TINTAGEL

My greatest memory of a walk in my life thus far was hiking around the rugged coastline that frames the Atlantic Ocean one blazing hot August day.

There was some perfect alignment in those magical moments where the scenery along with my personally selected soundtrack blasting through my ears and the sublime summer weather created a multi-sensory perfection while I took in the full panorama of epic scenery. I felt a frisson of transcendence as I could feel centuries of time compacted on top of one another as the craggy cliffs secured my footing while the foaming sea crashed all around me down below against the rocks.  

Of course I really have Bax to thank for this heightened realisation that day. His glorious music had prompted these lofty and poetic feelings within me.

Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax (1883 –1953) was an English composer most famous for writing his symphonic tone poem Tintagel, a work inspired by a visit to Tintagel Castle in Cornwall in the summer of 1917. The piece reflects the oceanic majesty of the landscape and the mythology closely associated with the place relating to the legendary tales of King Arthur and King Mark.  

Bax wanted to evoke an impression of the cliffs and castle of Tintagel and the sea “on a sunny but not windless summer day”, and to reflect some of the literary and traditional associations of the scene.

I, too, found myself recalling literary associations of my own as I remembered Max DeWinter precariously staring down to the swirling sea below him above the cliffs in Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca and later recalling the night he lost his wife, Mrs DeWinter, far out at sea close to his Manderley estate. I also thought of King Mark's boat navigating its way off the Cornish coast and the ship wreckers of Jamaica Inn. There were even times when I found myself reminiscing about first watching Jaws and finding both the allure and horror of the sea in equal measure as well as Daniel and Mr Miyagi in The Karate Kid 3 rock climbing above the sea in search of rare bonsai trees along the Pacific Coast Highway. Even Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock's Vertigo came to mind as I remembered his rescuing of a drowning Kim Novak off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Perhaps those past lives I'd fancied I lived before and dreamt on my walk were really just flashbacks to my cultural diet of books, films and music. Sometimes the lines get blurry and hard to distinguish. Had I become a strange fusion of DeWinter, Daniel San and Chief Brody while I wandered? Possibly.

I should state at this juncture that although it was 'Tintagel' that I was listening to on my walk, it was actually the coastal path route along Land's End I found myself enjoying that day. Bax's music seems to encompass the full essence of Cornwall's ancient scenery from the spongy heathlands to the epic cliffs and sparkling turquoise to navy blue water without needing to be followed to the letter of its title.

Finding myself scanning the horizon for sharks or cetaceans, I soon found my vision become a blur with the undulating waves before me as I went into a sort of trance.

Watching the ancient spires of rock that stand alone like granite knights, my imagination was further piqued. Passing Enys Dodan, the island cave and home to hoards of black backed gulls, I wondered what skeletons of smuggers had washed up there or what treasures might be stowed away inside the cave from long ago. Echoes of The Goonies came to mind suddenly. Perhaps there might be a pirate ship filled with rare rubies and sapphires where I could seize upon my fortune like the Count of Monte Cristo.

It doesn't surprise me that Land's End is strongly associated with the lost world of Atlantis known in Cornish legend as the land of Lyonesse. As a peregrine falcon hovered close by me I found everything that day to be imbued with mythic atmosphere and wouldn't have been surprised to have stumbled upon a secret world such as Atlantis myself that afternoon.

Myths are what remind us that we all share in an over arching bridge of time as well as simulatenously existing in a timelessness where all history dissolves before us.

That August day, with Bax ringing in my ears, I found myself to be momentarily immortal.

And then I went in search of a Cornish pasty and became all too human again.