At the village of Ruan Lenihorne, we met an old Cornishman sawing tree limbs. A smile tweaked his moustache as he gave tourniquet handshakes all around while explaining that he was cutting pieces of hazel. He would fashion the hazel into walking sticks that he would sell.
”Holly is the best and ash is more flexible,” he said, kneeling back to his task, ”but this hazel is good. And the best walking sticks are cut right here,” he said, leaning back to show us, ”where the root meets the ground. It makes a lovely handle.”
He refused to sell us any sticks because they still needed numerous coats of varnish before it would be ”proper,” although, he said, sniffing, there are those who would sell unfinished goods. Indeed, he said, there were so many walking-stick makers in Cornwall that most of the trees are claimed and marked.
There are shops in England that sell only walking sticks because walking is the national pastime, having supplanted fishing, according to a recent survey. The country has about 100,000 miles of public rights-of-way-footpaths, bridle paths and byways that traverse hills, mountains, farmlands, seaside and fields. Many of the walkways are public paths blazed long before the invention of the automobile.
After World War I walking became popular as the English people sought an inexpensive refuge from the grime of the Industrial Revolution. Today, walking is still much a part of English life. The government estimates that 38 percent of the population, or about 21 million people, go walking in the countryside regularly.
Among the most avid British walkers is Chris Hague of the Wayfarers, one of several companies that offer organized walks through the English countryside. Hague gave up a career as a commercial artist in 1983 to become a professional walker.
”I`ve walked all my life,” he said, ”and now I`m making a living doing what I`ve always dreamed of doing.”
Under Hague`s guidance, our walking group learned what the Britons already know: The best way to see the countryside is on foot. We spent a week walking in Cornwall along the Coastal Path, a 562-mile national trail around England`s western peninsula. Routes off the Coastal Path would take us into the interior.
Cornwall is well-suited for walking because it offers varied topography and because of its isolation. It is the tail of England, at the southwest tip, aloof and detached-a rocky claw thrusting into the Atlantic.
”You won`t see busloads of tourists here,” said Hague, referring to the southern coast of Cornwall. ”Americans who want to see one pretty village after another usually go walking in the Cotswolds. There`s really not much to do in this part of Cornwall but walk and sail.”
Hague, who looks to be in his 30s but is 51, described the assets of a Cornwall walk on our first day when we began our tour in Truro. The nine who joined Hague for the walk in Cornwall included my wife, Susan, and me, two couples from Baltimore, two Chicago women (a teacher and a computer programmer) and a retired electronics executive from the Isle of Guernsey.
We never ventured more than 50 miles from our starting point over the next five days, but we saw a lot of Cornwall. We walked through medieval villages, across fields, down cliffs, along beaches, up grassy hills medallioned with sheep and cows, along sandy coves, past lone farms in the center of high-walled fields and through forests thick with legends. Here in Cornwall Alfred, Lord Tennyson chased after King Arthur`s legend and wrote of ”wind-hollowed heights and gusty bays.”
In pretty villages we learned about the Cornish history of superstition and magic spells. Along the estuaries and little coves that followed the coastline we would hear not only of the shipwrecks but also of smuggling and pirates.
The weather caused thousands of shipwrecks, the Cornish, it seems, had a hand in more than a few of these disasters. The locals would set beacons on cliffs over the rocks and feast on the leavings of the dying vessels.
Of course, that is history and the Cornish people are friendly and eager to talk about the past. In fact, one can walk easily and safely around Cornwall (and other parts of England) without guidance.
But there are several advantages of organized walks. Logistical problems of luggage, accommodations and restaurants are handled for you. And you have the benefit of experts such as Hague in selecting the routes. This leaves the visitor free to savor the walk.
And so we did. The members of our group were congenial, fit and well-traveled. We walked in various configurations-twos and threes and fours-with the groupings changing perhaps every hour. And sometimes people walked alone.
Between walks, we took morning coffee, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner at pubs and restaurants in towns that were never far from the sea and with distinctively Cornish names such as Philleigh, Trewortha, Gerrans, Veryan, Portloe, Portscatho, Mevagissey and Bohortha.
Every day we walked about 10 miles. We carried only small backpacks for sweaters, rain gear, water bottles, cameras, maps and other necessities.
Twice a day, Malle Adkins, the walk manager, would rendezvous with us and offer refreshments and a ride in the Wayfarers` station wagon for anyone who was tired, blistered or otherwise indisposed. She also transported our luggage to the next night`s lodging.
Our accommodations were at village inns that were family owned and tended. The rooms were neat, clean and modest, and you had the feeling of staying at someone`s house rather than a hotel. Each inn had lively pubs where we met Cornish villagers who were unaccustomed to talking to Americans and who grilled us about our lifestyles, politics, even NFL football.
Sleep came early and easily, and each morning we awoke ready for walks that sparkled with the dew of novelty. Throughout the day we were propelled by an unshakable need to see what was around the next bend or over the next hill. Along the way we chatted with shepherds, refuse collectors, schoolteachers and assorted local eccentrics and amiable bucolics.
At the village of St. Mawes, a workman was painstakingly thatching the roof of a cottage. We yelled up and asked him how long it would take him.
”I don`t know, but when I`m finished, it will last 30 years.”
More often we found ourselves in the company of only each other as we walked the cliffs, ablaze in yellow gorse, high above the English Channel.
On these walks, Hague, the professional, and his nine amateur clients engaged in an exchange of walking lore that would go on all week.
