The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

Author:Raynor Winn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405937528
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-02-15T16:00:00+00:00

14. Poets

Even in the falling light St Ives has a luminous quality. Facing north, but surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic, the town bathes in a high level of ultra-violet light reflected from the sea, giving the painted houses a shimmering unreality, even at dusk. Bernard Leach set up a pottery here in 1920, still in production now, followed by Barbara Hepworth and her giant sculptures. The light attracted artists from all over the world and the little fishing village became a colony of bohemian life. Then the tourists came, then the Tate St Ives art gallery, then more tourists, then the pilchards left and the town’s fate was sealed. A heaving Cornish tourist mecca, where the fishermen run boat trips instead of trawlers and there are more galleries than artists. But the light is still real, reflecting from the narrow streets and terraces of fishermen’s cottages in a white Mediterranean glow.

‘It’d be good to stay for a day, have a look around.’

‘We can’t; there’s nowhere to camp.’

We sat on the harbour wall, watching the lights coming on. An old man in a ripped woollen jumper, short wellingtons and a beanie hat pulled down to his beard was packing away a collection of new lobster pots and a half-woven one. For a moment we could have been 1930s artists absorbing the atmosphere for a painting.

‘Do you fish locally, with your pots?’

‘I’m not a fisherman, my lovely, you won’t catch me on a boat.’

‘What are you doing with the pots then?’

‘Sell them to the tourists. Why, do you want one?’

‘No thanks.’

‘You look like you need a campsite more than a lobster pot. Follow the village out past the Tate, get on to the coastal path and you’ll see a campsite up the hill on the left.’

We left the path and headed up the hill, through a gate and into the final field in a long string of fields that made up a caravan and camping site above the town.

‘We can’t pay for this.’

‘No, but it’s dark: they won’t come and check now. We can leave early.’

The tent fitted perfectly into the furthest corner of the furthest field, behind the gorse bushes. We slept as if we’d walked thirteen miles across hills and rocks, sand and tarmac. When we finally woke, we took a chance and stayed.

I took my boots off in the shower block and peeled away the socks that had been on my feet for three days and nights. The big toe was flat, the nail lifting around the edges. I cut the loose nail away leaving a thin strip still attached to the middle of a pink throbbing toe. But the floor was warm: underfloor heating in a shower block – unheard of. I dried the socks with the hairdryer beneath a huge mirror, blowing sand, dust and skin across the immaculate counter top. The radio was loud with a clotted-cream voice talking about free petrol vouchers if your car displayed a Pirate FM bumper sticker. ‘Da da da da Pirate FM.

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