Detour #105: Cornwall or Bust, UK
The A303 cuts through the countryside Photo Shutterstock
Whenever Bill Dunn felt Cornwall calling he would just jump in his car and drive. Even when there was sometimes a slim chance of making it.
Often, on Friday afternoons in the mid-Nineties we’d be in The Landor in Brixton playing pool and decide to drive to St Ives in Cornwall for the weekend. We’d approach these spontaneous six-hour nocturnal journeys with minimal preparation and a menagerie of vehicles – two-grand Jaguar saloons, a meconium-coloured Allegro, a long, black Citroen CX called Lupa de Nocte… and my Dutton Phaeton.
The Dutton, like the trips, was an impulse decision, bought on a Friday night from its constructor, a Mr Peckover of Penge. I’d done minimal research and nodded politely as he talked me through the loom and fuses.
Luckily, Mr Peckover turned out to have been a fantastic engineer, although there were design issues. Staring over the long bonnet, the moulded fibreglass front mudguards would judder wildly, and the roof would be an annoyance over 60mph – like driving a go kart with a tent on it. So we’d take it off and do the 288-mile journey en plein air. It’s a summer night – how cold could it get?
Bill Dunn’s Dutton Phaeton Photo Bill Dunn
The Phaeton didn’t have a stereo, so we’d Bungee a boombox behind the seats, but between the wind roar and the fat exhaust note, even bass-heavy tracks like The Guns of Brixton or Shinehead’s version of Billie Jean would be reduced to the tiss-tiss-tiss of the snare drum.
Threading through south London, we’d inhale the malty aroma of the brewery in Mortlake, before getting up to cruising speed on the M3 where the Ford Crossflow engine started to sound like it was enjoying itself. But the real joy began when we turned off at Dummer and hit the A303.
The A303 is more of a ley line than a road. It follows a route trodden by druids, herders and wizards, dropping gently southwest and allowing you time to decompress from London life and readjust, ready to take on the Cornish mindset of ibni. Mystic, indefinable and unique, it’s as holistically all-encompassing as the Jamaican philosophy of I and I and as relaxed as the Spanish expression of mañana.
Druids and Dutton owners alike are drawn to Stonehenge Photo Ankit Sood / Unsplash
Stonehenge would fly by on our right, then acres of pigs in little Nissen huts on our left, all illuminated perfectly by the setting sun ahead. We’d get used to the rhythm of dawdling behind lorries on the single-lane stretches and then using our power-to-weight advantage to accelerate past all comers on the dual carriageway sections. But we paid for acceleration – everything vibrated, the rearview mirror fell off and the night air bit our necks – some mystery of aerodynamics meant that even as we moved forward, the wind hit us from behind.
We hurtled through acres of dark countryside and powered through the Blackdown Hills on the Somerset-Devon border. The A303 suddenly drops its last digit and becomes the A30. There was the tricky map-reading manoeuvre as we skirted past Exeter on the M5, then dropped through Bodmin Moor. The names would get Cornisher and Cornisher – Polyphant, Indian Queens, Zelah, Marzanvose… and we’d feel like we were driving down the old lady’s leg of the British Isles and entering another country – which many say we were.
The dawn would start to glint on the waves as we skirted Carbis Bay and threaded through St Ives’ narrow streets. We forgot the key to the flat again, and Willie Barns-Graham, the artist from next door, took us in and gave us tea and toast until the locksmith could be woken. “I don’t know how you do that journey,” she said.
Neither did we, but we’d do it again and again, because it’s perfect.
Words Bill Dunn Twitter
Anyone for ice cream? Photo Richard Bell / Unsplash