“Motorbike’s gone,” I said to Sarah as we stepped into the morning sunshine, our car now the only vehicle parked by the hotel.
“Yes, I heard it leave this morning, quite early. Come on, darling, show me the place where we get the boat.” We turned left and walked along the road, which dipped down to a public slipway next to the boatyard and a floating jetty for the steamer. People were already waiting in a queue for the ten o’clock boat.
“Morning,” I called to Mike Jackson, who was busy painting the underside of a sailing yacht laid up on a cradle beside the jetty.
“Hello Sangster,” he called back. “And this must be, er…”
“Sarah,” I shouted, as Sarah waved.
“Pleasure to meet you, Sarah,” said Jackson. “Perhaps I’ll see you both tonight in the hotel bar but got to get on now. Antifouling.” He pointed to the red paint on the boat’s keel. “Needs to dry between tides,” he added, turning back to his paintbrush.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Most of the waiting passengers turned to the left, as the raucous sound of a bell shattered the morning.
“What’s that, Jack? I nearly jumped out of my skin.”
“You ring that to call the ferryman,” I explained, looking down at a grey bell mounted on the wall by the slipway, next to where a group of hikers stood. “His name’s Pasco. Regular at the hotel, and when he’s not in the bar he lives over there.” I pointed over to a pair of cottages on the other side of the creek. “His is the far house by the point, and that little stone shelter thing by the water’s edge is called the Waiting Room. He’s supposed to sit in it and wait for the bell, but I’m not sure he ever does.” I squinted across the water. “No, maybe Pasco does at that, he’s already on his way with a passenger. See that rowing boat?”
“Oh yes, looks like he’s ferrying a cyclist. I can see a bike lying across the front of the boat.”
“That will be Canon Pengelly. He’s another regular at the hotel bar, and he rides everywhere.”
“Why?”
“Doesn’t drive and looks after several local churches, including the one by the academy. I guess this ferry’s the quickest way back to Truro from Roseland.”
“The peninsula on the east side of the river?”
“You’ve been reading up, haven’t you, Sarah?” She nodded. “Well, the academy’s at the bottom of it, near a place called St Anthony.”
“Can’t wait to see the academy, and look,” she said as the sky-blue steamer announced its presence upriver with a whoop. “Here comes our boat again.”
*
“Only last week we saw a seal, ladies and gentlemen,” came the indistinct voice of the guide through a loudspeaker on the mast of the Kernow Belle. “They very occasionally swim this far up the river.”
“I never seen one in sixty years going on these boats,” said a very old man with a long, flowing, dishevelled beard, holding a head-height walking stick made of highly polished gnarled wood, and incongruously dressed in a threadbare overcoat (worn buttoned up despite the sunshine). He stood next to us as we leaned against the rail on the top deck. “Reckon it’s always last week they’ve seen a seal,” the old man wheezed, bending double with laughter, and coughing as he did so. I laughed with him, then continued to admire the view, as tree-lined shores passed by, occasionally revealing a building, such as a church spire or stone boathouse and, at one point, just for a moment, a grand, turreted house with lawns sloping down to the water.
“That’s a calendar house, Jack. I caught a glimpse, then it was gone.”
“A what Sarah?”
“It has three hundred and sixty-five windows. One for each day of the year.”
“How did you know that?”
“That book I was looking at on the train.”
The Kernow Belle continued its journey, while the river widened as more side-creeks joined with it, including the confluence with the Fal proper, at which point a row of massive concrete hulls chained together along the centre of the channel came into view. “These are old barges, ladies and gentlemen, used to carry fresh water during the D-Day landings,” crackled our ever-informative guide. The steamer travelled on, close by the towering hulls of two impossibly large cargo ships (‘these ships are laid up in the river until work can be found for them’), and after those, past a chain ferry for cars (‘King Harry Ferry, ladies and gentlemen, nobody knows which Harry though’). The ferry named for the unknown Harry travelled slowly sideways across the channel, the captain of the Belle carefully navigating to one side. As he did so, the passengers on our deck, including the old man, waved, and the car ferry passengers waved back. Sarah and I followed suit.
The river eventually led to an expanse of water (‘Carrick Roads, ladies and gentlemen, over a mile wide and three miles long, the third largest natural harbour in the world’), where I felt the boat increase speed, the engines making more noise and the wake behind us now whiter and wider. From there we steamed through various yacht moorings and passed vessels underway, including a fleet of old-fashioned looking, many-sailed wooden yachts (‘Working boats, ladies and gentlemen, used to dredge oysters’), until the docks of Falmouth came into view.