The Long Journey to St Ives
What a big story that is for the West Country… News that the G7 Summit is to be held at Carbis Bay in June has filled the airwaves this morning. It’s a charming sheltered little spot just east of St Ives - and the news took me back to this article I wrote about a journey to Carbis Bay and St Ives many years ago.
View of St Ives from the far side of Carbis Bay
It may be a description of how a great many of those delegates will reach this part of West Cornwall… I was beginning a new series for the Western Morning News - the main daily newspaper for South West England - and it was all about great journeys in the region. And what better than a train trip from one end of the peninsula to the other?
My friend and colleague, photographer Richard Austin, joined me to jump on the First Great Western express at Taunton - and our destination was St Ives, next door to the now celebrated Carbis Bay…
The St Erth - St Ives branch-line passes Carbis Bay
No imagery is more redolent of seaside Britain than the series of old railway posters that used to speak so magically of long jolly days out travelling to somewhere wild and beautiful far from satanic mills and other dreadful workaday places. It’s a world that, by and large, has sadly disappeared but you can still experience glimpses of it, particularly here in the West Country.
No single entity provides such a big taster of this long lost world as the main railway line that threads its way the length of this peninsula, but even that glorious bit of engineering doesn’t have quite the seaside clout of the St Erth to St Ives branch-line that potters so precariously along the Cornish cliffs.
Together, the two represent one of greatest West Country journeys – which is why I hopped aboard First Great Western’s 9.26 Paddington to Penzance service at Taunton recently.
The thing about experiencing the mainline train ride down the peninsula is that you have the time to witness and understand how the region is put together geographically. The route skips from river valley to river valley over the odd low watershed and also, most famously, via the coast – so that you get to see how much of the West Country’s lay-out is structured.
Within a couple of minutes of leaving Taunton you are afforded the ability to do this as the countryside hurtles by in a 100 mile an hour blur. To the immediate left the ground rises steeply to the Blackdown escarpment, topped by Wellington Monument, while to the right the Quantock Hills fade away northwards only to make way for the distant Brendon Hills. These three ranges of hills are what forms the vast sweeping Vale of the Tone which provides the rail route with easy passage as traverses west.
But then we feel the powerful locomotive beginning to strain as it climbs the gradient south. Every bit of water we’ve passed so far is flowing east and north out of Tone Vale to the Bristol Channel somewhere behind us beyond the Somerset Levels, but the Blackdowns are getting very close now and suddenly there is the blackness of a tunnel.
After this, every rivulet and stream flows south towards the English Channel, and we follow their course - eventually joining the fast growing River Exe to reach Devon’s capital city. After which, the Exe gets very big indeed.
The main West Country line famously runs along the coast at Teignmouth
Now we passengers are about to enjoy the very best of this magnificent line – the much photographed section where rail meets saltwater As the floodplain meadows give way to the estuary we enter the historic parish of Powderham and through an avenue of evergreen oaks we can see Powderham Church - once the scene of a bloody siege during the English Civil War.
I mention it as an example of the tales you can muse over while belting along in the quiet comfort of a modern train. On a dark night in October 1645, 200 Parliamentarian soldiers crossed the Exe to take Powderham Castle but, having found it far better defended than anticipated, they seized the church instead. After three hours of fighting the Royalists had to retire leaving a bloody trail in the snow - but so cold was life inside the church that the troops were pulled out after a day or two.
The entire western shoreline of the Exe plays host to the Paddington to Penzance railway. Downstream, we come to Starcross, famed not so much for being the main harbour on the western shore, but for its association with the trains. The old tower which dominates the village is just about all that remains of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's experimental atmospheric railway which ran along the shoreline, but which failed and was superseded by his brilliant main Great Western Line.
Next is the quaint little harbour at Cockwood. It, for some reason I have never been able to fathom, is called Cockwood Sod. Now with restricted access caused by the railway embankment, this once busy port exudes an air of unspoilt charm.
Past Dawlish Warren we speed to gain the most fabulous bit of main railway line anywhere. How long the stretch between Dawlish and Teignmouth will survive the rising tide levels and wave torn ravages of global warming, no one can tell – but I reckon all Westcountry-lovers ought to travel along the section at least once before it all falls into the sea.
At Teignmouth the train blasts inland from as if thoroughly relieved to have passed the dangerous bit unscathed yet one more time, and we roar up the otherwise peaceful Teign estuary at a rate of knots that turns even the giant mud banks into a fleeting smear of seaweed and wading bird.
After Newton Abbot it’s all up hill to reach yet another tunnel that breaches a watershed – and after Totnes it’s much the same story, although the train’s traverse of southern Dartmoor’s foothills requires many more bridges than tunnels.
Once Plymouth is out of the way the route reaches one of its other great moments. Brunel's Royal Albert railway bridge was completed in 1859 and heralded as one of the wonders of the world. It was all very innovative - the two huge central arches were constructed on dry land, floated out onto the river on barges and raised up to position as a dizzying rate of six feet a week.
The spans across the water at a height of 100 feet above sea-level - a stipulation laid down by the Admiralty which was worried tall-masted ships would be unable to pass upstream. The modern road bridge nest door was completed in 1962.
