Cornwall – Peril, Mythology, and Dairy Products

First, a geographical musing, then a sip of history, followed by near death, and finished with a tasteful thought or two.

If the shape of Great Britain were likened to the silhouette of a Victorian lady, she would be gazing wistfully across the North Sea toward Denmark and Norway, home of Cnut the Great, onetime king of England and those Northern lands. The part of her face obscured primly by a parasol contrasts with the mane of hair blown wild past her proud shoulders—that part would be Scotland. The balance of her body and bustle would be England. The fabric whipping behind her legs in peaks and folds would be Wales. And the spit of shore reaching out into the Celtic Sea behind her would be Cornwall. And it is to this same Cornwall that we will dedicate this narrative.

Now for the shortest and most incomplete history of Cornwall ever recorded, intended to be read aloud and in no more than two breaths.

Begin first breath. The Celts were a group of tribes that emerged from the center of Europe a really long time ago; eventually, they made their way to Britain and were quite at home when the Romans arrived (initially led by Caesar only eleven years before his friends started killing him) and decided, oh so persistently, to stay. However, and as it pertains here, the Romans mostly ignored Cornwall, leaving its people to their ways on this wild little peninsula that our Victorian lady stands upon.

Second breath. Skip ahead a couple of hundred years to the fall of the Roman empire. Soon thereafter, the Anglo Saxons and their lesser recalled Jute comrades decided that they liked this big island too and would make it their own. The Celtic descendants in Cornwall, including the legendary King Arthur himself, held off these new aggressors for five centuries but were eventually subsumed into England and later the United Kingdom. Now it is where the rest of the island likes to go on holiday to soak up what sun is available.

Of Many Parts

Whole and stately in name, perhaps, but this silhouette of a lady, when viewed up close, is a collection of mysterious ways and wiles. To learn about this beautiful place, we would have liked to invite the whole of Cornwall for an afternoon cream tea (more on that in a moment) in an enchanted garden overlooking the sea. Given social distancing restrictions, we instead settled for a winding two-week road trip fueled largely by cream and jam.

Entering the Labyrinth

It was to be a more perilous journey than we expected.

Have you driven between hedgerows before? I hadn’t—nor do I wish to again, cream teas notwithstanding (I promise, we’ll tell you what a cream tea is, just bear with us). Imagine driving down a narrow tunnel, so tight that the doors of your compact little German-made go-kart are continually abused on both sides by brambles and other beautiful and yet nasty green bits as you make your way warily on. The wall beneath these protruding fingers of foliage is of unknown constitution but certainly has some terra firma and rock some way back; you just don’t know how far back.

Meanwhile, handpainted signs flash through openings in the hedgerows to indicate that if you turn to burst through the green wall right NOW, you will find a cream tea (which is the whole point, though I realize we haven’t yet defined the term), which is a rather dangerous distraction for eyes trying to be glued to whatever invisible foe might be appearing just beyond the bend. In that precise moment that your attention wanes, you are likely to encounter another vehicle with the audacity to be trying to go the other direction. They are, presumably, seeking a cream tea in the opposite direction. You’re tempted to tell them that there aren’t any cream teas there, but instead, you simply wave politely and back up three or four miles to the last passing place that you so foolishly passed by.

The waving is essential; it humanizes the whole interaction. You can’t, of course, remove your right hand from the steering wheel, or you will crash headlong into the wall only inches from the side of your car, nor can you remove your left hand from the stick shift (did I mention that in this wacky country you get to shift with your left hand, so zany) because the road goes from level to nearly cliff-like in less time than it takes a sheep to stare at you blankly through a break in the hedgerow, so you extend some number of digits from your right hand as you pass by way of expressing all of the emotions in the human pathos.

Some people only lift one or two fingers. I’ve never been one of those cretins. I always extend all four fingers. It seems the least I can do to reach out to this stranger with whom I am sharing this moment and this road. Whenever I encounter another person who sees the world as I do, also extending all four fingers, I think that we might be soul mates. I think that maybe we can be friends, never lonely again. Of course, by the time I realize this and the tears shed in recognition of our shared humanity are dried, they are long gone. I yearn to turn my car around to give chase but realize I am hemmed in on both sides, and I could never turn my little joke of a car around in this setting. I look back wistfully over my shoulder at the friendship that has passed me by in a moment of whimsy and careen unknowing into the hedgerow’s sidewall and die.

