Our weekend trip to Cornwall was fab.
We stayed at a lovely B&B in the centre of Padstow, a real find, with free wireless internet, excellent breakfasts, and parking. Those who know Padstow will appreciate that the parking is pretty valuable. The place was really good, though. They had a cafetiere in the room as well as instant, and a pint of milk instead of those awful plastic thimbles. Just what you'd have in your own house.
Visiting the area around Padstow is always full of memories for me. I've been going there since I was six months old (apparently) and must have been there maybe thirty times? I remember the old shops, the old steam trains that went there, the dredgers, the old ferry to Rock where you had to get on and off using a plank. I've been there with my grandmother (I think), my parents, Adam, with my best friend from school (we cycled there from Bristol), with Mary and her parents and sister, and then with our children; and now with Karen.
Each time there is something different, and much that is the same. Now there is Rick Stein and the likes of "Presto Pasties" with spinach and ricotta fillings. I call that an improvement; the original pasties were always horrible. The Mashie Niblick at St Merryn is now "Ripleys", but the chip shop there is still the same.
The theme of this visit seems to have been pottery. We went to St Ives, and I learned that the artistic community that set up there had partly come in part from Concarneau, a connection I had not made before. St Ives was (and is) full of sculptors, painters, and indeed potters.
Pottery is Karen's obsession, and we found a shop in St Ives that sold the real thing. Real pottery by people that people have heard of . . . . Karen was wandering about going "I've got a piece by this person" about half the things in the shop.
And then we visited Bernard Leach's pottery. Wikipedia says of him:
"It was in Japan that Leach began potting under the direction of Shigekichi Urano (Kenzan VI) and befriended a young potter named Shoji Hamada. With Hamada, he set up the Leach Pottery at St. Ives, Cornwall in 1920, including the construction of a traditional Japanese wood burning kiln. The two of them promoted pottery as a combination of Western and Eastern arts and philosophies. In their work they focused on traditional Korean, Japanese and Chinese pottery, in combination with traditional techniques from England and Germany, such as slipware and salt glaze ware. They saw pottery as a combination of art, philosophy, design and craft – even as a greater lifestyle.
Leach advocated making utilitarian, so-called ethical pots over fine art pots. Thus his style had a lot of influence on counter-culture and modern design in North America during the 1950s and 1960s. He aspired to running a modern cooperative workshop which created a catalogue of handmade pottery for the general public. However, he always made individual pots which were exhibited as works of art."
The original workshop and kilns are preserved, and there is a gallery of works by more recent potters.
We also did the coastal path run from Padstow to Harlyn, in lovely weather. Unfortunately there was no surf.
Oh, and we saw some live music in Padstow. Two of the pubs had acts which consisted of a singer singing along to a karaoke machine. There is scope here for anyone who's not completely rubbish. In the end we found some people actually playing the accordion and singing, which was much better...
My first ever attempt.