On Foot in Cornwall at 93 «

On Foot in Cornwall at 93

Thursday 2nd November 2017

Landhydrock was the object for the second day in creepy Cornwall. It’s an Elizabethan National Trust home, in fact burned down mostly in the late 19th and reconstructed lavishly with central heating and every known comfort. The Robartes family had money, thank God.

The National Trust have re-located the car park to somewhere outside the estate boundary and not provided any road signs. So the Official Car was whirring round in something of a temper to begin with. Once, finally, able to park, a buggy was spoken of for conveyance to the house, but the Gay Mother wouldn’t hear of it. It was easily half a mile. A good approach although wearisome because you got the full experience of the demesne of Landhydrock and its commanding position at the head of a valley which you wouldn’t do if just zooming up in a motor. I suppose you could call it ‘slo-Stately visiting’ like ‘slo food’. The house of course is low-lying. ‘It’s very manageable,’ I said. The Gay Mother didn’t agree. ‘It looks huge to me.’ I always like to reach out to a Stately and make it my own as well as establish that as people we are rather more upstairs than down. The Gay Mother has no interest in this approach which is disappointing. I like it to be known that I’m one of them, landed, lodge and gates etc.

The Gay Mother paraded all 50 of the rooms, fraternising with the guides who were determined she should take the lift as well as being often considerably older than her. She was allowed to keep her stick which prompted her to recall the Rokeby Venus episode. But there was nothing like that in the house to slash. It’s hideous really but incredibly great in its completeness and thumping top drawer craftsmanship in the endless panelling and wooden archways. Everybody says it’s a happy house, even though it burnt down. By irony it was in the creamery that we made the biggest connection with our own family for there were butter balls displayed. The Gay Granny made butter balls. I said loudly, ‘That was all she did. Apart from knitting dishcloths.’ Otherwise she sat in the Study in the mornings and lay on the sofa in the drawing room after lunch, except when doing committee work of course. Which she did a lot. Once she found her coffee cup under the drawing room sofa where she’d parked it the day before. Staff, failing to crawl on the drawing room carpet, had not discovered it.

While in the creamery somebody mentioned clotted cream. ‘No such thing,’ the Gay Mother said. ‘There’s cream or ream.’ Well, that was something new. I never knew that. Did you?

We went into the Steward’s Room. ‘This is …. ‘s room,’ she said at once, referring to our own ‘steward’ although we call him a land agent and he doesn’t have a room in any of our properties. I sent him a picture of ‘his’ room, though which he liked.

So we were linked after all.

Then it was the National Trust soup lunch in the old stable or wherever, with tiresome mummies belligerently changing their toddlers’ nappies all round as we lunched, before the half mile walk back to the car. We passed the buggy by the porch and the Gay Mother waved her stick at it. ‘I haven’t been to Polperro for 85 years,’ she said, so off we went. Awful car park, madly expensive and aggressive re: not being allowed to give your ticket to anyone else and cameras watching. No information as to how far to walk. We rounded a corner – massive vista stretching as far as the eye could see, no sign of nooky wooky Cornish fishing village. ‘How far is it?’ the Gay Mother enquired but battled on. It was .75 kilometres. Polperro – why not knock it down and re-build with more space between the buildings? So nooky – and wooky. The boiled down essence of nooky-wooky, although not beamy.

A member of the public approached in Polperro: ‘Excuse me, are you on the telly?’ ‘No, I’m not Robert Peston,’ I said, trying to keep pleasant. But really, it is likely that Robert Peston would be in Polperro on a Wednesday wearing Topman fun slacks in tartan (spray on), a faux linen dress coat also by Topman in silver grey and carrying a second-hand Designer clutch-cum-brief case by Lancel?

So that completed the Cornish visit.