Tag: penlee point

Cawsand Bay, the secret jewel in Cornwall

The story of a runaway dog, an imitation Porsche and stunning views

There aren’t many downsides of owning a Porsche, but the cost of servicing is one of them, so at the 2 year anniversary if owning the car and the next service came around, it was the time I was dreading,

The car reminded me about the service every time I sat in it, so a few calls to different types of specialists produced a range of quotes, all of them unpalatable, but the specialist garage that I bought it from offered the best deal.

It was a weird coincidence, that when I was hunting for a very specific model, the best option came up in my home stomping ground of Plymouth rather than around the bit cities which I’d expected. The specialist garage I had bought it from had been very good to deal with, so when their quote was the best, it gave me an excuse to turn the trauma of the car service into an opportunity for and adventure.

I’d had been a previous issue with the car, and the dealer had provided another Porsche as my loan car. So, when I booked the service, I requested the loan car and booked myself into a little pub in the village of Cawsands just outside Plymouth. I was looking forward to a blast through the Cornish lanes in a different model for a change.

Cawsand Bay had a special place in my life. It is a little village in one of the bays off Plymouth Sound, every Janner knows where it is but very few people go there once they grow up. As a kid, the treat with my gran was the 30-minute ferry ride across Plymouth Sound and then a day on the beach swimming and pleading for ice cream.

Then there was Maker Camp, an old military camp on top of the cliff, that had been converted into a school adventure camp. All the schools in Plymouth were allocated their week each summer, so from the last year of primary school and for the first 2 years of secondary school, we would be packed off to camp, where we played football, walked for miles doing orienteering, climbed rocks and cliffs and generally burned off all our energy before it was restocked at the tuck shop,. The food was shocking, even worse than school meals. For most kids it was their first experience of being away from home as well, so there always some grizzlers at night.

As we grew up, the 4 pubs in the village provided a great place for a day out and drinking on the sea front. As we got a bit wealthier and could afford a boat, it became the place to go on a Sunday, normally with a bit of water skiing in Cawsand Bay or maybe fishing before visiting the pubs and catching up with mates.

Nowadays on a Sunday, the bay is full gin palace type launches that have blasted their way over from the Barbican and bob around drinking cocktails or going ashore for a beer and then heading back, so not much has changed over the last 50 years, the village hasn’t grown much and even the ferry still runs to Plymouth as the best link with civilisation, 30 minutes by ferry or 90 minutes by road to a city you can see from the beach.

I was really looking forward to the trip back to the village for the night as there are stunning views and walks, old pubs and a little walk down memory way. After a good trip down from Bristol I dropped the car on time and was looking forward to the loan car, they gave me the keys and told me it was down the road. It took me a while to work it out, then I discovered why the loan car was “down the road”, it was not a Porsche, it was a Skoda. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Imitation Porsche

Now there is nothing wrong with a Skoda, smashing little cars, very reliable etc, but not what you expect from a Porsche specialist, especially while they are charging a fortune for an oil change. So a disappointing start to my treat, but Tess the Dog seemed happier in the little two door runabout, she took up residence in the back seat and off we went for 50 minute drive to Whitsand Bay, the beach haunt of all Plymouth teenagers once we had access to transport, and the first destination of my trip down memory lane. With the stunning views out to Rame Head. I stopped a few times to take in the views along the cliff road and eventually I arrived in Cawsand Bay and was unexpectedly greeting by a drop of rain, the first in 8 weeks, this was a development I hadn’t expected when I packed for the night.

I parked the car where I wouldn’t be noticed, walked to the pub, checked in, put the walking boots on and headed along the coast path to Penlee Point and on to Rame Head. Initially it was dry and very windy as we reached the first headland at Penlee Point, with stunning views back toward the Plymouth Hoe and the enormous breakwater built by French prisoners of 200 years ago.

I sat and ate my pasty enjoying the views back towards Plymouth and my spiritual home. Tess the Dog was more interested in the contents of my pasty to be honest and was cringing in the gale. we walked towards Rame Head along a stunning bit of coastline on the most easterly point of Cornwall, with the steep cliffs covered in gorse bushes. As a kid I dreamed of fishing on the rocks below, with their deep water and array of species, but now I realised there was no way down to those rocks, and pushing through the gorse might have incurred an unwanted meeting with adders which are abundant.

