It can’t be often that a bit of coast in South Devon can be claimed to stay unchanged over seventy years. Tony’s family and now ours, have known and loved this place for four generations, since the 1950s. The access is still down a narrow lane; there are still no ice-cream vans, no Private notices, no 'No Camping or Overnight Stopping' notices, and there are still few people there especially during the weekdays.
When we returned to live in Cornwall in 1969 we rather hesitatingly went back, fully expecting it to have been ‘discovered’ since we last knew it in 1962. But no, nothing had changed from the 1950s, and our son and his family visit from Plymouth now in the 2020s, and STILL no appreciable change except for more cars squeezed along the sides of the approach road at weekends.
For obvious reasons, I’m not now going to tell you where it is, except to say it is the estuary of a small river running down to the sea through the lush pastures and shady woods of the South Hams and originating on Dartmoor. At Low Water, an extensive area of flat golden sand is exposed and as the tide comes in over the sun-warmed rippled bed, It is an idyllic place to swim in the summer.
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| Looking up the estuary.1956 |
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| Looking across the estuary from above Wonwell.1956 The sea is on the left. |
Quiet little coves, rock pools at the base of the low cliffs, offer opportunities for picnics, collecting winkles, family cricket matches or plain idling. Tony's Dad and his brothers knew this stretch of coast when they lived in Plymouth in the early 1950s; then his Mum was introduced to the area for holidays;and the wider family of Atkinson aunts uncles and cousins had many a picnic and day-long gatherings there when Tony and his brother were young boys.
During holidays, somehow Tony got to know the folk in the farm just up the road from Wonwell. This was Farmer Rogers from Torrdown Farm. He used to fish in his leisure time and these visits surely were the root of Tony's dream of farming and fishing when he grew up -- a dream he realized when we went to live on Bardsey some years later.
My involvement with Wonwell came when Tony and I were at Seale-Hayne near Newton Abbot and Tony took me to meet his parents who were staying in the pub in Kingston, the village near Wonwell, and of course we went to Wonwell. This was in the mid -1950s and we made several trips there on his motorbike while still at college.
Meanwhile Tony's brother Mick, then working as a boatbuilder for Mashfords in Cremyll, had made himself a ‘camp’, a hideaway among the Brambles above the little cove favoured by the older Atkinsons.
This camp was in a hollow, covered by a sheet of tarpaulin and reached through a narrow brambly path. Fresh water was from a small stream a little way up the valley. The access along the beach from the slipway was blocked by the high tide, so then there was a bit of a slog along a narrow path running from the lane though a wooded slope to a couple of meadows and then the estuary coast and the cove a little way below a low cliff and looking south across the river mouth to the open sea.
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| Old postcard picture of local fishermen at Wonwell. |
Invariably in those days, any locals or visitors only went down from the slipway at the end of the lane and restricted their activities to the beach there or a little way up-stream. They never seemed to venture much downstream, and of course the tide restricted them for some hours every day.
Tony and I had an ill-begotten visit after College, just before he went in the army on National Service. We hitch-hiked down to Plymouth from his home in Saltford between Bristol and Bath. We were to pick up some camping gear from his Aunt in Plymouth to augment Mick's camping gear, but as we got down from our last lorry lift, Tony confessed he didn't know his Aunt's address. We tried phoning Mick in his digs but he was out for the evening and his landlady didn't know where. We spent an uncomforatble chilly night sleeping under a hedge on the outskirts of Plymouth. Next morning we rang Mick successfully this time, got the Aunt's address and picked up the gear. I cannot remember for the life of me how we trekked around Plymouth, nor how we got the camping gear to Wonwell some 20 miles away. Bus I suppose.
Anyway the camp started well. We had a fishing trip with Farmer Rogers, using a seine net to catch Mullet, a couple of which we were given. Tony still quotes this as one of his most memorable meals : mullet, coated in breadcrumbs and chopped wild marjoram, grilled over our camp fire. From there, things went downhill. A gale developed in the middle of the night and it blew ferociously. Our little tent collapsed, the rain poured in and we spent the rest of an endless night wrapped up in Mick's tarpaulin trying to grab hold of anything moveable. It was still blowing hard the next morning. The estuary was a white welter of foam and the sea crashed up to the base of the cliff below us all day.
Somehow we patched up the camp and stayed another day or two. When we got back to Tony's home in Somerset we heard that the tall ship Pamir had been lost with almost all hands off the Azores in that same storm. She had over 60 young German trainees aboard, and twenty two crew. Only to survived. She was carrying a cargo of grain from Buenos Ayres to Britain.
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| The Pamir. She was the last sailing cargo ship to round Cape Horn in 1949. She was carrying grain from Australia to Falmouth. |
A few years elapsed before we went back to Wonwell and camped in 1962, this time with a four-month old baby and a dog.
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| Wonwell, summer 1962 |
This visit we had the added fun of the use of a big canoe Mick had made and left for us to use.
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| Mick surfing with the canoe 1962 |
This camp had another dramatic end. When we broke camp, Mick took the canoe back to Plymouth for modifications. He set off for Plymouth but as we were about to leave a bit later, someone came running up to us to say that he'd been watching Mick paddle out of the estuary and he disappeared. He was afraid he'd capsized so he'd called the coastguard. We drove to Mothecombe on the other side of the estuary, left The baby Kim and the dog in the car with the windows open, and had a hot, exhausting and alarming race along the coast in the Plymouth direction, searching the sea. We got to Bantham along the coast and asked people on the beach if they'd seen a canoe heading west along the coast there, and, miraculously, a man told us yes, a chap in a canoe had come ashore, scrounged a light for his cigarette and gone on his way!
Much relieved, we went back to the car, to find that concerned people were considering calling the police about our 'abandoned baby and dog'!
Back at Plymouth we found Mick at home eating his tea with his family. It turned out that he'd cut through a channel in the rocks off the estuary for a short-cut. Hence his apparent disappearance. And later he met the lifeboat coming out of Plymouth. They told him they were looking for a missing canoe with two men on board. They'd been given the wrong message. In fact they should have been looking for a two-man canoe with ONE man!
Following our life on Bardsey we came to live in east Cornwall and resumed our visits to Wonwell.
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The canoe still in use in 1972. Kim, Angus and Tony off Wonwell slipway.  Just along the coast to the east is a small cove, Fernycombe. A narrow, steep fishermen's path goes down through prickly waist-high blackthorn scrub, but it's reached more easily from the sea if you have the means. In 1972 we had a day here; Kim and I walked with the dog and Ang and Tony canoed. Bridget was very glad to see the family re-united!  Someone had been here before us and made these shelters. 1972.  1972, Kim at Fernycombe. This summer (2022) our grandson jacek, now 21 canoed here with a friend, and camped. The family tradition continues! |
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More fun: wet suits and diving. 1977. Wonwell picnics. 1973 |
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| 2018. Brennie up the creek but still with the paddles! |
