Holiday number 2 of this year… I’m in Cornwall with my daughter and her family, revisiting her childhood holidays.

Today we went to St Ives and, since we’re staying in St Just, we drove through Trewellard and Pendeen.  Through several years’ worth of ghosts of my youth.  I was delighted the Trewellard Arms Hotel is still standing and seemingly doing a roaring trade.  I have drunk many a post-climb, yarn-spinning pint in that pub. Watching my companions’ bodies contort, their arms and legs moving in narrative remembrance as we share the stories of holds reached for, jugs found in moments of need, off-widths we’ve left skin in. As we drove past it, I realised that if we were on *this* road, heading in *this* direction, we’d be passing the cliffs of Bosigran.

So I persuaded my son-in-law to pull into the car park at the Carn Galver ruins.  Last time I was here, well over a decade ago, there were no more than two cars, probably including mine.  So it was a bit of a surprise – but a good one – to find the carpark full.  We unloaded the children.  The littlest was loaded into a sling, the biggest (still pretty little) walked.

So many memories.  Sensory memories.  I *ran* out of that car and into the mine house.  The feel of that granite under my hands; the smell.  The smell of gorse, of cowshit, salt of the sea all blowing up the cliff to us.  The sound of the stream, falling down the hill, to the old ruins about halfway down where it passes under a little, arched bridge hewn from crudely cut stone and then falls in energetic jumps down the cliff face and into the sea.  The sense of walking down the track, telling the little people that the earth is lava, showing them how to jump from stone to stone, practising their reach and balance, distance and co-ordination in a little game that all the young people in my life have adopted enthusiastically.  We lept and jumped, balancing and laughing and occasionally ‘burning’ our toes in the lava when stones are too far spaced or too slick and slippery to balance on.  Me and all the children.  My children’s ghosts keeping their little niece company, the whole gaggle of them running ahead, lagging behind, laughing and jumping, shrieking and laughing, balancing, suddenly quiet and thoughtful, working out the next sequence of moves to take them toward the stile without touching the earth.

We emerged from the little tunnel created by gorse bushes and wind-stunted, lichen gnarled trees, blinking into sudden sunlight and a wide open field.  “Mum, look!” said my daughter, suddenly also excited.  “Didn’t we come here when the kids were little? Didn’t we go over there? Over there? Did we picnic there?” pointing, wildly, in several directions at once.  Yes.  Yes, we did.

The field opens before us, stretching down a hill to the point where the cliff simply falls down, down into a zawn.  We can’t see the sea down there, yet, but I know it will be beautifully clear and turquoise, darkened only by shadows cast by the cliff and the occasional rock sleeping below its surface.  We chose to head down the hill instead of up to the head of the cliff.  As children, I never took them to the top.  We were always heading for the bottom, the safe space I could leave them with a suitable supervisor while I put my harness on, roped up, clipped my jingly jangly kit into place and set off into my vertical world.

Today, we followed the path down to our old picnic zone, by a ruined mine building.  I pointed out the route of Commando Ridge on our left.  I climbed it years ago.  It was a fabulous route – we abseiled down below the high tide mark and I remember getting over the waterline being one of the trickiest sets of moves of the entire route – the rock was dark, wet, cold and slippery and the only holds worth a shit were provided by barnacles which, as it turns out, are fickle little fuckers – as likely to pop off and leave you slithering down the granite as to hold and help you ascend a precious inch or two.  Once over the high water mark, the climbing is relatively straightforward with, as I remember, little necessity for rope or gear…. the most difficult part is conquering the exposure which snaps at your heels all the way back to the abseil point.

There were climbers on the main cliff, to the right of us.  At least two ropes making their way up routes I’ve probably done but couldn’t now identify.  There’s a fabulous ledge route; another with an offwidth crack that stretches into a chimney where I got a little stuck once upon a long ago; several routes for beginners and more for the competently confident climber.  I wanted to go down to the base of the climb, and the children wanted to go back to the car.  We compromised by all doing what we wanted.

I wasn’t dressed for it.  I’m wearing some quite cuntish trousers from Vietnam and a pair of rope-soled Toms.  But I followed the path, scrambling over large fallen boulders and at one point pausing to take some photos of the climbers, the zawn, the sea.

I decided to follow a faint, probably sheep path up to the top of the cliff, scrambling over boulders and up the face.  At the point where three points of contact seemed more than simply a fun way to get to the top I realised I perhaps hadn’t chosen a sensible thing to do, given the waiting children the inappropriate footwear and the expensive camera dangling round my neck.  So I scrambled back down and back to the path.

Oh, I cannot describe the delight I felt.  My heart was absolutely singing with joy.  Sun on my back, rock under my hands and a very, very slight sense of adventure burgeoning beneath my feet.  The rush of sentiment as I lava-hopped back up the hill, jumping over stiles back to the car park and the waiting family.

I grazed my hand.  Actually, I grazed my hand almost as soon as I got out of the car, traversing around the Carn Galver ruin and up onto the platform inside the house.  It’s a sharp, thin line of blood breaking through the skin, broken by the grit of the rock.  It stings a little.  It makes me smile every time it stretches or catches on something.

And then we went to St Ives, where we parked at the top of the hill and got a bus into town.  And *that* was the thing that most excited the eldest grandbaby, who lives a life bereft of buses.  And we walked, and ate pasties, and pottered in shops and visited a very beautiful art gallery.  And all these things were lovely, but oh they didn’t make my heart sing like the feel of granite, the scent of gorse and the sting of a little graze on my palm.