For instance, the leg muscles are the largest and most powerful muscles in the human body. Hippocrates prescribed walking for nearly everything, and walking was Freud`s personal route to mental health. Albert Einstein ranged for miles through the pretty countryside around Princeton. And much of English literature was shaped by such prodigious walkers as Wordsworth, Carlyle, Shakespeare, Jonson, Keats, Stevenson and Dickens.
Local residents added to our cache of information, as on the day we detoured from the Coastal Path down the steep trail to the fishing village of Portloe. At the old Lugger Hotel, the barmaid expertly downshifted a foam-free pint of bitter and told us that when Percy and Mary Shelley eloped, they walked the first 100 miles. In exchange we told her that Aldous Huxley once was stopped and questioned by Los Angeles police because he was out walking at night.
But as we walked across a farm field, rife with the lusty odor of earth and cattle, we found that there are problems of a different kind walking in England. Hague said that walking enthusiasts were required constantly to battle attempts to restrict walking rights along public paths.
”There are running disputes between the walkers and certain individuals who would like us to go away, like farmers, moorland owners and water officials worried about pollution,” Hague said. ”We are constantly taking landowners to court to force them to open rights of way, and there are a lot of petty harassments. Occasionally, a farmer will dump a load of manure right in front of his gate.” But we never encountered such opposition on our overland treks off the Coastal Path.
The sounds change
Fifteen minutes from the roar of the sea, the sounds became bovine, porcine, equine. The hogs were indifferent to this strange group of two-legged walkers, the horses almost friendly, the young bulls downright curious.
Then the countryside would give way to thatched-roof villages such as Veryan, with church steeples jutting into the sky like admonishing fingers, and cemeteries with tombstones canted and jockeyed by the frosts of a hundred or more winters.
We wondered about Veryan`s round houses and then learned that they were so designed because their 19th Century architects believed that if there were no corners, there would be no place for the devil to hide.
Veryan, like most of the villages, is so small that entering and leaving amounted to almost the same thing, and soon we`d be in a pasture again within earshot of the channel waves doubling their fists and pounding the shore.
Back on the Coastal Path, we might see a dozen or more black gulls holding an important meeting on a foam-flecked rock, each one earnestly seeking the attention of the chair. A half-hour later, we were climbing over yet another stile, a set of steps over a farmer`s fence or wall.
With this rhythm of landscape, we fell into a pleasant dailiness. It began with a full English breakfast (juice, cereal, eggs, toast, grilled tomatoes, bacon, sausage and kippers) about 8, walking from about 9 to 12:30. We`d stop for a leisurely pub meal (perhaps a ”plowman`s lunch” of cheese, ham and bread) and then walk till about 4. Then it was rest and recuperation until 7, and a long, voluble dinner followed by conversation and reflections on the day`s walk while the fire snapped its fingers in the hearth.
This postprandial relaxation climaxed the steady winding down of the day, which I often began by pondering some problem, but the rhythmic motion of arms and legs cleared the mind and opened up the senses. All thought soon left the head, to be replaced by the sights and sounds of land and sea. For the walker, the landscape is no longer something passing by through a window. And you get to meet some interesting people.
For example, Hague led us down a dirt lane near Portscatho to a farmhouse and the beckoning odor of warm scones. In Cornwall scones come not only with jam and marmalade, but also with clotted cream. Jean Curd-she swore that was her name-poured steaming teacups of Earl Grey and explained how she makes clotted cream.
”You let the milk stand over for 24 hours until the cream separates and rises to the top. Then you steam it over boiling water for about 4 hours, until it forms a crust at the top. It ends up at about 55 percent butterfat.
”There`s a difference of opinion in Cornwall over just how long it should be steamed. We make it thick and runny, but others steam it until it`s as thick as butter and you can slice it.”
Near St. Keverne we met a woman along the Coastal Path with a black dog. She wore boots, a handsome tan coat and a brown cap from which wisps of gray hair protruded.
”Have you seen any adders (snakes)?” she asked, and as we shook our heads she continued.
”Well, it`s wet and that brings them out, you know. I expect I shall walk across the field.”
She smiled a goodbye.
”Come on, Jane. I don`t think you need any more grass. She`s a gun dog, but she`s gun-shy, so I said, `I`ll take her; I don`t mind.` Cheerio.”
Adieu to `cheerio`
Hague noted that ”cheerio” as a word of parting is fading from usage.
”The younger generation thinks it`s too square, and they`ve taken to using `cheers` as a substitute. I think it`s a shame. So is that.” He points up the hillside, where workers are dismantling a stone wall. ”Small fields are inefficient, you see, and that`s why the walls and fences are coming down. It took a thousand years to shape the English countryside, but bulldozers can come in and tear it down in a day.”
On the fifth and last day, I descended steep cliff steps to a sheltered sunny beach near Bohortha. The waves fought their way onto the shore in a melee of foam, and I walked along the beach between surf and cliff.
As a walker, I felt like a traveler rather than a tourist. I recalled that Paul Theroux, walking around the British coast in 1982 gathering material for ”The Kingdom by the Sea,” became convinced he was engaged in travel because ”I was looking hard and because I had no other business there.”
Walking is the way for the traveler to savor what poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called ”the dappled things”-a flower, a bird`s song, a scrap of conversation with a stranger.
In the end I felt attached to Cornwall, the people and the place. Walking was a powerful antidote for the isolating patterns of conventional tourism.
I came to know what the British know: The real charm of their landscape is best seen from the public footpaths.
