The Cruel Sea

The 1808 Grylls Act - or Burial of Drowned Persons Act - enshrined in law that all dead bodies recovered from the sea or found on shore should be decently buried in consecrated ground. Prior to this it was the custom to bury drowned mariners without a shroud or coffin in the most convenient place along the coast. The simple cross in my photo is a memorial to all the sailors who had perished in these treacherous waters and had been casually buried hereabouts.

I finally reached Falmouth. It's a wonderful place - much bigger than I thought it would be - with an impressive harbour and some lovely old streets. When I woke the next morning the rain was bucketing down. I didn't need much persuading from my B&B host to stay another night in her immaculate, bijou terraced cottage. All day it rained. The drains overloaded. The roads were flooded. The locals tut-tutted, shook their heads, and talked enigmatically about ebbs and neaps and tidal surges. A few sandbags came out. But, the next day, the deluge was over, and I took a ferry across the estuary of the river Fal to a place called Place (I'm not joking) on the delectable Roseland Peninsula.

In Portscatho an air ambulance had landed on the beach, and an injured holidaymaker was being stretchered off. I wonder what had happened? The rocks don't seem that dangerous here for serious accidents. Perhaps a heart attack? Who knows...

I left the scene - with the sound of rotor blades ringing in my ears - and pressed on to Portloe, one of the prettiest villages in Cornwall according to Sir John Betjeman. There were over fifty fishing boats active here at the beginning of the twentieth century. Now there are only three. You must admit - it's in an enviably sheltered position. It has a lurid history of smuggling and ship-wrecking, like many of these Cornish coves, and has been used many times as a film location...

Sir John And St Enodoc

We used to picnic where the thrift / Grew deep and tufted to the edge; / We saw the yellow foam flakes drift / In trembling sponges on the ledge JOHN BETJEMAN Trebetherick

John Betjeman (1906-1984), the most popular of all our poets laureate, is buried in the churchyard of St Enodoc, which lies just off the Cornish Coast Path half a mile from Trebetherick village. I climbed the sand dunes to get there. Bizarrely, the church is almost completely surrounded by a golf course. I know of no other church in the middle of a golf course. But... why not? In fact Betjeman himself used to play golf there. He loved this part of Cornwall - which he used to visit on family holidays when young - and several of his poems affectionately evoke the area. Later he even bought a house here.

Let me state from the outset that I'm not a big fan of Betjeman's poetry, which I find old-fashioned and defiantly unmodernist. The tumpty-tumpty rhythm, to be honest, drives me mad. However, for me, it's redeemed in part by its wry humour, and its nostalgic references to a between-the-wars England which, quite frankly, would make even a hardened cynic go weak at the knees. Ovaltine! Robertson's marmalade! Liberty lampshades! Sturmey Archer bicycle gears!

Betjeman was a journalist, poet, writer, and broadcaster on both radio and TV - which he relished. He cultivated a bumbling, fogeyish image which completely charmed his listening and viewing audience. And he loved teddy bears - naturally another big plus with the English public. His own teddy bear, improbably named Archibald Ormsby-Gore, accompanied him to Oxford, where Betjeman - and Archibald too for that matter - failed to get a degree, another endearing trait which captivated the popular imagination. (Incidentally Archibald, or 'Archie' as he was known, became the model for Sebastian Flyte's teddy bear, Aloysius, in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited.) As you can see, Betjeman's big saving grace was that he never took himself too seriously.

In the end, Betjeman is important to me because he was a passionate lover of English country churches, and a tireless defender of Victorian architecture. At a time when the planners and developers were itching to destroy our heritage of 19th century civic and commercial buildings, Betjeman, as a founder member of the Victorian Society, took them on. Without Betjeman's championship, the magnificent Victorian-Gothic facade of St Pancras Station in London would have been bulldozed long ago, and replaced by some brutalist, soulless, concrete affair.

God rest Sir John. He represents an English era that's now gone, but one of which, thanks to his efforts, many traces still remain. And these include St Enodoc, a church of 12th century origin - marooned in sand dunes, and situated in the middle of a golf course! Which brings us back to the beginning...