If I’m ever born again in Cornwall, I might just plant myself in one of those passing places; that way, I wouldn’t have to reverse back to find one. Sure, I won’t get anywhere, but that is a small price pay for not being stuck in a narrow, hedge-defined gorge.

Emerging Victorious

Eventually, the hedge diminishes in the distance. The daylight returns in flashes and shadows, and the world opens out before us. Emerging like Theseus from the Labyrinth, following our modern-day ball of yarn, that is to say, the blue line on our sat-nav, we stride proudly and purposely into the open, leaving the Minotaur slain behind us—that is to say, we successfully passed some cars.

Now the terrors and trepidation of the labyrinth—I mean hedgerows—seem small and manageable. You feel ashamed of the lingering fear and oppression that still pervades you. In Theseus’ Greek Myth, he took to the sea with the resourceful local princess who told him how to defeat the Minotaur, but we have not—as yet—met any local princesses nor Victorian ladies to guide us. Theseus stranded his feminine helper on an island when she got weird, in any case. If we met one, we would have been much more polite and invited her to a cream tea to tell us all about Cornwall before deciding whether or not to abandon her on an island.

Ah, yes! We were supposed to be on about the cream tea.

We very nearly sustained ourselves exclusively on cream teas, as a matter of fact. They are not a beverage as we first thought, but rather a fourth meal that one should seriously consider having daily: one or two scones (pronounced “skAHns” if you are posh) accompanied by a genuinely unreasonable quantity of clotted cream and jam. They are best enjoyed following a spirited walk along a coastal cliff, of which the landscape has many to boast, or as a restorative after braving the maze of hedgerows.

The scones are made from wheat grown on the fields that roll gently off in every direction and is, in some cases, still ground by waterwheel-powered mills, they are soft with a hardened crust. The jam or preserves (I’ve never quite figured out the difference) recall the blackberries cropping up all along the hedgerows that protect these fields while imperiling our journey. The milk that makes the clotted cream comes from the cows grazing beyond the hedgerows. The produce of Cornwall wrapped up tidily in a tasty little package.

It’s all about the clotted cream

Oh! You might not know what clotted cream is; I certainly didn’t before immersing myself in Cornwall for a little while. I will tell you, and you will be so glad as your life will be richer and fuller for this knowledge—confessedly it’s also possible that your waistline will be richer and fuller for this knowledge as well.

Clotted cream is what all milk yearns to be. All other dairy products bemoan the blighted sun that was shining the day they were turned into something other than clotted cream. Made by heating raw milk and some other magicalness that I don’t presume to penetrate, it is what would happen if Butter and Whipped Cream could make a dirty little love child.

It is, notably, not readily available in the US because of our rashly provincial laws regarding the sale of raw milk. If I were a cow, I would want people to make my milk into clotted cream and would be offended by the government overreach that prohibited it. (Join our coalition for the introduction of real clotted cream in America “Udder Freedom!”)

This delicious tradition is served with a pot of tea with or without cream and sugar. I don’t know why anyone puts cream or sugar in their tea, but they seem to do that here. If you prefer, you can have coffee or drink your tea straight like a sensible person—which has the added benefit of allowing the world to allocate a bit more milk to the production of clotted cream.

More than Hedgerows and Cream Teas

Cornwall is so much more than hedgerows and cream teas. It is a three millennium home of Celtic people, guardians of an esteemed culture and dying language. It produced either the true Arthur, the Once and Future King to stave off foreign invaders, or it gave the world and posterity the legend of the same. Either way, the world is more vibrant for it. And though it was off of the coast of Cornwall where King Arthur sailed to Avalon to rest and heal his hurts, it is to Cornwall itself where so many people travel for the same.

On our search for the ways that Cornwall’s past affects its present day, we found pastoral beauty and geologic grandeur against the backdrop of a fickle sea and accompanying seaside hamlets. We found a good deal of history and mystery. We found our way through countless miles of thorny green tunnels without ever crashing. And, most memorably, we discovered the delight of an Afternoon Cream Tea. Perhaps sometime you’ll join us, and we can share one in this or a future life.

Questions

• Have you ever gotten lost while driving amidst hedgerows?
• Do you believe that King Arthur was real, and if not, why not?
• Have you had, and, if so, how much do you love clotted cream?
• Do you speak Cornish, and if so, do you give lessons?