Lamorna Cove

Lamorna Cove

Lamorna Cove in Cornwall a few miles from Penzance. I last visited here with my late-husband fifteen years ago and returned to Lamorna with Morty this week. I fell in love with Lamorna Cove the first time I saw it and my love has endured.

John le Carre has a home there on the cliffs overlooking the Cove. The post-impressionist artists colonised Lamorna Cove in the early part of the twentieth century.

We stayed in the Union Hotel in Chapel Street in Penzance. The best meal we had was in a super, modern restaurant in Chapel Street called the Bakehouse. I had what I can only describe as 'Posh Fish and Chips'. Scallops, squid, giant prawns and strips of sole rolled in oats and deep fried served with a homemade mayonnaise, and I don't mean Hellmans! To cap it all they served real chunky chips that began with a potato that had to be peeled on the premises.

Other meals we had in the pubs such as The Turks Head and the Admiral Benbow were good but why a whole fresh Megrin sole from Newlyn had to be perfectly cooked but served on a sauce of crab and pink peppercorns that was really a soup was a shame as the soup drowned the fish and I kept getting a mouthful of fish bones; and I'm a fishmonger's daughter.

It was wonderful to return to Lamorna Cove, Penzance, Newlyn and Mousehole and Marazion. We would have visited the Eden Project but the volume of traffic around St Austell was too dreadful to contemplate. Instead we parked the car up when we arrived in Penzance and left it there from our arrival on Wednesday until our departure on Friday. Instead we walked along the coast to all the above villages, stopping for frequent coffee breaks, beer breaks, water breaks and looking for lavvy breaks.

But if you visit this area of Cornwall then make sure you drop into Lamorna Cove and maybe have a pint in The Lamorna Wink and imagine the smugglers, the brandy thieves and the impressionist artists having a good time.