Snow, ice and the wind of lost souls

Snow came to Newquay during the night in the early hours of Saturday the 27th of November 2010. On Saturday morning, I awoke and looked at my sloping loft apartment window and there it was covering almost half of the window. Snow. Fluffy white stuff. A rare sight in Newquay.

And following the snow there came the icy, biting wind. Blowing in from the Atlantic ocean, freezing to the bone everyone with whom it came into contact. And it did not go about it's icy business quietly. No. It howled and screeched as it wove it's path around the rooftops and chimneys. Slinking around the narrow alleyways, and roaring up the roads from the harbour and the beaches.

And so here I am in the middle of it all. I sit here at my laptop. The wind whistles all around me.

The last few days have been some of the coldest on record with sub-zero temperatures in Newquay made all the more freezing by the arctic blast blowing in from the sea.

Yesterday I went to my art group and that day too was a sub-zero day. As I walked back home and reached the harbour and the exposed sea at the top of North Quay Hill, I could have sworn my cheeks and nose had frozen solid. I seemed to be having a hard time moving the lower part of my face! Well, having lived in Canada for ten years I should be used to that, but I was still chilled to the bone….

There seems to be no let up from the icy, howling wind……always the wind……..pushing, pulling, knocking…the air never still…..

* * *

A few years ago, I lived in Yorkshire, in Haworth, the home of the Bronte sisters. High in the beautiful but often bleak Pennines. When the wind howled and moaned around the hillsides and the moors, the local people used to say it was the ghosts of Charlotte and Emily Bronte, their moans echoing over the moors and the rolling hills of West Yorkshire. Haunting, desperate cries that compliment the wild bleakness of the moors around Higher Wuthens. Lonely, desolate cries reminiscent of eternal torment and terror carried forever on the wind……Cathy and Heathcliffe; Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester all rolled into one cry of pent up misery….Lost souls searching for one-another, an eternal call for help, for warmth, for comfort. A call for a help that is long overdue and will be ever thus.

So the tale goes……

* * *

And so now, as night falls, I sit here in the warmth of my loft apartment at the other end of the country in Newquay, and I hear the wind howling outside. It screeches. It moans. It reminds me of the legendary cry of Banshees, harbingers of Death. Whistling and thudding, banging and rattling the tiles on my apartment roof, making a huge din in general. Sometimes I think the whole shebang is about to collapse on my head. Really…living up in the roof can be quite scary at times.

Newquay itself has no shortage of ghost stories. Spooky tales that tap into the very essence of the wild, untamed scene that unfolds even more dramatically during the Winter months in Cornwall.

One such story belongs to the Gannel, an estuary very near to where I live. Yes, it is said to be haunted, but not by a human; but by a bird. A crake to be exact.

This feathered spirit is never seen, but it is certainly heard.

There are tales of men who work in the Gannel, men who keep down the weeds and grass, just going about their business....... and then suddenly being terrified by an "unearthly noise". Apparently, in bygone days, when horses were used to carry people around the town; the working men's horses heard it too. Heard the terrible cry rising from the very depths of the earth below the Gannel. And the horses also "took fright and bolted over the beach".

Numerous theories have been put forward as to what this terrible cry, (bone chilling in itself), can be attributed to. Some say that it is caused by the inrush of water through nearby caverns. Others say it is the wind…….

I look outside. Was that a large seagull that just flew past my window?…or could it be…..?

And that's not all. Even today there exists a belief that Vampires are living among us here in the West Country, and as recently as 1978 these nocturnal spectres paid a visit to Newquay Zoo. That year, the geese, swans and two wallabies were found slaughtered and their bodies drained of blood. Yet no blood was found around them or in the ground beneath them.

I shudder...…I look out my window again…..was that a black bin liner I just saw floating over the rooftops…….or could it have been……..?

Rescue at Towan Beach Newquay

Air Ambulance in Newquay

It was yesterday, the 4th August 2010 at around 4.15pm. Yes it is summer again, that time of the year when everyone should be enjoying themselves in Newquay. And the vast majority are doing precisely that.

So all the tourists are here and sumer season is in full swing with the Boardmasters, a major surfing festival underway once again.

On the afternoon in question, I was in the process of preparing a dessert for my evening meal when I heard the helicopter flying low overhead. Looking out the window I saw it hover and then land on Towan Beach.

Oh dear, I thought. Here we go.

The chopper sat for a short while on Towan Beach, and by now it had gathered a lot of sightseers as it were. People all around it were sitting and standing on the beach, most with their surfboards. Others were standin on the high cliffs above, watching the scene below.

After a while the helicopter took off again, did a kind of loop and landed again in a small cove right next to Towan.

I grabbed my camera which has a record mode. The zoom isn't too great so I could not see what was happening too well. I didn't have time to get my camcorder, which would have shown the scene with a lot more clarity. It's always fascinating to see the efficiency with which these guys work - how they co-ordinate their rescues with the life guards and often the Lifeboats too if the emergency occurs out at sea. Happily the latter was not necessary in this case.

After five minutes or so the chopper took off most likely on it's way to Trelisk, Cornwall's main hospital in Truro.

I don't think anybody had fallen from a cliff, well I sincerely hope not. We had bad injuries and even deaths from cliff falls at least six time last year in the summer season.

But I'm thinking in this case it was someone who had got into trouble in the water, maybe someone on a surfboard who had fallen off and was and knocked out by it. It does happen.

It all highlights how dangerous the sea and the high cliffs that surround Cornwall are. They make the county amazingly beautiful but can be a hazard for tourists, and sometimes for residents too.

It is a must that visitors read a guide book or a leaflet advising where it is safe to bathe and where it is not. Then they will leave for home with happy memories.