Now that we’re in Cornwall the express train seems to metamorphose into a quieter local service, stopping at just about every junction and halt there is. Liskeard, Bodmin (Parkway Station), Lostwithiel, Par, St Austell, Truro, Redruth, Camborne (where the train does stop despite the Cornish comedian Jethro’s famous skit), Hayle and St Erth, which is where we got off.
It does, of course, go onto to Penzance but we alighted at St Erth because that’s where you catch the amazingly scenic service to St Ives. From humble beginnings does this magnificent branch line grow – a journey which starts in an unremarkable siding between the mainline and the main road and which ends by enjoying some of the most spectacular coastal scenery you will ever see from the windows of a train
View of St Ives and the Carbis Bay area from Hayle Towans
St Erth is a small quiet village straddling the Hayle River a mile to the east, but the St Ives line leaves the station by bending away from it to the north, between a scrapyard and the sewage works. It’s true to say this is the only unattractive section of the entire journey.
Lelant Saltings comes first and passengers are treated to a front row perspective of this interesting inlet. When the tide is in there’s nowhere in the West Country where salt comes quite so close to the wheels of a train. Just six feet of sloping stone wall separate the line from the waves that race across from the Hayle side of this brackish lake.
View from the train window on the branch-line to Carbis Bay
There’s plenty of opportunity to catch a glimpse of the Saltings rich bird life - we saw swans, oyster-catchers, dotterel, a heron and shelduck. Halfway along the inlet the service reaches its first halt at Lelant Saltings where a good many new passengers are waiting for a ride into St Ives from the park and ride scheme. Indeed this is a very popular branch line, with more than 20 trains running every week day.
Within a minute or two we are stopping again, this time at Lelant Station. The village looks an attractive place, with a number of homes set back in well kept gardens which would presumably have stretched down to the water’s edge if it wasn’t for the line.
Lelant graveyard
Next we pass through a cutting as the track begins to climb a gentle gradient before being reintroduced with the river. Here we look out over the narrowest part of Hayle Estuary where the river passes between the dunes, known as Hayle Towans on the far bank and Lelant Towans on the westerly side. If you’ve a choice when you climb on board at St Erth, grab a seat on the right hand side of the train for that’s the window with the view from one end of the trip to the other.
View looking back at Hayle and its harbour from the train
The line now curves west and an enormous panorama of the ocean opens up as we climb across the links. Porth Kidney Sands – a wide beach of fine golden sand – stretches away just beneath the train and to the right past Hayle Bar you can see the strand continuing all the way up to Godrevy Point some half dozen miles away. Godrevy Island with its famous lighthouse can be seen just off the jagged headland.
From here to St Ives the line is accompanied by the St Michael’s Way – a footpath running from one side of the Cornish peninsula to the other. Irish pilgrims used the route in the early days of Christianity when the passage round Land’s End was deemed downright dangerous. These devout souls were on their way to Santiago De Compostela in Spain and the 14 miles from St Ives to Marazion near St Michaels Mount was regarded as a mere stroll by the earnest pilgrims who were about to cross vast tracts of continental Europe.
The path has been reinstated and you can follow it from north coast to south if you have the energy by following the special scallop-shaped marks that signpost the way.
Once it’s reached the far end of the Towans, the branch line leaves the sea for just a few seconds before introducing its passengers to the splendours of Barrepta Cove, known better as Carbis Bay. There’s a halt here and many passengers alight in summer months to spend the day on this sheltered beach.
Next there’s yet another dramatic section as the line follows the cliffs around Porthminster Point and round the final curve to terminate at St Ives Station above Porthminster Beach. Along here passengers might try looking out to sea for Jack Harry’s lights – a local St Ives phenomenon which has lured many an unwary sailor out to sea in a storm. Legend has it that pilots stationed along this coast would see these lights before a gale - and the ship seen with them was sure to be the one that would be found wrecked once the storm had abated.
Another St Ives superstition was known as the Seven Whistlers – strange whistling noises which occurred only at night were said to have spelled death or misfortune to the person who heard them. A St Ives fisherman wouldn’t have dreamed of going to sea the day after the whistling had haunted his dreams - though many sceptics put the strange sounds down to the passage of migrating birds.
Whistles or not, Porthminster Beach has always been a popular venue for lovers of sand and sea especially when the town’s famous surf beach at Porthmeor is swept by strong winds from the north-west. Passengers alighting at the terminus can either walk straight down the steps to the beach in a matter of a few seconds, or walk into this most picturesque of towns through the attractive side streets and back alleys in just two or three minutes.
Richard Austin photographs the hordes on St Ives beach
All you have to do is watch out for seagulls. The blighters that live in St Ives are the worst in the West and will mob you savagely if you are holding anything they might eat. My 99 ice cream lasted less than 30 seconds – much to WMN photographer Mike Thomas’s huge amusement.
Apart from those rats of the sky, St Ives is as pleasant a place as any in which to have arrived by train - although the St Erth to St Ives line might be the shortest general service railway in the West Country its few miles are certainly among the most fabulous and dramatic.
Richard Austin phones newspaper HQ while my laptop shows the days when we filed stories while on the hoof
Giant tug of war at Carbis Bay - let’s hope the G7 Summit won’t be doing that in June