As we arrived at the Rame the clouds turned grey and as we got to the little church on the headland, why ancients civilisations would want to build a chapel out there I have no idea, but as we got there the clouds opened. Worse than that, it was accompanied by thunder and lightning, the thing in the world that Tess the Dog hates most.

The walk back to Cawsand wasn’t easy, dodging between cover from the showers along the cliff path and finally we made it back to Penlee Point. 1 mile path back to the village and Tess was in a rush, at this point, there was a loud clap of thunder, and Tess the Dog unexpectedly bolted along the path.

She is normally very good off the lead so I wasn’t expecting this reaction, as she got to a bend in the path, she looked over her shoulder and gave me a look, one that I now realise meant “I’m out of here”.

I trotted along the path, whistling, expecting to see her waiting somewhere, but as I closed in on the village, I realised this could be more serious than I thought, she hadn’t run off in her previous 11 years. However, one thing to remember about Tess the Dog is she is a very resourceful girl and attracts attention.

The pub where Tess took refuge

As I arrived back into the village I noticed a group of people outside a pub, crowding around something fury. They were crowding around Tess the Dog. Apparently, she had bolted along the coast path, into the village and straight into the nearest pub where she knew she would find safety. The locals had adopted her and were feeding her bits of their tea, little did they know she was interested in their beer too.

Having solved the mystery of the runaway dog, she was put on the lead, and we went for a stroll around the pubs and the back streets. I had forgotten what an absolute gem of a place it is. As a kid you don’t really think about narrow streets much, and when you arrive by boat I didn’t really ever get past the pubs on the waterfront.

I have been to Cornwall so many times, but it had never occurred to me to spend time here in the village, by road it is a totally remote backwater. All the cottages are beautifully maintained, and probably available on Airbnb, one pub had burned down and has re-opened as a community centre. I would imagine the inhabitants must total less than 200 but somehow the other pubs seemed to be doing fine.

The most amazing thing, was that the shops were exactly the same shops that had been there when I was at Maker Camp as a kid, the little dairy now sold coffee instead, the gift shop still sold the same sort of stuff we used to buy our parents as our gift from Maker Camp, it was as if time had stood still, it was quite amazing how little had changed in 50 years.

I spent an evening in the Halfway House pub, eating fish and chips and drinking beer which is quite a treat to be honest. I would normally have had company, but Tess the Dog was still traumatised and had taken up residence under my bed, and I couldn’t be bothered with Tess being a Moody Mary being needy in the bar.

Next morning, it was back to the hidden Skoda, a drive back to the garage hoping that their car didn’t run out of fuel and to pick up my car. It was a then time to head into the Barbican to see my oldest mate, we went to school together when we were 6, and it was a chance chew over our memories of Maker Camp as kids.

It’s not easy to turn a car service into an adventure, but I reckon I did a pretty decent job.

15/09/2025
Adventures with the Widey Tech sailing club
My first near experience of dicing with death

Over my lifetime I have had many close encounters with disasters that could have ended much worse than they did. Most normal people don’t get themselves into these situations in the way that I seem to. This story is about the first of those close encounters and includes a bit of history about a very unique school I was privileged to attend.

Born and bred in Plymouth, I grew up loving the sea and still do. My dad was a shipwright in the dockyard and worked on boats all his life. Even though he was an accomplished student at school he wasn’t interested in following my grandad into the city council treasury, he wanted to work on boats and by the time he was 16 he had built his own canoe that he used for fishing.

A different era

This story is from an era where education was bigger than just books, and value wasn’t simply based on whether the school talked you into going to university, so some readers may find the fact that a school had its own sailing club is a bit odd. But then again, my school was a bit unusual, it was called Widey Technical Secondary School, this was an experiment from the early 1960s when educational visionaries recognised that not all bright kids were destined for jobs in banks.

The school focused on given bright kids who had passed their 11 plus a route to develop craft and engineering skills, not just academic skills. Consequently, the school had a fully equipped metalwork lab with lathes and lethal equipment nobody would dream of putting near kids (or most adults) nowadays. It also had a woodwork lab and by the time he was 15, my mate Paddy McDermott had built a boat for his CSE project and happily rowed it down the Tamar River with his mates.

