Retreat

I think I like this place best at the beginnings and the ends of the day, golden light streaming through the orchard and stretching our shadows. When I woke up earlier at 5am and staggered sleepily through the damp grass to the compost toilet, tucked neatly away in a repurposed old garden shed, there were still pink streaks of dawn in the east. Turning back I saw a bright white half moon still hanging in the vaguest memory of the night sky. It is my last morning of a long weekend in Cornwall with my teenage daughter V, a much anticipated post-exam treat, a pause from all of the everything that awaits us back home.

I have been visiting this part of south Cornwall on and off for over twenty years, and there is something immensely soothing about coming back to the same place and walking the same footpaths. The landscape doesn’t change, but of course humans do. The choice to keep returning was partly pragmatic, I was looking for somewhere by the sea to bring my children that was accessible by public transport from Bristol. So many lovely wild places are out of reach if you don’t have a car. My husband returned from a work trip to Switzerland recently and I listened enviously to his tales of efficient trains and properly integrated buses, and drifted off into a dream of mountains. Maybe one day. 

For now the coast path of Cornwall will have to suffice, and my daughter and I took our seats in the quiet carriage on the early train from Bristol Temple Meads to St Austell on Friday. A taxi from the station, costing nearly as much as our train tickets, took us the last few miles to Cotna Eco Retreat, nearest village Gorran Churchtown. We have stayed in various self-catering places over the years, but discovered Cotna in 2019. It’s run by Sara and Dave who run a smallholding along permaculture principles and offer camping in yurts. Practicality strikes again, as I know it’s technically possible to take all your camping gear on the train, but it seems like really hard work for what is supposed to be a relaxing holiday. The yurt gives me the taste of outdoor living I crave, but I have a proper comfy bed to sleep on at night. Washing up takes place in a hedge, with yellowing leaflets of willow fluttering down on me as I scrub the plates, and one morning I evict a small snail from a saucepan left on the draining board overnight.

V has chosen to leave her phone at home for the weekend, wanting to prove that she can do without it. In solidarity I put mine away too, only using it for such essentials as checking timetables and local shop opening times. Living where we do in a city, it’s easy to take for granted convenience stores selling whatever you might want at any hour of the day. V reacquaints herself with the chickens, the two dogs and the cat. In the seven years we have been visiting Cotna, the willow trees planted to give the camping areas privacy have grown thick and lush, the shushing noise of them lulls us to sleep. I think of one of my favourite childhood books. We really are living amongst the Wind in the Willows.  More and more areas of grass around the fruit trees have been left to grow long, the practice of ‘mow where you go’ and only cutting paths. There is a profusion of wild flowers, white-topped stalks of cow parsley, rusty docks and towering above them all, purple thistles.

This wilding brings the insects, and so the birds, and we are surrounded by life all weekend. I spot and am able to name Red Admiral, Meadow Brown and Large White butterflies and one day in the yurt an enormous Peacock butterfly zooms in and then dashes itself against the clear plastic skylight. Traditionally on the steppe I suppose this hole in the roof would be open to the elements to allow the smoke of the central campfire to disperse. This more modern iteration is a concession to a damper Cornish climate. As Dave helps us to wheelbarrow our luggage down to our temporary home for the weekend he tells us that he spotted ‘some kind of fritillary butterfly’ recently. We discuss how the old-fashioned way of being certain of identification was to catch butterflies and pin them to a card. Their numbers have suffered enough due to human interference, it’s definitely time to live with the uncertainty of not knowing and simply appreciate them in their transient beauty. Of course, welcoming the full ecosystem also means living with the less attractive invertebrates. An increased deer population means more ticks (there are 20 native species in the UK), and we check assiduously each night with our tick tool before we go to bed. V also wages war on horse flies, slapping at them with a copy of Private Eye and frequently shouting obscenities. I tell her to do what she needs to do, and that we’re so remote here she’s not disturbing anyone. It’s one of the contrary aspects of life as an autistic person that she finds solace in the natural world but also sometimes sensory overwhelm. As she says slightly plaintively, 'sometimes it's hard to love all of nature’.

Retreat means to withdraw or draw back from. There are resonances of defeat, of a retreat from battle. But I prefer the more spiritual meaning of the word, that sense of taking time out to reflect, to move more slowly. There is always a dreamlike feeling of being here at Cotna, a slowness, and I find myself catching glimpses of my children’s younger selves flitting just out of reach between the trees. I know that this visit will have added to that stock of memories, even though my daughter will be an adult in just a few short months. Being here this weekend has given us time to just be, and I relish it.

We stayed at Cotna Eco Retreat, this isn't a sponsored post, I just really like it there. Over the weekend I read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie and Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett, both purchased in the second hand bookshop in Mevagissey, a 45 minute walk from Cotna. I didn't really take any photos over the weekend, but snapped this one in one of the outbuildings while we were waiting for our lift to the station.