Day 1 - First Impressions

Day 1 - Land's End to Truro

My hotel had promised me a room with a sea view and I got one, albeit a rather fragmentary one across several acres of roof top. When I peered blearily out across the slates in the morning the world appeared somehow brighter and I remembered waking during the night to hear the window rattling with what sounded like handfuls of gravel hammering on the panes. The storm had been and gone, though, leaving behind it a landscape as fresh as a newly-laundered towel, the air cleaner, the paving stones on the hotel terrace sluiced and ready for the day. As, indeed, was I - or soon would be after breakfast.

Breakfasted, packed, unpacked and re-packed, I drop my bag at reception and wander around the still-empty Land’s End resort. Things don’t seem to get going until after 10.00 here, so the car park is still empty. The first bus of the day is more than an hour away and I have the place to myself.

Land's End is a rather traditional British visitor attraction complete with gaudy amusement arcades, gift shops, Doctor Who exhibitions and Ye Olde Pasty Shoppes. However, I soon begin noticing people dressed in clingy, brightly-coloured clothing – not the kind of plump car-borne people you’d expect to find queuing to buy ‘Powered by Pastie’ T shirts. These, I realise, must be fellow End-to-Enders, a handful of whom are celebrating the completion of their own journey but most, like me, are preparing for the start. 

I soon fall into conversation with Roger, a cyclist from Oxford who attempted the ride to John O’Groats a year ago and got as far as the Midlands before his knee gave way. Now, freshly-operated on and back to full vigour, he was here to give it another go. We swap ambitions, enjoy an easy camaraderie and I take his photo by the famous Land’s End fingerpost showing the distance to John O’Groats (874 direct miles by road), New York and the Isles of Scilly. Then we bid each other farewell and he cycles off up the road whilst I walk purposefully back to reception for my rucksack.

Before I leave, I ask the receptionist to sign and date a rather special form. I’m not really the kind of person who joins things. I tend to side with the great Groucho Marx who famously observed that he really didn’t want to belong to any club that would have him as a member. But when I happened upon the 'Land’s End to John O’Groats Club', well… how could I not?

The club is aimed squarely at the select band of travellers who undertake the journey between Britain’s two most distant destinations, to encourage them and celebrate their achievement and, hopefully, to sell them a suitably logo-ed polo shirt or two. Because whilst the LEJOG club sets out to celebrate the ‘whole end-to-end ethos’, which their website grandly contends is a 'part of our cultural history’, the club is not beyond a bit of harmless merchandising. Polo shirts, baseball caps, T shirts and fleeces, real stripped-down travelling togs all proudly bearing the club logo, are available at prices to suit all pockets. Clothes to be worn with a certain amount of swagger, with the added bonus that everyone you encounter en route will immediately know that you are involved in that one great undertaking.

And there's more. With your membership fee you get a signed certificate detailing your achievement, a privilege card entitling you and your family to free parking and entry to exhibitions at both ends of the route, and a club newsletter. You also receive invitations to club social events at the Land’s End Hotel, offering the opportunity to catch up with, brag to and generally irritate fellow End-to-Enders.

So, obviously, I joined and received a form which I’ll be asking people I meet on route to sign so I can prove that I’ve actually completed the journey. This is what I offer the receptionist before I pick up my bag, wave cheerio and head for my first bus stop.

If yesterday had been a propitious day for travel, today – May 14 - is also an anniversary of sorts, though a remarkably sombre one in which a simple bus journey helped to bring an unhappy and surprisingly-recent time in American history to an end.

Although slavery had been illegal in America for some considerable time, it was far from uncommon during the 1940’s and 1950’s in the southern states to have places which were blacks-only and whites-only - restaurants, drinking fountains, seats on buses. In 1946, the US Supreme Court had ruled that making blacks sit at the back of interstate buses while white passengers sat at the front was unconstitutional, but the law was never tested. So a year after the Supreme Court ruling, a group of blacks and whites planned what they called a "Journey of Reconciliation" throughout the southern states precisely to test the Court’s ruling. The group travelled together by bus to see if this new law was being observed. They got as far as North Carolina before they were arrested. The law, it seemed, was being ignored.

