Another View of Coverack - From Tess Warburton
Towns & Villages

Another View of Coverack - From Tess Warburton

Hi Oliver, I was just reading your rather critical review of Coverack. I holiday in Coverack every year, along with many other families who return there each summer to enjoy beautiful surroundings and friendly inhabitants. I have been going to the village for almost twenty years and although I have travelled to many places in the south west it is still my favourite. In many ways I am pleased you don't like it. If you had stayed long enough in the village and been bothered to find out what it is really like you would have written a more far more colourful description. This would however have encouraged lots of other people to holiday there, including people like yourself (who think it is possible to understand and make judgments about a place within a paragraph). I wish you luck with your touring. However, maybe you should 'stay put' in some of the places you visit before you judge them and influence the decisions of others.

ps. There are two beaches in Coverack, the beach in the village and the headland beach (named by local people as 'Mears' beach). The sand washes from one beach to the other anually so that one year it will be on Mears and the next it will be in the harbour.

Late afternoon view to Lowland Point

Thanks for your input Tess. Clearly families love Coverack.

This review was written by Oliver Howes and is reproduced here in his own words. All text and photographs remain his work, preserved in his memory.

More in Towns & Villages

Blisland

Blisland

There is a lot that is both unusual and admirable about Blisland, one of Bodmin Moor's, and indeed Cornwall's, most charming villages. To take the unusual first, you don't find many proper village greens in Cornwall - but you do find one in Blisland. Roughly triangular, the church is on one side, the Blisland Inn on another, the Manor house is on the base. The church has an odd dedication, to Sts. Protus (or Pratt) and Hyacinth, and an interior like a pre-Reformation church. The Blisland Inn has a reputation for its real ales and the atmosphere of a real welcoming local pub. The Manor house has the four-square appearance of a Georgian home with a two storey Elizabethan style porch - and, most unexpectedly, on its north face two Norman windows and a Norman arch. Now for the admirable. It looked at one time as if Blisland was going the way of so many villages, dormitories with no heart, soul or amenities. But Blisland fought back and now it has not only its pub but a school and, since 2006, a community centre in the real sense of that phrase. A great effort replaced the lost village shop with a brand new convenience store, whose groceries include local produce, plus cafe, doctor's surgery and internet caf�. Pub, church, school and store make Blisland a real village.

Bodmin

Bodmin

Passing through now, on the road to Wadebridge, Bodmin appears at first glance to be a rather scruffy, inconsequential town. But first appearances can deceive. Heading west into Bodmin, as you drop down into the town, look to your right and you will see Cornwall's finest and most important parish church, dedicated to St. Petroc, who founded a monastery here around AD550. Turn left by it and you will find yourself in Mount Folly Square, filled with handsome Victorian buildings: The Shire Hall housed the county's Assize Courts until 1988, the Public Rooms were once the social heart of the town. Continue past these, along the Lostwithiel Road, and you will discover former county regiment barracks and a railway station that served a line to Wadebridge, opened in 1834. Or follow the road to Wadebridge and you will see signs for Bodmin Jail and pass Westheath Park, now an upmarket housing development and technology park but once site of the county lunatic asylum. Put all these together and you will realise that this was once once a place of great significance, the County Town from 1836 to 1988. There are several things for the visitor to see and do, though little advertised. The Shire Hall houses the TIC, exhibitons and a Court Room Museum. Bodmin Jail is now a museum with restaurant. The Town Museum is in the Public Rooms. Do not miss St.Petroc's Church. Bodmin & Wenford Railway operates steam trains on the old Wadebridge line.

Bodwen

Bodwen

Bodwen scarcely qualifies as a Town or Village; in reality it is no more than a hamlet. You could easily miss most of Bodwen, whose name means the old dwelling. Part of it, the part of greater interest, is down an unsigned dead-end turning. Here is a small farm, a couple of converted barns and some renovated cottages. I would guess that Bodwen is a dormitory village for Bodmin. There are some cottages on the road through to Luxulyan and, at a cross roads south-east of the village, a former chapel now serves as a cold store for a food producer across the lane.