In hindsight, this was all genius, because the major employer in the city was the Royal Naval dockyard and it enjoyed the benefits of a grammar level school churning out pupils ready to go into the dockyard as high performing apprentices in engineering. If only education and industry were as joined up now.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of the school successes. I didn’t seem to have much in the way of talents for woodwork or metalwork. The first project in woodwork was to make a dovetail joint which never seemed to fit properly and went on for months, and metalwork seemed to involve hours of filing which was very boring.

It wasn’t helped by my old man taking the mickey out of everything (he was a very good craftsman) I created and was assertive that I should never go into the dockyard. Generally, and unlike any of the other boys, I lost interest in these craft topics and by the time options selection came along I chose History and French.

Widey School Sailing Club

However, I still loved the sea and was very excited to be able to join the Sailing Club when I was old enough (there was a minimum age, 13 I think). The school had a little flotilla of boats for us to learn on. So, at the start of the summer, we all had to head to the Barbican and do our share of sanding and rubbing down to get the boats ready for the summer season, all under the watchful eye of the teachers, Max Wall and Paddy Padfield, we had 4 different types of boats.
1. A GP14, this is the big boat with 3 people, a helm and 2 crew and normally had a teacher in charge
2. A Mirror, this was much more modern than the others but only 2 people, I was never one of them.
3. Cadets, a little research has unearthed that these are designed as training boats for youths, and we seemed to have a few of these.
4. Safety boat with an outboard motor that pottered around following the flotilla rescuing people.
3 times a week we would look forward to going sailing, Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Saturday morning. One of the first things I learned was that we only went out when the wind was below force 4 as a safety precaution, I also learned that force 4 winds cause the tops of the trees to move. Every sailing day I’d be checking the tops of trees as we moved between classrooms keeping my fingers crossed, we’d be going out that night, but it often ended in disappointment. At the end of the day Plymouth is a windy city on the ocean, and I was amazed how many days were lost from high winds.

It’s fair to say that I didn’t turn out to be a brilliant sailor. Maybe it was lack of attention to detail or in fact attention to anything I was told, the boats were a bit uncomfortable and when I did go out in a Cadet they seemed to have a habit of capsizing for some reason, so more and more time was spent in the GP14 with the teachers or in the safety boat. It was almost as if the capsizing was my fault and I couldn’t be trusted.

The safety boat could be more fun as my love of the sea had got me into fishing, if Paddy was driving, I could take my fishing gear and a hand line and drop the lure out of the boat and do something useful with my time as we followed the flotilla around Plymouth Sound. Max didn’t approve of the fishing from the school safety boat so that curtailed my activities on occasions.

Widey Techn annual sailing day, 1974

Then came the annual Widey Sailing School Day out. We all congregated at the club on the Barbican at 9am with our packed lunches, warm cloths and looked forward to our freeby day off school. The weather didn’t look good, grey skies and spitting with rain, it seemed a bit windy to me but off we went anyway. Circumnavigating Plymouth Sound took most of the morning, backwards and forwards trying to get to Cawsand Bay, then more backwards and forwards as we tried to get out of it again.

Unfortunately, I was in the larger GP14 again under the watchful eye of Max rather than the Safety Boat, as I’m sure the fishing would have been good but instead, I spent the morning banging my knees and toes on the keel board thingy in the dingy.

Eventually, we pulled into a little cove on Penlee Point and onto the beach. I knew it well as we often pulled in there in my dad’s boat, I used to be allowed to row around in his tender, attached by a rope because I couldn’t be trusted, but at least I was afloat and unsupervised. Even though the beach was sheltered, outside the cove we were a good mile outside the protection of the Plymouth Breakwater, out in the English Channel.

As lads we messed around on the beach, ate our lunch and did most of the things we were told not to. Eventually the teachers couldn’t take anymore and decided it was time to go. As the boat allocations for the trip back were being made, I was amazed to be allocated to one of the little Cadets rather than the Safety Boat.

Dicing with death

That meant I had to concentrate, and as we pulled away from the beach, I got a lecture from the helm, I bloke called Robins who was a couple of years older, about doing what I was told. We could see the sea beyond the cove and the waves were now bigger as the swell had picked up in the channel. As normal I was in a scruffy mess, my lifejacket was untied and the rope was floating around near my feet and getting in the way. So for my own convenience rather than any thoughts of safety, I tied it around my waist and was ready for action. We were the first boat out of the cove, so it was very exciting.