The fire-bombed bus in Alabama

Then in early May 1961, seven blacks and six whites tried again, travelling south from Washington DC by bus on what they called a ‘Freedom Ride’. At first they met little resistance and got as far as Rock Hill, South Carolina before encountering trouble in the form of twenty white people who attacked their bus. Fortunately, only two of the passengers were hurt before the police turned up.

However, a few days later on May 14, 1961, the Freedom Riders decided to divide into two groups to travel around Alabama. One group ran into trouble at Anniston when 200 angry locals stoned their bus and slashed its tyres. Despite the damage the bus managed to get away, but when it stopped to change tyres the locals caught up with it and firebombed it. The passengers escaped with only minor injuries but their bus was completely destroyed.

An hour later, the second bus arrived at Anniston and this was also attacked and its passengers beaten. Angry locals boarded the bus, pointedly occupied the front seats and forced the Freedom Riders to sit in the back. Eventually free of the mob, the driver then headed north to Birmingham, Alabama where another group of whites attacked them. Strangely, the Police were only two blocks away but didn’t arrive until well after the beatings had been dished out.

By now, though, this had become national news and the Kennedy administration and much of the US was outraged by the racially-motivated violence and the lack of police protection. Within months, new laws were passed which entirely outlawed segregation on buses, ensuring that the Freedom riders, though enduring vicious and unprovoked beatings, had played no small role in ending segregation in the southern states of America.

By contrast, my own journey seems rather trivial yet I’m still embarrassingly overjoyed to spot the arrival of my first bus – which, very conveniently, happens to be operated by transport company First Bus. This takes the form of an elderly double-decker driven by Jason who, in my excitement, I couldn't resist telling about the honour he was enjoying by carrying me on the first leg of my epic journey. He seems slightly nonplussed.

My first bus - and a First bus at
that - pulls into Land's End

“Cor,” he said, warily. “That’s a trip and a half!”

I was the only one to board so, beaming from ear to ear, I climb the stairs and perch myself on the front seat.

This proves to be a superb journey through achingly pretty villages and along country lanes so narrow that other vehicles often have to reverse out of our way to let us past. The scenery is soft and wind-ruffled, and I am already loving the fact that I am not driving and therefore free to take in the view. And being on the top deck means that, unlike a car passenger, I could see above and beyond Cornwall's customary high hedges. I am also occupying the same airspace as birds and when they fly alongside it feels like I am actually flying amongst them.

We pass through tiny villages with odd, alien-sounding names – Porthgwarra, Trethewery, Polgigga – before the road descends into a deep cleft down to the tiny village of Porthcurno, the home of the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum.

In 1870, this obscure village was chosen to be the home station for a growing network of underwater telegraph cables reaching across the Atlantic and to the far corners of the British Empire. Cables carrying important telegraph messages from India, Africa and America all came ashore onto Porthcurno's soft sandy beach, turning the village into the most important communications centre in Britain.

By the Second World War, Porthcurno had become so important to Britain that steps were deemed necessary to safeguard it from enemy attack, so miners were recruited to burrow deep into the local granite to create a network of tunnels where the work of the centre could continue unobserved in conditions that were bomb and gas-proof. From here, vital messages were transmitted in secret around the world. The tunnels now house a museum where you can see working communications equipment from the Victorian age and the Second World War.

The Cornish landscape - and it's all
there behind the hedge

The view from the top deck keeps getting better, mile after mile of green fields hemmed in by hedges trimmed with dazzling gorse, then acres of daffodils, and woodland turned misty blue with batallions of bluebells. Bizarrely, the land is also liberally punctuated with prehistoric standing stones which poke unexpectedly through fields and hedgerows. At one stage the road seems about to plough straight through the remains of a long barrow but shears off at the last moment.

We are soon navigating the steep, twisting road into Newlyn, with other motorists having to drive almost into people’s gardens to get out of our way. Jason handles it all with well-practiced aplomb and we are quickly trundling along Newlyn’s pretty seafront with its palm trees and neatly-trimmed bowling greens. It’s an undeniably attractive scene but a little further along the seafront the town’s skate park seems to suggest a hint of rebellion just below Newlyn’s well-ordered surface. 

