Wednesday 30th May
Bude – St Nectan’s Glen – Bude
I’m still feeling pretty rough this morning – I’ll spare you the running to the bathroom commentary – but I reckon I’m just about up for a trip to St Nectan’s Glen, as long as I don’t shit my pilgrim pants along the way. Sal and Ryan seem in no rush to get rid of me, but it’d be good to build up some physical strength – and emotional confidence – before I resume my pilgrimage. Or maybe getting ill and being looked after are part of any pilgrimage, too. I’m guessing – as usual – that the major pilgrim hostels of yore had herbalists and doctors of sorts on hand. Of course pilgrims are going to get ill. I’m not the first peregrinator to be stuck in the lavatory. Maybe, fundamentally, nothing is personal?
First up, though, I head into Bude in search of new walking boots. These Berghaus boots I’ve been wearing thus may be fairly good in the – thus far non-existent – rain, but they’re way too hot on days as sunny as these. And the sunny days are only going to get sunnier. Risky business switching tyres so early on in the race, I know, but needs must. I find a little camping shop and eventually opt for some lightweight leather and canvas boots. I spend ten minutes walking around the shop in them before I purchase – my main concern right now not being whether or not they are waterproof, but whether they breathe or not. I keep on reassuring the sales staff that I’m not going to do a runner. They’re nice and light, and – unusual in a walking boot – have plenty of toe room. I realise that I can actually walk with my toes splayed out – as if I’m walking inside boots rather than in boots, if that makes any sense. It’s the toe-wriggle room that clinches the deal. I box up my old boots and post ‘em to my brother – I do hope he doesn’t get unduly excited by the arrival of my various parcels.
Whilst in Bude I also – don’t tell the holistic cops – buy and drink a can of coke, in order to calm my belly. I don’t know what the biochemistry is, but coke does seem to have the ability to stop – or at least pause – the shits. Maybe I should copyright that: “Coke: pauses the pilgrim shits.” I also remember to buy Sal and Ryan a large pack of replacement loo rolls.
My modest shopping trip temporarily wipes me out, and I have to lie down in the garden for half an hour in order to top up my battery. I haven’t felt this physically delicate in yonks.
But the bus journey goes without incident, and stops right opposite St Piran’s well, Trethevy, which sits slap bang on the old pilgrim’s way. Like Saint John the Baptist’s well in Morwenstow, St Piran’s well is housed in a small sort of pyramidical slate building – like a bread oven that’s dreaming of being a chapel – surmounted by a simple wooden cross.
St Piran, I only recently learned – relative northerner that I am – is Cornwall’s patron saint, his name immortalised in Perrnaporth – or Piran’s Port – a bit futher down the coast. He’s also the patron saint of tin miners, and his flag – Cornwalls’ distinctive white cross on a black background – is said to represent the seams of tin running through the dark ground below. Some say his saintly remains are concealed underneath the wellhead, and that the holy water actually flows over his bones.
I haven’t got a clue what St Piran’s back-story is, but I don’t think he was one of Nectan’s and Morwenna’s siblings, even though he was around at a similar time. They definitely knocked out a lot of saints back in them Dark Ages, when the lights were out.
I find a place where the well waters are accessible, reach down to wet my hand, and then dab a finger of ice-cold holy water upon my forehead. I now realise that I have somehow blessed myself, and it suddenly feels as if my day pilgrimage has officially begun. The refreshing cool wetness of my forehead self-benediction lingers for a while, like the final ring of a meditation bell as it cross-fades into sweet nothingness.
I decide to pass by St Piran’s pleasantly squat slate church – I can always call in on my way back, if there’s time. And, even though the coke seems to have done its temporary job, I am very much relying on there being free and functioning toilets at my destination. Otherwise I’m stuffed – or, more accurately, unstuffed. Oh, to be a pilgrim...
