cable and girder. The flowing line of water is pure interzone uncertainty. Till you reach the other side, you are suspended, belonging to neither county, neither country.
I remember the first time I made this train journey aged 10. A Devonian ticket inspector joked: “Have your passports ready when we cross the Tamar.” Not understanding, I shot my mother a worried stare and hoped she could talk her way out of not having packed them. She tried to make me see what was funny. I did not get it. Two weeks spent on the Lizard peninsula explained it perfectly.
We push passed the Wivel – the shire of strangers – and keep going west. West to the end of the line. West to Penzance and Penwith Hundred. The name might mean last promontory or end-district, but to me it is the first of Cornwall.
3 comments:
Oddly, despite growing up in Dorset I've never been to Cornwall. To me it was that magic land that Rupert went to on holiday every year and cavorted with piskies. Even when playing Cornwall away at chess the journey was seen as too long and we ventured as far as Plymouth - tantalising close but still not brave enough to make that final step.
I regard Dorset as my spiritual home. I feel linked to and empowered by its landscape. However, Cornwall was as far could go on honeymoon without technically leaving England and still feel really abroad. That fusion of myth and history suffuses every part of Cornwall and it does felt hat if you could approach it with proper childish wonder, you probably would run straight into a Rupert- esque /English hoodoo fairytale.
You moved. :)
I call Canon City the armpit of the universe. JK.
I've always thought it would be fun to go travel on the other side.
Happy Day!
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