Full tide at Cockwood Harbour
Beautiful Cockington Village
When I asked my old school friend Sally (now living in Cyprus but on holiday in England at present) if she’d like to go to Cockington for an outing on Tuesday she thought I meant Cockwood; well they sound similar, and both spots are beautiful, but they are quite different and about fifteen miles apart. Cockwood, as you may be aware, is the little harbour on our side of the Exe Estuary and just two and a half miles from our house; it is perhaps the favourite cycling destination for Chris and me. Cockington, on the other hand, is the charming little “chocolate box” village situated only a mile or so from the seafront at Torquay, and it’s so well hidden that you wouldn’t know that it’s there.
My very first visit to quaint Cockington Village was with my cousins who lived in Torquay; that was when I was fourteen and had just arrived from Australia. On the way to Cockington – we all walked in those days – my cousin John saved me from a speeding car by pushing me into a hedge… and for the first time in my life I was stung by stinging nettles, then treated with dock leaves growing in the hedge also – another first.
In my case fourteen was an age for many firsts. My new friend Sally, who, like me, was new to the school, came from a family with rather modern and sophisticated taste – they used to eat real spaghetti not Heinz spaghetti and tomato sauce from a tin! My first attempt to eat real spaghetti – at Sally’s house – proved challenging. The pasta would not stay on my fork. Maybe an hour into the meal, when everyone else had finished, and my dinner was cold, Sally’s father could bear watching me no more.
“You don’t have to eat it Sally,” he said kindly, no doubt thinking that I preferred the Heinz variety.
I expect I blushed. It was all so embarrassing for a shy fourteen-year-old from the bush.
So Chris took we two old school friends to Cockington bright and early on Tuesday. At nine-thirty in the morning, though it’s the height of summer, there were few people about and the village felt like it belonged to us… and the lady who sat contemplating on a bench by the lower lake. The air had the coolness of morning and the sun had the heat of promise for a hot afternoon. The paths were shaded by trees with leaves every colour of green, the outer ones edged with sunshine. The lady on the bench left with her white poodle, greeted us on the dappled path (as if to show no hard feelings for us interrupting her reverie) and Sally took the lady’s solitary position while Chris and I sat close together on another bench.
At our leisure we strolled back to the main path and down to the church and the big house called Cockington Court. From our table outside the cafe we watched some people trickling down the path and larger groups of young folk running off the path, down the grassy banks to the field of parched grass where cricket matches are still played on Sunday afternoons. The tourists were coming, filling the hidden world that we had felt was especially for us. It was time to leave. We were not so dissimilar to the lady on the bench. But we didn’t leave without a walk through the rose garden and a mosey around the craft centre – we, too, were kind of tourists.
I’m so glad we went to Cockington Village and not Cockwood Harbour (albeit a wonderful local destination) not least because we now have a new addition on our terrace – a strange-looking bird we acquired on our visit. Is it a cockatoo by any chance? No, that would be too coincidental. Our friend Roland from Australia (and something of a bird-man himself) has called her Tammy Toucan, and if you think she’s a bit ugly… good! We hope she’ll scare away the seagulls and pigeons that like to perch on our balustrade! All the same, we think Tammy is beautiful.
Tammy Toucan from Cockington Craft Centre
The name Cockington is thought to derive from Saxon terms meaning either ‘the settlement near the springs’ or ‘the place of the red meadow’. … From 1130-1350 the lands were owned by the Fitzmartin family who took the surname De Cockington.