This continues our Cornish adventure in July 2021…
The next day was a slightly stressful start as well, as we wanted to fit in a visit to Stevenson’s fishmonger in Newlyn to pick up some crab for G’s father and fresh seafood for our meal that night, and also make it in time for our boat across to St Michael’s Mount. As it turned out we needn’t have worried as they weren’t fussed about entrance times at all, as long as you had pre-booked a ticket. Anyway, Stevenson’s is our go-to fishmonger after being introduced to them at Falmouth Oyster Festival one year. Since then we’ve been going back for their oysters, scallops and incredibly fresh fish. We try to buy local fish like mackerel and gurnard which can be hard to get fresh in a landlocked place like the Midlands. We bring a cooler box down filled with ice packs and freeze the fish when we get home.
St Michael’s Mount is managed jointly by the National Trust and the St Aubyn family, who still live in the castle on the island. Our NT subscriptions this year made it worthwhile for what would otherwise have been an expensive visit. When the tide is high and the causeway to the island floods over as it was that morning, boats ferry you over on a brief but interesting 5 minute ride. We walked uphill and explored the castle first. As it was with all of Cornwall’s famous attractions, this was quite crowded too and so our visit inside was brief, having to follow the general flow of the crowd with little room for lingering.
However, the main attraction is the view from the outside of the castle where lingering and drinking in the 360 degree views overlooking Marazion and Penzance were very much possible. The gardens too were spectacular, filled with mainly subtropical and succulent plants and were in full flower. There were red hot pokers, lilies, echium and so many others I couldn’t name but still admired. Most impressive was an agave plant with an 8-9 metre branch growing upwards into the sky.
We then walked around nearby Penzance, checking out some shops and had a simple pasty lunch and coffee before chilling out in the apartment the rest of the day. I cooked dinner that night. We started off with oysters which we shucked ourselves, eaten with lemon juice. Next up was Taiwanese stir-fry clams. The sweet clams were eaten with boiled rice, all the better to soak up the moreish sauce with. Here’s an interesting story. Our oyster knife is a relatively new acquisition. We’d normally only eaten oysters in restaurants before, having not learned how to shuck them yet. One year though we bought oysters from Stevenson’s and on their advice used a butter knife to open them, which made it a rather fun if not fairly hazardous activity, both for the person shucking and also unfortunately to the integrity of the knife. We left behind a rather bendy knife in the cutlery drawer of the apartment we rented that year!
On our penultimate day in Cornwall, we drove to Pentire Headland near Newquay. Being slightly further out of town, parking this time was no hassle at all. We found our perch on a bench and enjoyed the views over Crantock Beach, watching children and adults alike using floats and SUP boards on the River Gannel which opens out into the sea. The ever vigilant lifeguards were on duty, and we even heard them use a megaphone asking paddle boarders to be wary of rip tides and to keep between the flags. Interestingly, we saw a group being taken on a trek on the rocks, diving into the sea when needed to then continue their walk across the rocks. We then walked round to the other side of the headland and sat on the grass watching said paddle boarders go even further out to sea, saw some cavers going into the rocky outcrop offshore and watched a fisherman try his luck down by the cliff’s shoreline. It was a good people watching day. We finished off by walking towards Fistral Beach, but had to turn back when our car park time was running out. We’d overstayed our prepaid time by a few minutes at Fistral Beach car park once and got fined so I’m wary of Newquay car parks now.
We dropped by Chapel Porth beach on our way back to Falmouth. It’s one of our favourite beaches to walk along when the tide is out with interesting pools and caves to explore and the old tin mine of Wheal Coates overlooking the beach. This time we parked at Wheal Coates instead of down by the beach. Some kind folk passed us their parking ticket which had several hours left on it but I put it in the ticket machine, as our NT passes meant that parking was free for us. We walked down to the beach and enjoyed the cafe’s famous Hedgehog ice-cream – Cornish vanilla ice-cream topped with clotted cream and rolled generously in hazelnuts. Utterly decadent, messy and worth the calories. As the tide was high during our visit, we headed back up the slopes and explored the paths around the mine. Gareth had plenty of fun estimating how long a pebble took to drop to the bottom of an old shaft. There would have been quite a few pebbles collected at the bottom of that shaft by the end of our little diversion.
