Discovering Arthurian Legends, Tintagel 1972

I hitch-hiked and walked to the pretty coastal fishing village of Boscastle in Cornwall, which has a Museum of Witchcraft but more importantly is the beginning of a 5-mile walking track along the spectacular Cornish coastline to Tintagel, an area steeped in Arthurian Legend. I began the coastal walk, passing through Rocky Valley, an impressive slate canyon eroded by the small Trevillet River, in misty rain which fortunately did clear and though wet from the knees down, I enjoyed the walk immensely even though I was carrying my back-pack.

Rocky Valley on the coastal walk between Boscastle & Tintagel

In Tintagel I checked into the Youth Hostel which had once been the office of a slate mine and was situated on a spectacular site high above the rugged Cornish coast. I immediately liked Tintagel which, in 1972, was not yet widely visited. In fact I had only heard of the town a few days before during a discussion with fellow travellers at the Bath youth hostel. The small bay at Tintagel is dominated by a large headland upon which are the remains of an old castle, most of which dates from the 12th century but earlier ruins, perhaps a Celtic monastery and a former fortress, date back to the 6th century, which certainly fits in with the time frame of Arthurian legend. According to the 12th century historian, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Uther Pendragon, a king of post-Roman Britain, had a fixation with Ygerna, wife of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall. With the connivance of the magician Merlin: By my drugs I know how to give you the precise appearance of Gorlois, so that you will resemble him in every respect.  The disguised Uther Pendragon travelled to Tintagel Castle while Gorlois was away at war: The King spent that night with Ygerna and satisfied his desire by making love with her. … That night she conceived Arthur, the most famous of men, who subsequently won great renown by his outstanding bravery. Next morning news was received that Gorlois had been killed in battle. Uther Pendragon then took Tintagel Castle and married Ygerna, thus legitimising Arthur’s birth.

Site of what is supposedly King Arthur's Castle, Tintagel

Beneath the Tintagel Castle headland is a large sea cave known locally as Merlin’s Cave. Uther had died before Arthur’s birth and according to Alfred, Lord Tennyson in The Idylls of the King Merlin is said to have rescued the baby Arthur here:

Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,                     

Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep         

And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged       

Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame:                 

And down the wave and in the flame was borne         

 A naked babe, and rode to Merlin’s feet,               

Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried ‘The King!  

Here is an heir for Uther!’ And the fringe                 

Of that great breaker, sweeping up the strand,        

Lash’d at the wizard as he spake the word,               

And all at once round him rose in fire,                        

So that the child and he were clothed in fire.

 

Tintagel Cove from Merlin's Cave

The cave, accessible only at low tide, spurred my imagination and I wrote in my diary: ‘It is not terribly hard to picture the bearded Merlin in his robes and peaked hat, casting spells over a cauldron in the cave.’ Guess I had been overly influenced by Disney in those days! I spent a couple of days exploring the castle ruins, Tintagel village and this dramatic section of the Cornish coast. Tintagel was just beginning to cash in on the Arthurian legends and there was a rather tacky ‘sword’ stuck in a stone, alongside a bar called, tastelessly, ‘Excali-bar’!  The old stone-slab post office, then a small museum, was an interesting structure.

The old stone Post Office in Tintagel, 1972

 The days were sunny and warm, and I spent time along the cliff tops near the youth hostel, scrambling down one morning to a small rocky bay for a dip in the Atlantic. It was a very quick dip as I was surprised at how cold the water was. It was also the first time I had come upon small globules of crude oil, washed up on the rocks. This was a legacy of the Torrey Canyon disaster which took place on a reef off the coast of Cornwall in 1967. The wreck of this super tanker was the world’s first major environmental oil spill and, to date, Britain’s worst. Five years on, small amounts of the tar-like crude oil still remained on this otherwise pristine coast.  

The spectacular Cornish coastal scenery near Tintagel

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography 


An execrpt from my book One Foot in Front of the Other - First Steps now available in paperback from Amazon Books