Although the Maypole has been given up, the hobby-horse still prances on May Day.
Padstow Harbour is spoiled by the Doom Bar, a shifting bank of sand at the mouth. But this might be placed under control and rectified by the expenditure of money, and the mouth of the Hayle be made into what is sorely needed, a harbour of refuge on the north coast.
The neighbourhood of Padstow abounds in interest; the cliffs are superb, towering above a sea blue as a peacock's neck, here and there crowned with cliff castles. In the sand-dunes or Towans is the buried church of S. Constantine, a convert of S. Petrock, Duke or King of Cornwall, who was so ballyragged by Gildas. There are old Cornish mansions, such as Treshunger, lying in dips among trees; and churches on wind-blown heights, their towers intended as landmarks.
But this is not a guide-book, and such details must be passed over.
On no account should Pentyre Point be missed. It is a grand and glorious cliff, and a projection called the Rumps is occupied by a well-preserved cliff-castle. Porth Gaverne, Porth Isaac, Porthquin, Polzeath are all delightful little bays. The pilchard cellars cut in the rocks should be noticed. Porthquin was once a flourishing little place, but in a terrible storm nearly every man connected with the place, being out fishing, was lost, and it has never recovered.
Porth Isaac--let not those amiable faddists who hold that we are Anglo-Israelites fasten on the name--means the Corn Port, Porthquin the White Port, from the spar in the rock, and Porth Gaverne the Goat Port. A curious fact, to be noted, is that there exists an extensive ancient cemetery close to where is now rising a cluster of new houses at Trevose. Bones are continually turned up by the sea as it encroaches, but all record of a church with burial-ground there is lost. There is a ruined chapel of S. Cadoc, but that is half a mile distant. Cadoc was an elder brother or cousin--it is not certain which--of S. Petrock of Padstow. He must have come here to visit his kinsman.
The story goes that he had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and he brought back with him some of the water of Jordan, and this he poured into a well at this place, which thenceforth possessed marvellous powers. The well is not now easily traced, but bits of carved stone of the chapel lie strewn around. Cadoc was for a while in an island of the lagoon d'Elet, near Belz, in the Morbihan, where he constructed a causeway to the mainland, of which traces remain. He was one of the most restless beings conceivable, and no sooner had he established a monastic centre in one place than he tired of it, and started off to found another somewhere else. He played a scurvy trick once on a South Welsh chief, who with a large party came down on him and imperiously demanded meat and drink. They took all they could get, and got drunk and incapable on the spot. Cadoc shaved half of their heads and beards as they thus lay, but, worse than this, cut off the lips of their horses. He was a violent-tempered man, of tremendous energy in all he did. According to one account he fell a victim to his rashness or enthusiasm; he tried to carry the Gospel to the Saxons, but was cut down by their axes at the foot of the altar.