By way of the broad sunshiny estuary, which is as beautiful when the tide is out and the distant gulls stand like a string of pearls on the edge of the yellow sand, as when the whole expanse is one stretch of dimpling blue water, we come to Padstow. At Little Petherick, which is halfway, there is a copy of the 1684 edition of Foxe's "Book of Martyrs," and the south doorway of the church is believed to have been stolen from the ruined edifice on Constantine Bay—at any rate there is no mention in the churchwardens' accounts of any payment made.
Padstow and the Hobby Horse
A short distance from the mouth of the estuary and looking up the blue reaches to the open sea lies the little port of Padstow. In early days it was so near the Atlantic that wandering Danes (901) came and plundered its monastery of St. Petrock, and later the sand blocked up the wide mouth of the harbour forming the Doom Bar, and leaving only a narrow channel on the west. But the little place with its narrow streets all running uphill, its unprotected sharp-cornered quay, and its dominant manor-house, still contrives to exist. It is at its best perhaps when stress of weather has driven in the fishing fleet, and there is a forest of masts clustered by the wharves. On such occasions milk and bread are hard to come by, for there will be five hundred extra mouths to feed.
A quaint survival of the ancient May Day celebrations exists in the Hobby Horse, a wooden circle with a dress of blackened sail-cloth, a horse's head, and a prominent tail. This is carried through the town, the bearers meanwhile chanting a song which, in spite of an old tune and refrain, is full of topical allusions.
Halfway up one of the steep roads that lead out into the country is the beautifully situated Prideaux Place. The family, though of respectable antiquity, has not taken any leading part in the history of the county, but in the house are some interesting pictures, a Vandyke, and some early Opies. When the old home of the Grenvilles was finally dismantled, the great staircase was brought from Stowe and set up here to be a link with the immemorial past.
Round Padstow the land is fertile, very fine wheat being grown; and it is believed that a certain farmer pays his rent with the produce of a single field of asparagus. It is astonishing that more of the succulent edible is not grown, or that the sandhills of the coast are not utilised as they were round Southampton for growing strawberries. A fortune may lurk in the sand, the devastating sand, or, if that is too much to ask, at least it may give back more than it has taken. But the farmers are disinclined for change, and if you ask why there are so few milch kine and why vegetables and other amenities of life are so difficult to get, you are told: "Spoase they'm warm men, got a long stocking. They don't trouble."
Prehistoric
Along the estuary to the north is a way which, in windy weather, is dangerous, but at other times gives a succession of lovely views and which brings the walker past Rockferry (mentioned as early as 1337) to Stepper Point, with its white day-mark. The cliffs for a little are high and not too safe, but Tregudda Gorge with its amethyst and topaz crystals, its flints and worked slates, is a lonely and a beautiful spot. The Cornish tell strange stories of these places, stories of the "little people" whom they believe to be fairies,[1] but who are probably the neolithic dwarf race which is said to have inhabited parts of the country. They are also firm believers in psychic faculty, though they call it by other older names. A man interested in such matters met a London friend at the Padstow terminus. Aware that his friend was supposed to be clairvoyant, he without comment put a fragment of bone that he had found on an old kitchen midden in the other's hand and asked him what he saw. "Now, this is interesting," said the other, "for I see walking away before me a little brown man dressed in skins. On his feet are brogues of hide with the hair inside."
The friends were walking by the estuary and the tide was in. "He has got into a queer sort of basket boat covered with hides and is paddling about among a lot of other little brown people in similar boats. Ah, there is a forest over there." The antiquarian looked across the discoloured line of the Doom Bar to the sandhills opposite, but not a tree was to be seen. He remembered afterwards, however, that many centuries ago a forest, now submerged, had occupied the eastern side of the Camel estuary.
So sparsely inhabited is this coast that the worked flints and arrow-heads of that bygone people still lie on the undisturbed surface of the rocky land. The flints are so sharp, so clean, that it seems their owners can have only just laid them down. And we must remember that this is not a flint country. Every sharp atom was brought from far away in the days when the rivers had to be forded and there were only paths over the waste. Yet, onward from Tregudda Gorge, there are any number to be found. Moreover after Trevone—an uninteresting place where some bathing fatalities have occurred—we come, in broad and beautiful Harlyn Bay, to the necropolis of this vanished race.