March 13, 2022
We are currently staying in the village of Crantock which is a short walk down narrow roads from Crantock Beach. The walk from the town center is pleasant and leads past old thatch roofed houses with stone walls and a cascading green plant with beautiful purple flowers.
At the end of the road is a gravel parking lot and sand dunes that lead to Crantock beach. The beach is at the mouth of the River Gannel that flows along the right hand side of the beach and out into the ocean. As you can see from the surfboard, this is also a popular surfing beach though it’s mostly empty this time of year.
There are grassy sand dunes on one side of the river that lead to rocky cliffs and along the beach are a series of crevasses and caves. At low tide you can explore these areas but they fill up surprisingly fast as the tide rushes in.
Here is a short video of me exploring one of the caves (which I do not recommend since the water comes in even faster than I imagined. Shortly after the video, I got soaked up to my knees)
In the video, you can hear me talking about what I thought was a legend but it turns out is a very real tragedy that occurred in the 1920’s.
It is a story about a beautiful girl who was riding her horse on the beach along the cliffs. As the tide came rushing in, she and the horse were pushed into one of the caves and drowned in the churning waters. The girl’s lover was heartbroken and he wrote a poem to the girl which he carved into the stone where she died.
Bi and I found the carving and here is what the poem reads:
“Mar not my face but let me be
Secure in this lone cavern by the sea.
Let the wild waves around me roar
Kissing my lips for evermore.”
The beach has a wild, melancholy feeling to it that is accentuated by the tale of the girl and her lover.
If you look at our photo below you can see two rainbows in the background, one prominent and another faded but still visible like a small tribute from the heavens to the two lovers.