We debated for a while whether we should make quite a long detour to St Ives for our fix of Blas burgers that we missed earlier in the week and the burgers won out. We rang to preorder in advance, and as is now our usual practice G circled the town in the car whilst I walked down to the restaurant to collect our burgers. My absolute favourite is the Kimchi burger and G always goes with the Smokey. Our plan to eat at Porthminster Beach were scuppered twofold though – one for the lack of parking at the train station and two that the skies had decided to open and rain down on our parade. So the car park at Tesco became our prosaic dining spot instead. As we tucked into our burgers, we agreed once and for all that these were the best burgers we’ve ever had. It’s that magical combination of quality beef, with the right amount of coarseness in texture and char on them, the balanced flavours of toppings, a burger bun that’s soft yet firm enough to keep its shape and not fall apart and those absolutely-bloody-lovely chips/fries. Those chips/fries are skin on, crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside and seasoned with flaky sea salt. They are so good that one year I walked into the restaurant and asked for a single order of fries to take away which flummoxed the staff a little as they said they wouldn’t normally sell fries on their own but they kindly relented and let me have them.
The next day we said goodbye to our comfy apartment, packed up the car like some 3D jigsaw puzzle and headed back up north towards home. I’d booked us a table for lunch in Padstow at Paul Ainsworth’s Caffe Rojano as a last treat of the holiday. Padstow was just as crowded as St Ives was and we ended up parking in a field all the way up the hill out of town. By then we were running a little late for lunch so we hurried down to the restaurant. I was so thankful I’d prebooked as people were getting turned away at the door. To sum up our experience at Rojano’s, it was absolutely amazing. From the incredible food to the very professional but very friendly service, you could tell it was run by a team who had a lot of experience in the food business. Our server bless him was busy with his section but still took time out to chat with us, telling us he’d never actually eaten the food but was looking forward to having his birthday meal there.
To start off, we had wild red prawns with manteca, chilli, garlic, lemon and parsley; grilled octopus with romesco sauce and pimenton; line-caught BBQ mackerel with grilled sourdough, red chilli, pickled onion salsa, tomato and wild garlic; and duroc rib of Iberian pork with PX barbecue glaze. Those little plates alone were sending me to culinary heaven. All well-considered and perfectly executed, with very different flavour profiles each. My favourite was the prawn dish, and I wish I had a side bowl of bread to soak up all that delicious buttery sauce. Our server told us we clearly enjoyed our starters.
G had the beef burger for his main which came with an aged rib patty, shortrib, onion ring, cheese, tomato chutney, pickles and fries. It was a well-constructed thing of beauty when it landed on the table. I couldn’t resist one last seafood dish and opted for the Cornish crab mafalde pasta with smoked salmon, tomato, chilli and katsuoboshi. G enjoyed his burger very much but it was a very different beast to the Blas burger, being more polished and refined and he secretly preferred Blas’ over Rojano’s. It was my first time trying mafalde pasta and I really enjoyed those wavy tangled ribbons of pasta coated with sauce. They looked like pasta versions of seaweed. The restaurant definitely warrants a return visit as we didn’t even get a look-in at the pizza section this time. Or the hot dog. Or the pork chop. Or the sobrasada pasta. I skipped dessert at the restaurant and opted instead for a streetside Malty Mystery ice-cream from Roskilly’s. We hung out by the harbour for a little enjoying sea views one last time before heading back uphill and out of Padstow.
We cancelled our initial plan of walking along the coastal path near Treyarnon as it was looking like rain and drove straight out of Cornwall. On our way home we stopped at Tre, Pol & Pen farmshop to have a browse of their produce and came away with a pack of beef short ribs. Then the heavens truly did open and it was dicey driving for a bit which made us all the more thankful the weather held out for one of the best weeks we’ve had in Cornwall.
Nowhere else resonates so strongly with me as this region does. I have a lasting memory of being struck by the beauty of the sea driving into Padstow for the very first time. The combination of the resilient, entrepreneurial spirit of its people and the craft they produce, the abundance of excellent food together with that particular light and sea blues will draw me back to Cornwall time and again.
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