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The shore is not only broken into rough headlands, but has a number of off-lying islets. Thus there are the Gull Rocks, off Penhale Point; the Chick, off Kelsey Head; and the Goose, off East Pentire. The sands in this district have wrought more havoc than the sea; and if tradition may be trusted there was once a far more dense population.
The story of his saving a man's life in a stormy sea had reached them, and they sent him an invitation, which he accepted at Christmas time in 1853. He stayed for a fortnight with a cousin's married daughter, Mrs. Anne Taylor, at Penquite Farm, near Liskeard, and then several days again after a fortnight spent on a walk to Land's End and back. In his last week he walked to Tintagel and Pentire.
However this may be, those who leave Cornwall without visiting Pentire have missed its noblest scenery." It is a large claim that Mr. Norway makes, but surely it is justified. The parts of Cornwall that are best known are naturally those that come within range of the more popular resorts Newquay, Bude, Penzance, St. Ives, Falmouth while eastern Cornwall is accessible from Plymouth.
Cubert is still peaceful and primitive, being a little too far from Newquay to be overrun by the summer visitors. A pleasant and fairly good road leads towards Crantock, passing by Trevowah, beyond which a turning to the left takes us to West Pentire and the small bay known as Porth or "Polly" Joke. The "joke" needs explanation; possibly it is the corruption of some forgotten Cornish word.
It cannot, of course, compare with the coast magnificence of the shore from Pentire to Boscastle, but it has what these wilder spots lack a possibility of conventional settlement and expansion in the style of watering-place that the British public chiefly loves. We read in the memoir of Tennyson that in the year 1848 he felt a craving to make a lonely sojourn at Bude.
"On the east the prospect seems almost boundless. Port Isaac Bay lies just below, sweeping far back into the land, half hidden by the Eastern Horn of Pentire.
There is a remarkable triple entrenchment on the eastern Horn of Pentire, above its stark, rugged caverns; but those who came here and fortified this noble headland, in far-back days of which we can only dream, came not in search of the picturesque as we do, nor probably for the spiritual repose that we crave in this age of hurry. Even sterner necessities governed their existence.
Tintagel, Dundagel, or Dundiogl, the Dunecheniv of Domesday, seems certainly to have belonged to Gorlois when Uther was Pendragon or Head-king of Britain; it would have been a cliff-castle such as that on Pentire Head. As years passed the rock probably became more insular, and when the Norman stronghold was built it was connected with the mainland by a drawbridge.
Baring-Gould's book will remember that he places the home of Cruel Coppinger in this district, with his house at Pentire Glaze; but we shall find the true home of Coppinger further northward, near Morwenstow. Just within Hayle Bay is the little village of Polzeath, which in time may become a popular watering-place; it has a wonderful charm of position, and enough sand to satisfy anybody.
Yet the blood of the peoples still flows within Cornish veins; and those characteristics that we vaguely speak of as Celtic often derive from a far earlier source. The little island to the east of Pentire is the Mouls, and to the right is Portquin Bay.
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