Skateboarders, as is their want, have adorned the park with clever, angry slogans which seem aimed carefully at the town’s older residents - such as “Death Motivates Religious Commitment” – and as we clamber up the hill into Penzance I begin to struggle with the contrast between the gentle palms and the well-ordered gardens, and the rather despairing assertion painted on the side of a skate ramp stating that “Hell Seems A Much Better Place”.

In fact, I find it is Penzance that is a much better place. It's a lovely town of neat, small shops set against a sparkling ocean. Yes, the High Street chains are here, but they seem constrained by the size of the shop buildings and this seems to leave room for smaller shops to succeed. The result is a vibrant, busy little place.

Penzance bus station and tourist information centre

A quick coffee then it is back to the bus station which is perched on the harbour side. Passengers wait in the open air but beneath huge white-tented canopies which look something like spinnacers and are rather nice. In fact, it's a lovely little bus station.

Finally, the No. 2 bus to Helston pulls in and I present my First 'Day Rover' ticket to the white-haired and slightly wind-blown driver.

“A Day Rover?” he exclaims, over-dramatically. “A Day Rover? Gosh, boy, where are you going?”

He looked easily old enough to have sold many thousands of these before, so I’m taken aback by his over-the-top reaction. I carefully explain that I am ultimately bound for Truro, hence the ticket, and he then imparts what for him is clearly a piece of the profoundest Cornish wisdom.

“Well, now,” he says. “You’re going to be on the bus for a very long time, then…”

I blink, thank him for his observation and edge nervously aboard. Blimey, if he thought Penzance to Truro was a long way, I wonder what he’d make of my ultimate destination.

We are soon out along the seafront, then past the town's heliport which ferries people to and from The Scillies, and within minutes are in Marazion, the hopping-off point for St Michael’s Mount. This steep, implausibly scenic little island topped with a Benedictine abbey and just yards from the shore is so utterly gorgeous that it looks like it might be an invention of the Cornish Tourist Board. In fact, the island used to be an important part of the local tin industry and two thousand years ago ships sailed regularly from the Mount’s harbour with cargoes of Cornish tin bound for mainland Europe.

The Mount took on religious significance in AD 495 when local fishermen witnessed an apparition of the Archangel St Michael from which the Mount gained its name. After the Norman Conquest, the abbey was granted to the Benedictine monks of Mont St Michel in France, an island monastery close to the Normandy shore which is almost identical in appearance to its Cornish namesake. The Middle Ages saw a further series of miracles which greatly added to the Mount’s religious reputation.

I’m tempted to get off and splash across the causeway to take a closer look, but the bus is ploughing on deep into Marazion’s tight, narrow streets which seem filled with art galleries, craft shops and boisterously-coloured beachware. Our driver has to thread his double decker through roads that are so narrow that he becomes stuck for more than a mile behind a cyclist climbing slowly out of the village with no hope of overtaking him because the road simply isn’t wide enough. Still, the views are rewarding and well worth the delay.

Outside Porthleven, our driver ambles his bus into the centre of the road prior to making a right turn into the village. It’s probably a move he has made a thousand times before but this time the engine of his bus coughs and shudders ominously to a halt, and all is suddenly silence.

After what seems like a minute or two, the driver decides it’s time to make an announcement.

“Oh, dear,” he declares loudly, slowly and carefully to nobody in particular. “We appear… to have stopped.”

Several tense moments pass. We few passengers exchange mute, worried glances whilst Mungo (as I have now named him) starts moving things around in his cab. Eventually, he appears to find the starter button and expertly presses it. This induces little more than a few diesely coughs from the engine but a few more presses brings it thankfully back to life and at last we could move out from the centre of the road and into the comparative shelter of Porthleven.

Porthleven, with its ancient harbour filled with gently nodding boats, is picture postcard pretty and busy with gift shops and cafes. A gentle stroll along the harbour seems indicated - too bad I have to get to Helston and a looked-forward to lunch.