After half a mile or so walking along a quiet country road, signposts lead me to a very enchanted woodland valley, harbouring at its fold a merrily chuckling stream that might even be a river. The accompanying footpath is well made and well used. I’m among dozens of other day pilgrims following the trail, all shapes and ages and sizes, one or two looking as if they’re worried they might have bitten off a little bit more than they can chew. It feels like this path contains an invitation for tourists to remember what tourism essentially is: a misplaced urge for pilgrimage. Oh, it must be trebly enchanting to walk along here late evening, when nobody else is around. The twenty-first century is definitely beginning to loosen its grip on me. Alleluia.
I actually feel as if I’m entering a land not just full of ancient saints, but full also of far more ancient dragons. There’s definitely fern-festooned dragon energy running through this valley. Maybe the old saints were dragon hunters? Or maybe, unbeknownst, they followed their subterranean songs? If you were going to introduce a young child to the joys of pilgrimage, this would be a wonderful place to do it.
And whilst you have to pay modern-day coinage to visit the waterfalls at the end, you don’t get the feeling that you’re being ripped off. Plus: they’ve got eminently passable toilets. Phew!
If you so wish, you can make a beeline straight down to St Nectan’s Kieve – and there are dozens of pairs of wellies you can borrow too – but I decide to perambulate the winding woodland walk first. My new boots seem to be working just fine – my toes are splayed with happiness – but my upper body feels like a very old boot indeed. My get up and go has definitely got up and gone.
Near a woodland statue of the Buddha, I plonk myself on the welcoming earth, lean against the trunk of a beech tree, and slide into a midday snooze, serenaded by that finely woven late-May sunlight that only a sky full of beech leaves can convey.
I’m woken from my spiritual slumbers by two half-term children walking up to the Buddha and casually high-fiving his raised right hand, which don’t half make me chuckle. Even more Zen than the sound of one hand clapping.
The white noise of thundering water, and its correlative mist, saturates the air.
And what a joy to finally behold. The waterfall plunges a good sixty feet into some sort of stone basin – kieve is Cornish for washing basin – and then issues forth through a large mossy hole in the rock, dropping a few feet further into a pool which you can easily wade into. New boots off, and a-wading in I go. I can’t tell if my feet are singing with joy or complaint, but I so appreciate the tune that’s now travelling through my body, as my heart pumps water-cooled blood to every nook and cranny of my achy body.
The adventurer in me wonders about the practicalities of climbing up into the kieve – I’m sure it’s not allowed, and I’m also sure it’s done. Oh my, there must be a very sacred tub up there, through that slippery, rocky hole. Maybe that’s where St Nectan himself used to take his monthly bath? Imagine frolicking in there in the moonlight with your skyclad neo-pagan mates, the cacophonous roar of the waterfall blinding your collective brain into pristine clarity. Whilst on mushrooms. I’m guessing it’s been done. I really do hope so.
On a piece of slate on the far side of the stream there’s a long painted message. I wade through the waters to inspect its contents:
We first came here by chance on 13th October 2012, the day after our 49th anniversary not knowing what we would find. The place affected us both. We spent time by the waterfall and found ourselves remembering friends and family who have gone and threw a stone into the river thinking of them.
We returned today with this marker to remember the people we miss: those who helped us over the years; to mark our love for our families, our children and their children; but especially for each other.
One day this will fall into the river and become part of it again.
We hope it’s left where it falls because that’s how it should be.
ANITA and FRED – married 12th October 1963
“All you need is love”
Nice one, Anita and Fred. It ain’t fallen yet.
Slightly downstream of the pool there’s an old tree-trunk festooned with thousands of coins that have been hammered into its sodden flesh. Who said there is no magic money tree?
It’s a wonderful anarchic mix this place – Christian saints, Buddhas, coin-scaled tree trunks, ubiquitous clouttie ribbons, carved Egyptian cats draped with bejewelled necklaces... The gift shop is equally anarchic in its scope. I buy a fistful of postcards and a delightful book by Roland Rotherham called Sacred Falls. And over a cup of coffee on the terrace above, I flip through its colourful pages and gather a few more beatific jigsaw pieces from the box.
