Peace, perfect peace, in a Cornish haven
ILOVE a tiny little village in Cornwall called Polruan, which is on the Fowey Estuary. We’ve rented a variety of cottages there.
Where Fowey is the bright lights, big city, Polruan is very quiet.
It’s a little passenger ferry ride away. They call it “Little Russia” because the sun doesn’t get there at the end of the day.
When the kids were small it was lovely not to have to take them anywhere major, and just sit on the beach with a cup of tea with the rain dropping gently into it, telling yourself it would clear up in a minute.
They all remember it fondly and last year it was my 60th birthday, so as a treat to myself, I insisted the whole family went down to Cornwall again.
We rented a cottage. I said I was going to rent it for a week and all I asked was that we were all together for some of it.
We managed four days out of seven, so that was pretty good!
I have grandchildren now, and it was really lovely. Crabbing with small people hasn’t changed over the years.
The weather wasn’t brilliant, but you have to go prepared for that.
There’s not much to do, but it’s not far from the Eden Project and we did go there a few years ago.
It was lovely, but one of the joys of being in that quiet part of the world is not getting in the car for a week.
You just drive down there, park the car and leave it.
The whole place is on a one in one incline anyway, so you don’t want to drive.
If you walk fast you can’t hear the children saying: “Are we nearly there yet?”
The little passenger ferry goes every 15 minutes so we’d all pile on that and go across to Fowey then come back and have some chips.
In the cottage we had balloon fights, and played games.
Rather than insisting on doing anything, things just happened.
It was really great family fun.