Portreath

The wind was up that day, buffeting the surf boards against the roof of the car as we screamed down the A30 towards our turn off. When we drove around the final bend into the village of Portreath, we could see the wind whipping up white horses along lines upon lines of surf, breaking from the harbour wall to the right and then traversing westwards across the bay. We turned past the Atlantic Café at the fulcrum of the beach, and parked on Battery Hill which banks up a cliff, above the surf and lifesaver club below. As we stepped out, doors slammed back against us, the chill got inside our anoraks, and sea air seeped into our lungs. Just then the sun broke through from clouds which were starting to retreat from the North Coast for the day,and the village of Portreath which had initially looked grey and tired and yesteryear, sprung teasingly into life. Brilliant winter light danced across her harbour, kissed the ocean below, turning deeps blues into aqua marine wash, playful plumes of spray brushed against dramatic rocks to the left and right and disappeared around the headland and out to sea. Fulmars soared up from the cliff below, surprising us and heckling as if they’d just heard a bad line at the comedy store; and dust quickly started to build up on our car, a nod to the building work behind us.

“I think this is this one”, I said, turning to look up at a large 4 story house set back from the road and into the cliff side.

I’d been looking at a CGI image of this very house every day for the best part of 6 months. In each dull interlude at work between meetings or emails I would find myself on the Chartsedge website – an agency specialising in high end homes in Devon and Cornwall. Despite the price tag, I would be drawn to this particular development, and would check each time if there were any gallery images I had missed on my previous log in. There never were. There was something about the large open plan living space, with floor to ceiling windows providing an uninterrupted panoramic view of the Atlantic thundering in, framed with craggy headlands on either side. And despite the building work being at a fairly early stage, reality was better than any architect’s image, and we could instantly see our dream laid out in front of us. It was every house I had ever coveted.

It was now 11am and we were supposed to be meeting a guy called Barry who was due to show us around at 10:30. The apologetic builders had let us in and given us a hand up each flight of unsafe wooden stairs, as they tried Barry on his mobile once more. We were standing in the master bedroom looking out of a huge window,imagining Barnaby doing sprint training on the beach below, when Barry finally arrived. We turned to see a huge pirate of a man walk in, shoulder length salty blond hair wrapped around his face, huge calves bulging out of long shorts and large feet spilling out of sole-less shoes.

“Sorry I’m late”, he said in his soft Cornish accent.

“I’ve just walked in from St Ives and it always takes longer than you think along the cliff walk, especially in this wind…The surf looks good today though, doesn’t it?”

I was just creasing my forehead thinking about how on earth anyone could do a cliff walk in sockless feet and buckled leather shoes when Alex asked him:

“How far is that then? How long did it take you?”.

Barry replied: “Well I got drunk you see last night in St Ives, and so I couldn’t drive back and I don’t like taking the bus. So I had a few hours kip on a friend’s sofa and then I set off at 6 ish. I think it’s about 21 miles if you follow the cliff walk. Beautiful morning though, beautiful! Bit windy mind!”

And this was our introduction to the enigmatic Barry - the developer and crafter of our dream house. He oozed Cornish warmth, sincerity and unintentionally would have us laughing and smiling in hope for the months to follow. Always slightly evasive on detail:

“How many kids do you have” Alex had asked after we discussed the local primary school in depth.

“Well at any one time there can be up to 10 to 18 people in our house. That’s why I’m going to go for a surf before I go home. I surf every day if I can, 365 days a year. Are those your boards on the roof down there. Do you like surfing then? Is he going to be a surfer? He should join the nippers club. Best surf club in Cornwall that is"

We are sold hook line and sinker, even before he takes us around the completed house next door, where the London owners have set the bar ridiculously high in their tasteful and luxurious fit out. We are reassured by the finish and quality throughout, and Barry confirms they are doing very well with holiday lets.

“Do you like it? We ask Barnaby “Would you like to live here?”

“I want to go back to the hotelllll” replied Barnaby. “I want to go back to the pooool. When can we go back to the pool, I want to go surfing in the poool, nowwww"

He is soon distracted when we go inside the surf shop at the bottom of the hill, and he discovers a large bright red skateboard. “I’m going to be a skate boarder mummy, I’m going to go really, really fast”.