Straddling the fifth and sixth centuries, in that historical holiday between Roman withdrawal and Saxon supremacy, Nectan was one of a multitude of Welsh missionaries who crossed the channel to evangelise the West Country. While some of his sistren and brethren may well have landed on Glenthorne beach, Nectan himself stepped out of his missionary coracle at Hartland Point, in nowadays Devon, where he established his first church, at nowadays Stoke St Nectan – which goes on my list of future adventures.
Years later Nectan upped camp and moved here, and who can blame him? King Arthur is still rumoured to have paid him a visit. And surely this waterfall would have already been regarded as a sacred place by the local pagans – any one with a mind or heart set on the deeper stuff of life would be enchanted by its potency and beauty.
The most famous legend goes that, having helped Huddon the local swineherd locate some – in Rotherham’s playful words – “errant porkers”, Nectan was rewarded extravagantly by the local lord with the gift of two of his finest milking cows. Alas, local villains swiped the bountiful bovines, and, when confronted by Nectan, they knew that there was no point in arguing with a saint. Instead – as villains are sometimes wont – they hacked off his head.
But neither the story nor Nectan were thereby truncated. The decapitated saint promptly picked up his bonce and carried it back to his hermit’s cell for fond reunion, and wherever blood fell along the way, foxgloves sprang up in full-throated reply. One of the villains promptly died of shock, and the other went blind. It appears that natural justice was swift in them days. Pre-sentencing reports must be a fairly modern invention
When he eventually died for real, Nectan’s body was placed in a coffin of hollowed oak. The river was then temporarily diverted past Nectan’s hermitage, and his oak-blessed body was buried at a secret location along the temporarily dry bed before the river was reverted to its original course. Two of his many sisters then continued his life of prayer and praise. I’m not surprised to learn that good ol’ Reverend Hawker even wrote a poem them both – The Sisters of Glen Nectan – but it’s not really worth repeating. Opium use, it seems, is no guarantee of good verse. All the poems I’ve written whilst stoned have turned out to be vampiric.
Rotherham includes a delightful list of Nectan’s and Morwenna’s other siblings, and the place names associated with them:
Adwen (Advent)
Canauc/Cynog
Cleder/Clether
Dilic/Illick
Endeient (St Endellion)
Helie (Egloshayle)
Joahnnes/Sion (St Ives)
Iona
Julianna/Ilud
Kenhender/Cynidr
Keri/Curig (Egloskerry)
Mabon/Mabyn (St Mabyn)
Menfre/Menfrewy (St Minver)
Merrewenne/Marwennna (Marhamchurch)
Nennocha
Tamalanc
Tedda/Tetha (St Teath)
Wencu/Gwencuff
Wenheden/Enoder
Wenna/Gwen (St Wenn)
Wensent
Wynup/Gwenabwy
Yse/Isssey (St Issey)
Just reading these names out loud makes me slurp my coffee and rouses within my caffeinated blood both an ancient language and a primal urge to nuzzle my face in a clump of ripe moss and snort its vapours unto their very ripe source.
Alas, the coffee hit doesn’t mask my underlying physical condition for long, and I really struggle with the walk back along the valley. Whilst I’m feeling emotionally and spiritually refreshed by this micro-pilgrimage, I’m also feeling pretty physically knackered. I’m really not sure if I’ll feel fit enough to hit the road tomorrow.
I reckon it’s somewhere along here that a very young pilgrim might begin wanting “a carry”. I sure wouldn’t say no if some friendly Kernow giant offered me a ride on his or her generous shoulders.
With a bit of time until the bus back to Bude, I pop into St Piran’s church. I really like it. It’s so simple inside: whitewashed walls and low, exposed roof beams, and a hefty altar made of thick slabs of slate, above which a slender stained glass window of St Piran himself, dressed in blue and red and gold, surrounded by sea and cliffs. I sit in one of the pews and have me a bit of quiet time.
Where does God actually live?
On the bus ride back I slip into omnibus snoozeland, wherein Melangell informs me that she’s particularly enjoyed today’s little outing.