Helston is an lovely, pink little town, the most southerly in the UK, which gently dog-legs its way up a south-facing hill ensuring that whatever sun there is washes onto the pink granite paving slabs lining the streets. This then reflects back off the ground onto the shoppers like a slowly-revolving mirror ball. No wonder everyone here looks happy.

Helston

My eyes are glued to the shop fronts and within minutes I find what I’m looking for. Warren’s Bakery has a range of plump, craggy-looking pasties in their window and I dive inside. I select a delicious-looking and still-warm Vegetable Pasty, grab a bottle of Cornish apple juice from the counter display and make my way to a granite bench I’d spotted next to the Town Hall for quite the finest picnic lunch I think I have ever eaten. 

The Cornish Pasty is another example of man’s ingenuity when faced with the prospect of lunch in a challenging situation. The pasty was originally created for tin miners who were unable to come to the surface for their lunch and therefore had to carry food with them eat underground. Originally, it was a full two-course meal bound up in a hard-wearing pastry crust which could be eaten without cutlery or plates, and even without the miners having to wash their hands. A concoction of meat and vegetables would fill most of one end of the pasty, with the other reserved for a pudding of stewed fruit. The miner simply started from one end of the pasty and worked his way to the other, using the thick ridge of pastry on the pasty's spine as a handle which could be thrown away at the end of the meal. 

Apart from the pasty, the reason I'm in Helston today is because it enjoys a unique position in the history of public transport. It was here that the very first motor buses in Cornwall operated – and in a way that is surprisingly familiar. 

At the turn of the 20th century, most towns of any size in Britain either had their own railway station or were no more than three miles from one. Helston was a case in point. The town had enjoyed the benefits of being connected to Britain’s railway network courtesy of a line they had, to all intents and purposes, constructed themselves but which was operated by the Great Western Railway. Financially, though, it was not a great success. The local burghers had spotted the area’s potential for tourism and suggested that the GWR might consider building a railway line down to The Lizard, the spectacular peninsula jutting out into the English Channel and the most southerly point on the British mainland.

The Great Western were clearly a canny bunch. They knew how little money the Helston Branch was making and they weren’t convinced that an extension to what was essentially a remote headland would make money either. They were prepared to give it a go but using motor buses instead of trains. A fleet of five Milnes-Daimler buses duly entered service on April 17, 1903, becoming the first ever bus service to operate in Cornwall, the first ever to be operated by a railway company – and probably the first rail replacement bus service ever operated, even though the rail service it was replacing never actually existed!

Incidentally, the bus service was suspended a year later due to a dispute with the local council which was only resolved when the GWR agreed to lend them one of their steam rollers, also said to be the first in Cornwall.

Comedian Dave Gorman, who travelled across America in a 1970’s Ford Torino avoiding all the major petrol chains by using only independent petrol stations, was advised to adopt a technique called Destroyer Tactics to ensure that he never ran out of fuel. This was a re-fuelling technique developed by the US Navy during the Second World War which meant destroyers would fill up whenever fuel was available, whether they needed to or not. I tend to use a similar technique when it comes to food and now I’ve decided to adopt a similar policy for public toilets. After all, you never know where the next one will be.

So before I make my onward connection, I pop into Helton’s public loos which I find to be clean and all pretty standard stuff apart for a rather plaintive poster which someone has attached to the wall beside the hand dryer.

“£1000 Reward for information leading to the current whereabouts of Pebbles, leading to her safe return home. Please call in strictest confidence – no questions asked.”

The poster was accompanied by a series of phone numbers, a photograph of a rather bad tempered-looking Border Terrier, and the postscript “We miss her so much”. It was rather touching but a strikingly odd place to advertise a lost dog. Maybe there is some kind of link between lost dogs and weak bladders that I'm not aware of.

I am aiming to take the bus from Helston to The Lizard, the most southerly point on the British mainland, to follow in the wheel tracks of Helston’s first bus service. Unknown to me, however, the bus I am planning to take has been recently discontinued by First. Blast! Fortunately I discover that local competitor Western Greyhound has picked it up though it doesn't leave until later in the day. So I end up with a longer wait at the bus stop than I 'd bargained for and, of course, I can't now use my First 'Day Rover' ticket.

