Morwenstow

Open fire. The smell, sight, crackle, warmth; the taste, even, of homely heavenly...

“Aah, good morning!” Gill, our host, through another door. Just the two of us, and her, in this truly wonderful dining room. A great oak chest from the Far East, a great golden gramophone, a great giant camera, a great rug under a great table under great crockery for but two, a great array of cereals, yoghurts, berries, juices...

“Did you sleep well?” Well, no. Warmer than we're used to, creaks of doors and floors, wild dreams of psychosis, softer than we're used to. Yet, yes. Filled with some different spirit. “Yes. Thank you.”

Great gothic windows, looking up to the great church of Morwenna with its Saxon font and older

well. Coffee, egg, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, paper, England won, and on and on. Portraits, music, ceilings, things. The hats, caps, helmets of the porch, looking over the great triangle of sea. The drawing room, study, billiards room, lead piping, deaths or murders of countless souls wrecked and dragged up the cliffs, up the valley, by Revd Hawker and his gin strong men.

This morning: mist, rain, heavy grey, a hint of awful happenings long ago. Yet, yesterday, even in his timber hut: sun streaming in as we sat, eating cheese and apple, watching gulls soar, hearing waves roar, sweetly; windy sun as we walked, and lay on cliff altars and tufty grass, high above the Atlantic blue. He left his parish twice in thirty years; Tennyson, geese, corpses, hymns, brownies, wives all came to him.

Go to The Vicarage at Morwenstow. Go from afar, or from near like us. It might help heal you too.