Unlike bike paths in Canada, often built on abandoned railway lines in wilderness areas like Quebec’s P’tit Train du Nord in the Laurentians, the Camel Trail is very much part of the surrounding community, several times crossing roads and plunging into built-up areas in its path. It is very popular with families, and I am now sorry we did not cycle its length. It did not rain, and the temperature, in mid-September, was consistently 15-18 degrees, pleasant biking weather.
We chose Lison in Normandy and St. Breward in Cornwall a decade later because they were both convenient for day trips to local places of interest to us. Lison was in easy reach of the D-Day beaches, and of Bayeux, where the famous Tapestry of the Norman Conquest is displayed, as is beautiful Mont St. Michel, islanded like its Cornish counterpart, St. Michael’s Mount near Penzance, at high tide, and surrounded by mud at low tide. We walked the beach battlefield at Pointe du Hoc, taken by U.S. Marines in 1944, and visited Lisieux, where Ste. Therese is buried, as well as the little village of Repentigny, where Louise’s ancestors came from in the seventeenth century. Similarly, St. Breward was our home base for day trips, among them Port Isaac, the real name of the fictional ‘Portwenn’ where the phenomenally successful Doc Martin television comedy series is filmed, and where, we discovered, the Doc’s house was up for sale, presumably to someone who would not mind the hordes of fans streaming past the door and posing for selfies outside. Port Isaac, once a humble fishing village, is now a tourist trap, but the local economy is clearly not suffering from the influx of visitors. Another day trip took us to Tintagel, the rocky headland above the sea crowned by its ‘castle,’ once incorrectly associated with the legend of King Arthur, with ‘Merlin’s Cave’ beneath it. The ruins of this fortification are medieval, not Arthurian. Admission to the peninsula is now only by expensive ticket to permit crossing the Castle’s suspension bridge recently built to connect the ticket office to the mainland, but on my previous visit here with my own small children in 1988, there was no bridge and no outrageous entrance fee. Windy cliff-top walks on Glebe Cliff near the ‘castle’ are still free, however, and the sea views are spectacular: you can see Port Isaac from one of these, and a visit to the twelfth-century parish church of St. Materiana is also worth a visit. We made another day trip to the postcard-pretty town of St. Ives, where an artists’ colony thrives, with artists’ work on display in many enticing shops and boutiques, especially along the esplanade where we sat gazing out at the little harbour full of stranded boats at low tide, temporarily out of reach of the sulky grey sea glowering beyond the harbour’s protective embrace. After an excellent lunch of fresh fish and chips we consumed while sitting on the promenade, we walked along the sand until the threat of rain sent us back to the car park high on a hill. Other day trips followed, including one to the beach at Newquay under a sparkling sun, and another, a shopping trip to Truro, as well as scenic moorland walks from St. Breward itself.
Both our transatlantic trips were memorable, and for both of us the idea of celebrating our 20 years of marriage by remembering with affection these two destinations, both small, isolated, and proudly monocultural places, similar to and yet so different from each other, one French and the other English. They are linked by a thousand years of history since the Norman invasion. These two visits can now be seen in hindsight as an act of homage to our own Anglo-French origins as a couple, although neither was undertaken with such a purpose. This reminder is something to cherish today, and no doubt to recall with pleasure in years to come.
