The soul of the SWCP
He earned the nickname ‘Nutty Noah’ for his willingness to set sail in foul weather, but these days ex-fisherman Martin Ellis paints pictures and sings of his beloved Cornish coast, 304 miles into the SWCP.
FOR FIVE GENERATIONS Martin’s family has lived by tiny Cadgwith Cove on the Lizard peninsula, 304½ miles into the South West Coast Path. For 30 years he launched his fishing boat from its steep shingle beach. Martin pioneered the now widely adopted technique of Cornish ring net fishing for pilchards. He was great at catching – in fact his only real disaster came about because his catch was too good for his boat. So many scales rubbed off the fish in his bumper catch in 1999 they blocked the boat’s scuppers, and his heavily-laden 30-footer – faced with high winds and taking on water that couldn’t drain away – sank.
Selling fish was a different matter, and though he continued to catch, dealing with the markets’ canny buyers to his advantage defeated him. His debts mounted and after three decades fishing Martin lost his final boat, the Prevail, and with it his livelihood. “Then the bank took the house,” he says.
But the 65-year-old is sanguine. “I accepted my fate. I moved into a caravan, grew a few vegetables, then I decided to drive a taxi.” And with its Cornish flag on the front, hand-painted number on the side and an increasingly forthcoming and characterful driver, the service was a hit, particularly with weary coast walkers. Martin loved their company. “They were wonderful – outgoing, friendly, positive, healthy people. The people walking the cliffs were a different breed to townie people. And it encouraged me to overcome my nervousness, and start talking.” And it turned out he had a lot to say – much of it true, about the coast, the birds, the fish and the pirates; and some of it engagingly unexpected. “I used to say ‘I hope I’ve had enough water in my whisky’ or ‘I hope I can find where you want to go’, knowing damn well I did, or I’d sing them my Cornish fisherman song – the story of my life.
At the end of some journeys the men wanted to thank me for being who I am and more than one woman wanted to marry me.”
After six years Martin decided to retire his taxi and devote himself to his art – songs of pilchards, pirates and Samantha Rose (his favourite boat), and canvas after canvas portraying his beloved Cadgwith Cove. “I paint it by moonlight or by day, sometimes from a gull’s eye view, sometimes a human’s. I don’t really want to paint anywhere else,” he says.
He’s sold a few, though you sense characteristically he drives a hard bargain in favour of the buyer. “Most of my life I’ve lived hand to mouth. I’m normally on the bones of my arse, but I’m happy. You can’t paint if you’re not happy.” He’s also working on a long-incubated investigation into Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, a book about which he has a theory he intends to prove.
You can find Nutty Noah singing and telling his life story via his paintings on YouTube (www.bit.ly/ swcpnuttynoah), and we heartily encourage you to
do so. But a real treat it’ll be if you bump into him in person somewhere around mile 305 on the path, or perhaps singing and drinking with “a bunch of other old men at the Newquay gig rowing championships in September” which he says is his highlight of the year, and about as far as he’s willing to travel. He’ll be pleased to meet you, he says, because being a walker you’re no ‘emmet’ (the Cornish name for the wrong type of tourist). “They’re kind and natural. Healthy in body in mind. They notice the world around them like a painter would.” Which is about as close to being locked in a bond of mutual admiration with the South West Coast itself as we can ever hope to get.
“At Land’s End
the turbulent romance of the Atlantic turns gently Mediterranean, with pure light and vivid colours that
artists.” have captivated generations of