Chapter 11: The Currency of Kindness

St Austell to Bude

Bude.

I was dropped in a small town called Liskeard and made my way to the road out. Before long an old couple, hobbling up the hill, told me I wouldn’t have much luck there, I was better off trying the other road out of town. I followed their advice and another passer-by told me I should head up to the roundabout, that was the best spot apparently. I followed her advice too and as I arrived a third kindly Liskeardian advised that I make my sign to Callington a bit bolder. No sooner had I done all of these things than a pickup towing a horse box pulled up. I hadn’t even finished rewriting my sign. Hitchhiking was obviously popular in Liskeard.

I threw my bag in and the woman at the wheel took one look at me and said, “I’m doing the one thing I tell my kids they should never do!” She had frizzy, grey-blond hair and wore thick-rimmed glasses. She looked unsure as I tried to convince her that hitchhikers aren’t all bad.

Her name was Hazel. She wore a pair of riding boots which along with the horsebox gave away her first love: riding. She’d grown up in a coastal village called Par and still lived there now along with the 12 horses she looked after. Some were her brother’s but most were hers. Hazel’s daughter was as passionate as she was and was a keen eventer. Together they’d drive to tournaments but Hazel was increasingly torn between allowing her to pursue her dream and the chronic realities of the sheer cost.

“Petrol costs so much,” she said with a sigh, “Going to these events is £200 on fuel alone.” The petrol is really just the tip of the iceberg though and for most, it’s nigh on impossible to compete with the wealthy riders. Hazel wasn’t sure how much longer they would be able to do it.

The afternoon was getting on when I reached Kelly Bray. Kelly Bray, a beautiful name for a village, I thought. I discovered it derives from old Cornish and means ‘dappled grove’. I’d passed several evocative Cornish names that day: Merrymeet, Lostwithiel, Lanlivery and Penpillick, Polgooth, Lanjeth and the superbly simple Sticker. I wondered what they all meant.

The pub opposite was equally well named. I decided against a pint in The Swingletree but googled the name while I waited. It turned out a swingletree is a contraption used by horses to pull vehicles, a kind of ‘whippletree’. As I stood there, wrapping my mouth around the words ‘swingletree’ and ‘whippletree’ and thinking how I’d pay good money to hear Rowan Atkinson say them, another pickup pulled over and jolted me out of my trance.

The driver was covered in dust and wore faded high-vis trousers and a purple woollen jumper. He came round to the passenger side, clunked open the door with a tug and whipped out an enormous angle-grinder.

For a brief moment, I thought I was going to be cut into pieces right there and then but instead he heaved it into the boot of his truck with a loud thud. I chucked my bag on top of it and hopped into the dusty cab slightly relieved.

Far from being a dangerous murderer, Mick was a quiet and timid man. He spoke softly, almost nervously, and would look over out of the corner of his wide grey eyes as we spoke. A fading blue tattoo clung to his thin arm which read, ‘Peace, Love and Empathy.’

He used to hitchhike he told me and still sometimes did, though not so much these days. He laid fibre optics for a living. It had taken him to London once but he hated it there, missing the hills too much. His passion was woodworking and he’d make bow-top carts, like John and Scott’s one that I’d seen on Alston Moor, and he’d carve his own sculptures too. He explained awkwardly how he’d just finished carving a 3-foot-tall figurine of a character who had knives for hands. It wasn’t Edward Scissorhands but someone else. I’d never heard of them though.

Intrigued by his workshop, I asked if he would show me as we came into Launceston. However, he quickly became nervous and said he was too tired that evening before adding that this was the best place to drop me. He pulled over suddenly. It was pouring with rain and he said I could get onto the main road from there but as he drove off I quickly realised I couldn’t. There was a tectonic crack of thunder and I was on the wrong side of town. It always seemed to rain in Launceston.

When it finally stopped I emerged from the nearby bus stop and trudged across town. From there, a man called Mark said he could take me a few miles up the road. It was better than nothing so I hopped in.