As the little dingy pulled out we needed to tack quickly and run with the swell. In a swift and totally unpractised manoeuvre, we swung into action. As we hit the swell, “Ready about” was the shout and before I knew it there were sails and bodies flying everywhere and we new it we were in the freezing cold sea. Robins gave me daggers as we tumbled over the side, I don’t know why as it was his fault.

I felt myself come to the surface but for some reason couldn’t find any air, after a bit of panicking and fighting for air, I realised I was under the mainsail and swam out from underneath to find fresh air and a deep green/grey sea everywhere.

Initially, being wet and cold, I just wanted the safety of being back in the boat. I started to swim towards the boat, but smart-ass Robins got there first and clambered in. Unbelievably, with his weight changing the balance of the boat, it righted itself and the wind caught the sail and off he went, admittedly largely out of control but putting an alarming gap between me and salvation.

I remember those minutes in the water as if it was yesterday, I guess that is what shock does to your mind. There was no one around, the other boats were still coming out of the cove, so I was totally alone. Off Penlee Point the swell was bigger as it came around the headland, I was looking around at the swell lifting and dropping me back down in what felt like huge valleys of water., with white crests on the top of the waves slapping me in the face.

I remember thinking, “Thank God I did my lifejacket up”, because if I hadn’t, I’d probably have slipped through it and gone down under with the weight of a woolly jumper and other cloths. I then noticed my shoe bobbing along on the next wave and thinking I need to rescue it, or my old man would give me a battering so swam off to save my shoe.

In the distance, our dingy capsized again, which was excellent news for me, and I started to swim for the boat again, it was a couple hundred yards away by now, but I had to do something. Then the GP14 appeared with Max in charge, as it sailed past surfing down one of the waves he shouted, “Are you OK”, probably one of the daftest questions ever, of course I wasn’t OK, I was about to drown. “Yes, I’m fine, sir” I shouted back, so he sailed off and I was left bobbing around on my own again, trying to spot my shoes.

My saviour

Finally my saviour appeared over the crests of the waves and surfed past me in the form of the Safety Boat with Paddy at the helm. As with the GP14 he did a first pass, surfing down the face of one of the waves, he shouted “What are you doing in there”, the sort of question a teacher asks a pupil I guess, so I responded “Fishing, what do you think”.

He then went around and skilfully came alongside me, using the boat to protect me from the waves and was about to dragged me onboard when I spotted my shoe, so I wriggled clear and swam to get the shoe as I couldn’t leave it behind. I swam back and was then heaved out of the sea by the crew of the safety boat. I was dripping wet hugely relieved that I wasn’t dead, but a lot less enthusiastic about sailing than I had been.

We then went over and rescued Robins and secured his dingy to the rescue boat before hatching the plan to get us home. Annoyingly, that plan involved me getting back in the Cadet with Robins and sailing it back to the Barbican. I think it was on the basis of kill or cure, and it would help us get over it any fears that might have developed.

It is fair to say that the atmosphere between Robins and me was a bit frosty, and we didn’t talk much on the way back, so some reason he seemed to blame me for his incompetence, but someone has to be blamed, I guess.

When we got ashore, I dried off and was on the bus home to tell my mum as soon as I could. I honestly don’t remember going dingy sailing again until I joined the BBC Sailing Club on the Thames 15 years later, but that was more to do with a bar and BBQs than a desire to be a sailor.

That night, and for many nights later I relived that experience in the water. I still do now, which is why I’m writing this blog as the memory is so vivid. I still have nightmare moments that focus in on “what would have happened if I hadn’t done up that lifejacket to get rid of the strap”.

I’ll be forever grateful to Paddy, the teacher for rescuing me and the sight of the Safety Boat surfing along the tops of the waves actually gave me hope, as I thought I was done for.

The process of writing this blog has left me with two thoughts.
1. What a brilliant education idea Technical Grammar schools were. They were totally designed to create employable young people ready to go into engineering, we have absolutely nothing like that anymore.
2. Shock, if this incident could be so embedded in my head, what must it be like for people who have much more severe experiences, whether it’s the traumatic things we see on the TV or the experiences of the armed forces and rescue services that are happening all the time. Maybe if there are lots of them, they overwrite each other or maybe it was because I was young.
This wasn’t to be my last close encounter with disaster, but it was my first and I’ve never forgotten it.
06/07/2025

Tag: penlee point

Cawsand Bay, the secret jewel in Cornwall

Adventures with the Widey Tech sailing club