When I finally get back to Sal and Ryan’s cottage, it’s pilgrim debriefing over gin and tonic in the garden, laughter, dinner, music – courtesy of Ryan – more laughter, bath and then bed-sweet-sheeted-bed for me. Just before lights out, I open up my travelling Soul Food collection and there’s Derek Walcott’s beautiful poem, Love After Love, staring back at me. Every time I come across this poem, it touches me afresh. Even if my life right now feels more like a dog’s dinner than a celebratory feast...
First up, though, I head into Bude in search of new walking boots. These Berghaus boots I’ve been wearing thus may be fairly good in the – thus far non-existent – rain, but they’re way too hot on days as sunny as these. And the sunny days are only going to get sunnier. Risky business switching tyres so early on in the race, I know, but needs must. I find a little camping shop and eventually opt for some lightweight leather and canvas boots. I spend ten minutes walking around the shop in them before I purchase – my main concern right now not being whether or not they are waterproof, but whether they breathe or not. I keep on reassuring the sales staff that I’m not going to do a runner. They’re nice and light, and – unusual in a walking boot – have plenty of toe room. I realise that I can actually walk with my toes splayed out – as if I’m walking inside boots rather than in boots, if that makes any sense. It’s the toe-wriggle room that clinches the deal. I box up my old boots and post ‘em to my brother – I do hope he doesn’t get unduly excited by the arrival of my various parcels.
Whilst in Bude I also – don’t tell the holistic cops – buy and drink a can of coke, in order to calm my belly. I don’t know what the biochemistry is, but coke does seem to have the ability to stop – or at least pause – the shits. Maybe I should copyright that: “Coke: pauses the pilgrim shits.” I also remember to buy Sal and Ryan a large pack of replacement loo rolls.
My modest shopping trip temporarily wipes me out, and I have to lie down in the garden for half an hour in order to top up my battery. I haven’t felt this physically delicate in yonks.
But the bus journey goes without incident, and stops right opposite St Piran’s well, Trethevy, which sits slap bang on the old pilgrim’s way. Like Saint John the Baptist’s well in Morwenstow, St Piran’s well is housed in a small sort of pyramidical slate building – like a bread oven that’s dreaming of being a chapel – surmounted by a simple wooden cross.
St Piran, I only recently learned – relative northerner that I am – is Cornwall’s patron saint, his name immortalised in Perrnaporth – or Piran’s Port – a bit futher down the coast. He’s also the patron saint of tin miners, and his flag – Cornwalls’ distinctive white cross on a black background – is said to represent the seams of tin running through the dark ground below. Some say his saintly remains are concealed underneath the wellhead, and that the holy water actually flows over his bones.
I haven’t got a clue what St Piran’s back-story is, but I don’t think he was one of Nectan’s and Morwenna’s siblings, even though he was around at a similar time. They definitely knocked out a lot of saints back in them Dark Ages, when the lights were out.
I find a place where the well waters are accessible, reach down to wet my hand, and then dab a finger of ice-cold holy water upon my forehead. I now realise that I have somehow blessed myself, and it suddenly feels as if my day pilgrimage has officially begun. The refreshing cool wetness of my forehead self-benediction lingers for a while, like the final ring of a meditation bell as it cross-fades into sweet nothingness.
I decide to pass by St Piran’s pleasantly squat slate church – I can always call in on my way back, if there’s time. And, even though the coke seems to have done its temporary job, I am very much relying on there being free and functioning toilets at my destination. Otherwise I’m stuffed – or, more accurately, unstuffed. Oh, to be a pilgrim...
After half a mile or so walking along a quiet country road, signposts lead me to a very enchanted woodland valley, harbouring at its fold a merrily chuckling stream that might even be a river. The accompanying footpath is well made and well used. I’m among dozens of other day pilgrims following the trail, all shapes and ages and sizes, one or two looking as if they’re worried they might have bitten off a little bit more than they can chew. It feels like this path contains an invitation for tourists to remember what tourism essentially is: a misplaced urge for pilgrimage. Oh, it must be trebly enchanting to walk along here late evening, when nobody else is around. The twenty-first century is definitely beginning to loosen its grip on me. Alleluia.
