The Church in the Dunes

A Song of Cornish Summers : The Church in the Dunes

Leaving behind

beach towels spread across damp sand gritty sandwiches crusts abandoned flip flops men dozing in deck chairs their heads tied up in white hankies mothers warning offspring not to swim so soon after lunch the rapturous cry of kids swamped by waves the rattle of the donkey’s bell and the cry of the ice cream man we escaped to the dunes.

 

It was an uphill slog

sand filled our footsteps as soon as we walked out of them. We waded into the sun cut our hands on the sea grass we grabbed to help us up the unstable incline sand filtering into our sandals.

 

At last we reached the crest.

Below, lay the central roofline of St. Piran’s church now enclosed in a concrete bunker fourteen hundred years after St Piran came here from Ireland in his small coracle.

We knew all the tales of Celtic holy men St. Piran, St. Budoc and St. Blaise, the folk legends Tregeagle, Madgy Figgy and the piskie thresher, and every night we listened for the sound of the bells of Lyonesse tolling from a hundred drowned churches.

 

Here

with a wall of sand muffling the summer sounds of a hundred holidaymakers we crept around the shadows of the church imagined ourselves a thousand years away battling the waves carrying faith like precious cargo into wild and unruly places.

 

Here 

we enacted sacrilegious rituals shared stolen sweets practiced swear words told each other extravagant lies made angels in the sand enacted a St Vitus dance to free ourselves of its insidious silt.

Although 

the wind-tilted sign told us not to, we slipped sideways between the bunker and what was left of the ancient walls engulfed in the shadow’s chill we dared each other to hold our breathe until we passed out in religious ecstasy

 

But the lure of the present 

soon eroded our daring and patience. We eased back into the light clambered the dunes which seemed steeper now and less alluring. We could soon smell candy floss and fish and chips, see bright buckets garlanding storefronts at the top of the beach, the damp rectangle of sand where our family’s blanket had lain.

 

And so we raced home, 

eager for tea. Promising each other, once again, to stay awake that night until we heard the Bells of Lyonesse ring out of the dark lilting sea beneath the dunes.