I wait outside the thatched Blue Anchor Inn on Coinage Street, a monk’s rest house which became a tavern in the 15th century and which is now the oldest pub in Britain to brew its own beer. Just as my resistance is beginning to crumble the bus pulls up, rescuing me from the pleasure of easing down a pint or two of their apparently delicious Spingo Ale.

My bus is one of those modern mini-buses which looks like a shrunken version of a normal single-decker, an Optare with a strangely bulbous front. I climb board and we are soon barrelling along through rolling scenery littered with pretty and bizarrely-named villages such as Poldhu Cove, Ruan Minor and, eventually, The Lizard.

The Lizard - I won't get any further south than this

This is Serpentine Country judging by the dozens of gift shops and workshops offering expertly hand-carved nicknack’s in the local green Serpentine stone. However, I have less than an hour to walk the mile or so to the tip of The Lizard and back again, so I ignore the blandishments of the Serpentine carvers and set off down the road with a will, pausing only to read a sign outside of a pub which proclaims that beer “… is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy”. Amen to that.

A quick walk along the cliff top, a few moments staring moodily out to sea and a couple of photographs later, I am making my way back to the bus shelter on the green to wait for my bus back to Helston. I arrive in good time and begin waiting. I wait a bit more. At first I assume my bus has been held up by a herd of cows or something, but it is soon apparent that the damned thing just isn’t coming and I'd have to wait for an hour and a quarter for the next one.

Annoyed, at least this gave me time to make the acquaintance of fellow disappointed travellers Steve and Carol Jones from Houston who, in a bout of exercise possibly unique for American tourists, have walked that day cross country to The Lizard from St Ives, a distance in excess of 20 miles. They are travelling in the UK mostly by public transport. 

“Our friends are totally amazed when we tell them we are going by public transport”, explains Carol. “But public transport in Britain is great.”

“Oh, yeah?” I ask. “So where’s the ruddy bus, then…”

The bus finally arrives (with no apology) and we are quickly back on the road to Helston and my onward bus to Truro, which is waiting as we arrive. I hop quickly from one to the other.

This, my fifth and final bus of the day, is the 82 First service to Truro which ploughs through a rolling countryside littered with the remains of Cornwall’s former tin industry, with countless silhouettes of ruined engine houses and chimneys high on the skyline.

Cornish time - your bus will be here d'reckly...

It then takes an unexpected turn. At the oddly-named Water-ma-Trout Industrial Estate, just behind a large warehouse bearing the name 'Cornwall Farmers', I spot a car park filled with what looks like a battalion of battle-ready Chieftain tanks. Is this normal in a farming community, I wonder? Is this, perhaps, the provisional wing of the Countryside Alliance? Frankly, I'm afraid to ask. Besides, there is only me, the driver and a spotty kid listening to his iPod on the bus and I don’t much like the look of either of them.

We eventually arrive in Truro, sparkling like pink frosted icing in the late afternoon sun - it’s that granite again - with me quietly wailing as I spot my guest house sailing past the window as we drop down, down, down into the city centre. It will be a long walk back. 

Still, I find the frustrations of the day can often be cured by the careful application of a curry, so with that in mind I drop off my bag at the guest house - who’d forgotten I was coming and had themselves only just arrived back from holiday in Cyprus – “Not sure what’s in the cupboard for breakfast, though…” - and hasten to the Katmandu Palace, a Nepalese restaurant tucked behind the beautiful and slightly austere Truro Cathedral. Here I meet the owner, the irrepressible Sunni, who guides me through the menu and, when he sees me writing up the day's notes, comes over to make sure I am not a restaurant critic.

It’s a grand and flavoursome end to my first day. I’ve witnessed superb countryside, eccentric drivers, travelled on three different types of bus and explored a whole new area of Asian cookery. I’ve also experienced some of the frustrations of bus travel that I’d been warned about – long waits, mechanical breakdowns, services that disappear and buses that don’t turn up.

I've a feeling I'm going to have to get used to this sort of thing...

NEXT Truro to Plymouth – via medieval roadworks, a group of annoying caravan fans, a nice man with perilously loose teeth, and a lady called Doris.

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Map courtesy of those awfully nice people at Google.