I actually feel as if I’m entering a land not just full of ancient saints, but full also of far more ancient dragons. There’s definitely fern-festooned dragon energy running through this valley. Maybe the old saints were dragon hunters? Or maybe, unbeknownst, they followed their subterranean songs? If you were going to introduce a young child to the joys of pilgrimage, this would be a wonderful place to do it.
And whilst you have to pay modern-day coinage to visit the waterfalls at the end, you don’t get the feeling that you’re being ripped off. Plus: they’ve got eminently passable toilets. Phew!
If you so wish, you can make a beeline straight down to St Nectan’s Kieve – and there are dozens of pairs of wellies you can borrow too – but I decide to perambulate the winding woodland walk first. My new boots seem to be working just fine – my toes are splayed with happiness – but my upper body feels like a very old boot indeed. My get up and go has definitely got up and gone.
Near a woodland statue of the Buddha, I plonk myself on the welcoming earth, lean against the trunk of a beech tree, and slide into a midday snooze, serenaded by that finely woven late-May sunlight that only a sky full of beech leaves can convey.
I’m woken from my spiritual slumbers by two half-term children walking up to the Buddha and casually high-fiving his raised right hand, which don’t half make me chuckle. Even more Zen than the sound of one hand clapping.
The white noise of thundering water, and its correlative mist, saturates the air.
And what a joy to finally behold. The waterfall plunges a good sixty feet into some sort of stone basin – kieve is Cornish for washing basin – and then issues forth through a large mossy hole in the rock, dropping a few feet further into a pool which you can easily wade into. New boots off, and a-wading in I go. I can’t tell if my feet are singing with joy or complaint, but I so appreciate the tune that’s now travelling through my body, as my heart pumps water-cooled blood to every nook and cranny of my achy body.
The adventurer in me wonders about the practicalities of climbing up into the kieve – I’m sure it’s not allowed, and I’m also sure it’s done. Oh my, there must be a very sacred tub up there, through that slippery, rocky hole. Maybe that’s where St Nectan himself used to take his monthly bath? Imagine frolicking in there in the moonlight with your skyclad neo-pagan mates, the cacophonous roar of the waterfall blinding your collective brain into pristine clarity. Whilst on mushrooms. I’m guessing it’s been done. I really do hope so.
On a piece of slate on the far side of the stream there’s a long painted message. I wade through the waters to inspect its contents:
We first came here by chance on 13th October 2012, the day after our 49th anniversary not knowing what we would find. The place affected us both. We spent time by the waterfall and found ourselves remembering friends and family who have gone and threw a stone into the river thinking of them.
We returned today with this marker to remember the people we miss: those who helped us over the years; to mark our love for our families, our children and their children; but especially for each other.
One day this will fall into the river and become part of it again.
We hope it’s left where it falls because that’s how it should be.
ANITA and FRED – married 12th October 1963
“All you need is love”
Nice one, Anita and Fred. It ain’t fallen yet.
Slightly downstream of the pool there’s an old tree-trunk festooned with thousands of coins that have been hammered into its sodden flesh. Who said there is no magic money tree?
It’s a wonderful anarchic mix this place – Christian saints, Buddhas, coin-scaled tree trunks, ubiquitous clouttie ribbons, carved Egyptian cats draped with bejewelled necklaces... The gift shop is equally anarchic in its scope. I buy a fistful of postcards and a delightful book by Roland Rotherham called Sacred Falls. And over a cup of coffee on the terrace above, I flip through its colourful pages and gather a few more beatific jigsaw pieces from the box.
Straddling the fifth and sixth centuries, in that historical holiday between Roman withdrawal and Saxon supremacy, Nectan was one of a multitude of Welsh missionaries who crossed the channel to evangelise the West Country. While some of his sistren and brethren may well have landed on Glenthorne beach, Nectan himself stepped out of his missionary coracle at Hartland Point, in nowadays Devon, where he established his first church, at nowadays Stoke St Nectan – which goes on my list of future adventures.