The shop owner agrees that Barnaby may well become a skater if he comes to live here, and he’d be able to show off at the annual body-boarding championships that are held in Portreath each year. Apart from the surfers on display, dare devil skate boarders will come careering down Battery hill sloping round the corner to the beach doing their tricks at break neck speed.

“Looking at one of Barry’s houses are you?”

“Yes – that one there” replies Alex. “Do you know Barry? How many kids does he have?” asks Alex.

“Oh he’s got a few, never any trouble mind, they’re always knackered you see, he walks them everywhere. He makes his 6 year old walk to Hayle and back for lunch across the cliff top there.”

Having talked to a few more welcoming locals, and after checking out the pool at the 5* Gwel an Mor resort above us, we finally give into Barnaby and head back to Watergate. Pointing out the football pitch at the primary school, the BMX tracks off to the left, and wondering what enchanted secrets lie behind the Tehidy Wood gates as we pass.

Inspired by Barry, Alex is quick to unwrap his blue and white striped Local Hero 9 ft 4 longboard and run into the surf on our return, whilst I wrestle with the idea of forcing my wetsuit around my growing bump, but reluctantly give in to common sense. So Barnaby and I retire to the Ocean room with a packet of crisps to watch his daddy dodge kite surfers from our comfy window sofas.

“Is that him, mummy? Is that daddy standing up there, there?”

“Well briefly” I said.

*************************************************

Sunday is all about Barnaby as it should be. It is his 3rd Birthday which starts dramatically at 5am when we awake to a horrible thud as he falls out of bed, face planting on the unforgiving wooden floor below. We race into his room, and join him in the bunk beds to sooth his face and watch his ‘Father Ted’ box set, marvelling at the educational value of the farmyard mechanics.

Despite the abrupt start, the day washed over us all happily with presents in bed, an enormous breakfast, more surfing and swimming and kite sailing on the sodden beach. Cheeks were filled with burgers and chips and ketchup from the Beach Hut restaurant which sits under Jamie's Fifteen, and we all bathed in the healing powers of Watergate Bay. We would be very sad to say goodbye the next day, but our minds were buzzing with the ethereal image that the Portreath house had presented.

As the iPad provided the Chuggington background noise on the car journey back, my mind had turned back to a profoundly brilliant course I had been on 4 years earlier with my company. The course is known as “The Energy Project”. It sounds entirely cheesy to explain it, but it was one of those courses that cynical attendees alike got something out of. One challenging exercise we had been given on day 3, was a blank piece of paper on which we should draw our dream future – be it the job role, a place or whatever came into mind. I was considering leaving the page blank when I saw that even the CFO was drawing something. So I took hold of my pencil to see what I would draw, and moments later, barely decipherable, I had scribbled an image of myself at a desk, dwarfed by a surf board in a house on a cliff above a surf beach. It had taken me aback at the time when asked about it, as I expected myself to say I wanted to be the CEO one day of a medium sized company, but I forgo the opportunity to show off with my ambition and had articulated that I simply wanted to do a job that would allow me to surf every day, in a location that would inspire the book I still thought I had in me.

I don’t think anyone had taken me seriously, least of all myself. Until that weekend that is, when I was trying to facing up to my own vulnerabiity and had felt I'd glimsed our dream future.

In a similar vein, Alex had never managed to shake off the happy recollections of childhood holidays in St Agnes (just 10 min drive from Portreath) where he would endlessly muck around in rock pools with his Dad, returning to a little cottage in the evening on the corner of ‘Stippy Stappy’ road which is at the top of the hill from Trevanance Cove. We had talked about our ideal destination together, and Alex just wanted to live somewhere safe, where the kids could enjoy the outdoors, get fit and play out their Enid Blighton adventures, far away from the urbanised lure of the video game.

So chatting on the way back, and agreeing to park the small quandary of how we would derive an income in Cornwall, we agreed that we would go for it; and that I would call Miles (the agent) on Tuesday morning and offer him the asking price. In fact before we came off the M5, I had placed that call and left a message for him to call me back.

As I started to put the iphone down, it vibrated back at me. So I took the call excitedly expecting it to be Miles, but instead I was met by Dr Al Memar’s secretary. She was calling to say that Poirot wanted to put the Tuesday appointment back to Thursday in order to more widely confer with his colleagues on Tuesday afternoon. “Has he got the results then”, I asked.

“Yes, I understand he has”. She said.

And the rest of the car journey passed by quite slowly after that.

Confirmed Diagnosis to follow