Tales from Mumma’s Café

I’m sitting in Mumma’s Café in Camelford, sampling a pot of tea and a slice of cake. This is the way I like it: arrive early at the destination and have time for a bit of refreshment before going to the B&B. It also gives some time to start the blog in which I share with you some of the highlights of the day.

That’s where the problems start. There haven’t been many highlights today. Viv and I left home in good time to deliver me to North Petherwin for the start of the walk. After about an hour it started to rain and this lasted for an hour, by which time I was struggling to make sense of a footpath that was horribly overgrown with all the gates tied up with baler twine (once described to me by a farmer as a farmer’s best friend but I’m not so sure). I notice that large electrical cable ties are now being widely used instead of baler twine for holding things together, the trouble being that these cannot be reused so that cut plastic ties are now littering the verges.

And, whilst on this topic, it seems to me that wooden field gates are fast disappearing, being replaced by galvanised steel gates. Though these have been around for a long time they appear to have taken over in a big way, with some sophisticated models that combine a field gate and a small pedestrian gate or a kissing gate in a single unit. However, many of these steel gates (which are heavy) have been hung on wooden gateposts that are not strong enough or young enough to carry the weight, making opening some gates a big struggle.

Then, via some extremely small lanes, some pretty but drunken signposts and another bad path, to Davidstow airfield, opened in 1942 and used by Coastal Command until the end of the war and then as a motor racing circuit (three Formula 1 races were held there in the 1950s), It is long since derelict, though microlights have been flown from there for some years and there are warnings about walking on the runways (though the sheep do it all the time).

There is also the huge creamery at the edge of the airfield with its chimneys, and a couple of steel towers that I haven’t seen before. The largest looks like a huge electricity pylon but there are no wires and no other pylon in sight. And would you put power cables next to an airfield, even if it’s only microlights that are flying?

Finally, a long and muddy path down into Camelford where I’m now looking out at the traffic on the A39 and thinking that I can’t spin the last cup of tea out any longer. So to the same primitive but cheap B&B that I used in 2012; same proprietor, same room, same air of the 1950s but clean and well placed. On the way into the town I came across another garden figure either modest or where the face had fallen off.

Camelford seems little changed. The Conservative Club has been spruced up and there’s bunting strung around outside – it’s hard to tell whether that’s a political statement or merely celebrating summer. Tomorrow I go to Bodmin where I’m meeting a lady outside the station. Brief Encounter it isn’t and I stay in Lostwithiel tomorrow night.