Years later Nectan upped camp and moved here, and who can blame him? King Arthur is still rumoured to have paid him a visit. And surely this waterfall would have already been regarded as a sacred place by the local pagans – any one with a mind or heart set on the deeper stuff of life would be enchanted by its potency and beauty.
The most famous legend goes that, having helped Huddon the local swineherd locate some – in Rotherham’s playful words – “errant porkers”, Nectan was rewarded extravagantly by the local lord with the gift of two of his finest milking cows. Alas, local villains swiped the bountiful bovines, and, when confronted by Nectan, they knew that there was no point in arguing with a saint. Instead – as villains are sometimes wont – they hacked off his head.
But neither the story nor Nectan were thereby truncated. The decapitated saint promptly picked up his bonce and carried it back to his hermit’s cell for fond reunion, and wherever blood fell along the way, foxgloves sprang up in full-throated reply. One of the villains promptly died of shock, and the other went blind. It appears that natural justice was swift in them days. Pre-sentencing reports must be a fairly modern invention
When he eventually died for real, Nectan’s body was placed in a coffin of hollowed oak. The river was then temporarily diverted past Nectan’s hermitage, and his oak-blessed body was buried at a secret location along the temporarily dry bed before the river was reverted to its original course. Two of his many sisters then continued his life of prayer and praise. I’m not surprised to learn that good ol’ Reverend Hawker even wrote a poem them both – The Sisters of Glen Nectan – but it’s not really worth repeating. Opium use, it seems, is no guarantee of good verse. All the poems I’ve written whilst stoned have turned out to be vampiric.
Rotherham includes a delightful list of Nectan’s and Morwenna’s other siblings, and the place names associated with them:
Adwen (Advent)
Canauc/Cynog
Cleder/Clether
Dilic/Illick
Endeient (St Endellion)
Helie (Egloshayle)
Joahnnes/Sion (St Ives)
Iona
Julianna/Ilud
Kenhender/Cynidr
Keri/Curig (Egloskerry)
Mabon/Mabyn (St Mabyn)
Menfre/Menfrewy (St Minver)
Merrewenne/Marwennna (Marhamchurch)
Nennocha
Tamalanc
Tedda/Tetha (St Teath)
Wencu/Gwencuff
Wenheden/Enoder
Wenna/Gwen (St Wenn)
Wensent
Wynup/Gwenabwy
Yse/Isssey (St Issey)
Just reading these names out loud makes me slurp my coffee and rouses within my caffeinated blood both an ancient language and a primal urge to nuzzle my face in a clump of ripe moss and snort its vapours unto their very ripe source.
Alas, the coffee hit doesn’t mask my underlying physical condition for long, and I really struggle with the walk back along the valley. Whilst I’m feeling emotionally and spiritually refreshed by this micro-pilgrimage, I’m also feeling pretty physically knackered. I’m really not sure if I’ll feel fit enough to hit the road tomorrow.
I reckon it’s somewhere along here that a very young pilgrim might begin wanting “a carry”. I sure wouldn’t say no if some friendly Kernow giant offered me a ride on his or her generous shoulders.
With a bit of time until the bus back to Bude, I pop into St Piran’s church. I really like it. It’s so simple inside: whitewashed walls and low, exposed roof beams, and a hefty altar made of thick slabs of slate, above which a slender stained glass window of St Piran himself, dressed in blue and red and gold, surrounded by sea and cliffs. I sit in one of the pews and have me a bit of quiet time.
Where does God actually live?
On the bus ride back I slip into omnibus snoozeland, wherein Melangell informs me that she’s particularly enjoyed today’s little outing.
When I finally get back to Sal and Ryan’s cottage, it’s pilgrim debriefing over gin and tonic in the garden, laughter, dinner, music – courtesy of Ryan – more laughter, bath and then bed-sweet-sheeted-bed for me. Just before lights out, I open up my travelling Soul Food collection and there’s Derek Walcott’s beautiful poem, Love After Love, staring back at me. Every time I come across this poem, it touches me afresh. Even if my life right now feels more like a dog’s dinner than a celebratory feast...
Love After Love
by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.