He told me he was a stone worker and was on an unsatisfactory job building an enormous new holiday home for a Surrey millionaire. He didn’t much care for the holiday economy dynamic and wasn’t bothered by the fact it was a well-paid gig. Nevertheless, he was a cheerful man and wasn’t cynical about it “I’m not a capitalist or anything,” he said proudly as he dropped me in the hilltop hamlet of St Giles-on-the-Hill.

By now the clouds had all cleared and the evening sun was warming the patchwork fields below. I was getting nervous that the evening was approaching and beautiful as it was, I didn’t much fancy camping there. There was nowhere to have supper.

It wasn’t long though before I was on my way to Holsworthy on the back seat of yet another pickup. This one was driven by a middle-aged couple with the amazing names Samira (pronounced Sam-eye-ra) and Myrdden. They were off to walk the dogs. The dogs clanged excitedly in the cage behind me. They had an adolescent puppy, a gorgeous golden lab, who was so overjoyed at the sight of a hitchhiker that she wriggled through the cage and burst onto my lap, licking my face, pounding the car with her tail and leaping about avidly. I spent the rest of the journey trying with all my force to keep her from careering into the front and distracting Myrdden who was doing a sterling job at wheel despite the canine firework that had just gone off. Exhausted and completely covered in dog hair I was quite relieved when we made it to Holsworthy.

I was now just 8 miles from Bude, where I hoped to spend the night on the cliffs. Annoyingly, the road there was closed but I was picked up by a lady called Skye. Her son Joss sat on a booster seat in the back clutching a football as we wove through the back lanes. The dreamcatcher hanging from her mirror swayed with each turn.

Skye was a free spirit if ever I’ve met one. She was an endless traveller who’d never stayed anywhere for long. The few years she’d spent hitchhiking in New Zealand were her happiest and she spoke of the country with longing and awe. When she came home she tried to hitch here but found the magic was somehow lacking.

Seven years ago she moved to Bude with Joss. It was hard raising a young child on her own. She never got out and didn’t have many friends until one day a colleague from the cafe persuaded her to come out one night. She got a babysitter for Joss and went. That night she met an entire network of friends and even found a new partner. Ever since then she had loved life in the seaside town with a passion not felt since she returned from New Zealand. “There’s not been a day go by when I’ve wanted to move,” she beamed, shaking her head happily, “It’s absolutely beautiful.” 7 years was the longest she’d lived anywhere.

She still worked in the cafe but was training to be a sound therapist and reflexologist too. Despite having plenty of clients already she didn’t like to overcharge people so had to keep up the cafe job. She told me about sound therapy and how she used different frequencies to rebalance the mind of her patients, ironing out the stress from their brains through the humm of an instrument. Then she explained reflexology and how the feet connect to all the different parts of the body: the toes to the sinuses, for instance, or the heel to the pelvis.

“Some of it is science,” she said, “but really I think it’s magic.”

Skye saw the magic in everything. She saw it in beauty most of all and saw it in people’s faces too. She even saw it in the words they spoke. She thought New Zealand was alive with magic and felt that Cornwall was too, that’s partly why she was so happy there.

As we came into Bude the sun was low and the air was clear.

“I love showing people Bude because I love it so much myself.” She grinned again. We drove around the town for a while and she told me how after covid she and Joss had had to move into a caravan. Once people could work from home, thousands flocked to Cornwall and she’d been told to stump up a whole year of rent upfront. She couldn’t so was evicted. It was hard but she’d managed and it hadn’t dampened her passion for the place.

The Mermaid, Bude.

Skye and Joss dropped me by their favourite fish and chip shop, The Mermaid, and said a warm and heartfelt goodbye. I watched them as they wove off through the narrow streets into Bude. It had been an uplifting end to a long day. I got fish and chips and walked out of town, past a dreamlike game of cricket onto the cliff tops as they glowed in the evening and I reflected on the 9 lifts I’d had that day. I could hardly believe that I’d woken up in Penzance. A breeze whipped off the silver sea and set the barley fields afloat. I recalled what Alex had told me about his transformative hitchhiking days.

“There are things you learn hitchhiking that no book can teach you. You can’t be taught that stuff!” He’d said passionately, “It’s real lived experience.”

I’d told him about some of the characters I’d met. “Well,” he’d replied, “People are good at heart, you know. Kindness is still a currency.”

The clifftops near Bude.