Hello, and thank you for visiting
Mevagissey has been our home for some years now, and we have never quite got over the good fortune of it. It is an old fishing village on the south coast of Cornwall — two harbours, a tangle of narrow streets, and boats coming and going with the tide.
These pages are simply a place to put the things we enjoy: the village and the coast around it, the vegetable garden, the radio, the kitchen. Nothing very grand. Do have a look around.
The family
The two of us live here, but the house is at its best when it is full. Our son and daughter-in-law live in Tokyo, and he tries to get home when he can — though being in Japan makes that difficult. Our daughter and son-in-law, by contrast, are fifteen minutes' drive away in St Austell.
Christmas is still the fixed point of the year that everything else arranges itself around, and the best of them are the ones where we are all in the same place at once.
Welcome to
Mevagissey
It’s a bit like Padstow
but Rick Stein hasn’t bought it yet
Not, we should stress, an official Cornwall Council sign.
Have a look around
-
Mevagissey & the local area
The harbour, the coast path, the neighbouring coves, and the gardens and beaches within easy reach of the village.
About the village -
Paul
Forty-four years a radio amateur, sending television pictures by repeater and satellite — plus a vegetable garden and a long-standing weakness for good hi-fi.
Paul's page -
Rachel
The WI, and a kitchen that is rarely quiet — baking, preserving, and cooking with whatever Cornwall is offering that week.
Rachel's page
The house
Home is a white house set into the hillside, with the garden dropping away below it in terraces and a balcony that catches the afternoon sun. It has taken a fair amount of work over the years, and it is not finished yet — houses this close to the sea never really are.
The mast beside it is not a decorative feature, and neither are the dishes on the balcony. That is the amateur television station, and it has been part of the house rather longer than some of the paintwork.
Making the house greener
Over the past few years we have been steadily working at the house's green credentials, and it has become something of a project in its own right.
- Solar panels for electricity, and a second set for hot water.
- Batteries fitted to the house, so what the panels make during the day is still there in the evening.
- Rainwater collection supplying everything the plants and vegetables need.
- New windows and doors throughout, all to a high specification.
Next on the list is the heating. We are currently looking at replacing the oil-fired central heating with an air source system, which would take the last of the fossil fuel out of the house.
The garden
Cornwall's mild winters and long growing season are a gardener's gift, and the salt wind is the price you pay for them. Behind a good hedge, though, a great deal will grow — and does.
The vegetable plot sits at the bottom of the garden in raised beds: potatoes, french beans, sweetcorn, squash, carrots, beetroot and leeks, watered from a two-thousand-litre rainwater system that runs downhill from the house. Most of it reaches the kitchen table within the hour.
Getting away
For two people quite so attached to their own village, we are surprisingly keen on leaving it. We get away twice a year if we can, and almost always by sea — European destinations, and the fjords whenever we can arrange it.
We sail most often with P&O Cruises, and have been out with Ambassador as well. The appeal is simple enough: you unpack once, the view from the window changes every morning, and somebody else does the cooking — which even Rachel is prepared to admit has its moments.
“There is something about a working harbour that never gets dull. The boats go out, the boats come back, and the village gets on with it.”