The Lizard Wind

Down the ages men have felt a certain awe in the presence of the wind. There is mystery in a force that moves with unseen and un-reckoned power. Does the devil lurk behind its sound and fury, or witches ride by on broomsticks over wild and lonely moors?

 In The Lizard Peninsula is a unique, desolate heath, where fox and badger hide and the owl flies silently at night. Here stretches the plateau of the down-lands of Predannack, Goonhilly and Lizard, most of it over 200 feet high, bounded on three sides by the open sea, a place for all the winds to muster in frolic or ferocity. Strips of shelter like Church Cove, Poltesco or the wooded valley at Bochym take on an added significance and are precious for their scarcity.

 Shelter is sought by all living things when The Lizard wind thunders fiercely. It will steal trembling out of the distance and become suddenly impetuous as it cries in the great spaces over the downs or the sea. It whips up to a frenzy, shaking our roofs and chimneys, heaving itself at our windows till it seems they can never withstand its onslaught. It cleaves the waves into a violent, frothy tumult. It rocks the clouds in “the steep sky’s commotion”.

Two years ago (1959) it blew a gale of 100 m.p.h. Roofs were torn off, cars rocked, men could hardly stand upright to go about their work. The crew of the Lifeboat at that time would work their way, sitting, down the slip-way at Polpeor and return on their hands and knees. They now rejoice in a new, more sheltered station at Kil-cobben, and the most up-to-date machinery for transport up and down the abrupt cliff side.

The very sound of the wind can be frightening. You can hear it roar and grumble and sometimes crack like a bolt of thunder, till you think that all the giants in Cornwall are abroad, hurling boulders. It can shriek with fury, it can howl with rage, it can cry round a chimney like a small child in pain or moan like a lost soul, wailing eerily. A curious noise is sometimes conducted by certain winds from Kynance over to The Lizard. A big sea out in the Atlantic can be followed two or three days later by the breaking of violent waves as they reach the rocky coast. This reverberates into the caves at Kynance and Asparagus Island and produces at The Lizard a sound like the rumbling of heavy machinery, which can easily be mistaken for the deep throbbing of ships’ engines.

 When a storm has whispered itself into silence and stayed its power, the very stillness is fascinating. The sea is a millpond. The grass is red with fallen fuchsia and the little brown path to the sea is green-carpeted with strips of tamarisk.

The results of persistent gales lie around for all to see. The roofs of many a farm and cottage have been sealed with a shining, greyish-white cement. By moonlight this is a cover of glistening icing on an enchanted gingerbread house. Perhaps the horns of Elfland are still faintly blowing down the folding valleys west of the Tamar.

Trees and hedges have acquired a strange appearance. In exposed places they do not grow tall but are slanted in a curious, flattened, sideways fashion. Where they have not succumbed entirely, they take on a lively look, like a parade of creatures on the move.

Plants, too, defy the elements. Sea campion, thrift and primrose shrink into themselves to avoid a buffeting. By the cliff path there are bluebells with thick, chunky heads on stalks of less than two inches.

The pale blue vernal squill comes up out of its shelter, lifting its brave gay little face to the sun, careless of its leaves’ protection, shortening its stem the nearer it grows to the sea’s edge and the sweeping of the wind. In March, when gales are expected, the young plants of the foxglove, thistle and sea radish, just emerging from the soil, are flat, circular discs against the ground, their leaves like spokes of delicate tracery radiating from the centre. When they rise taller and more vulnerable into the air, they will be hoping for the gentler weather of April.

 In the warmer days of he insistent South Wester can be an enjoyable affair. It rustles in the palm trees with a sigh as soft as silk. It ripples underneath the privet, turning the leaves over so that the dark green of the hedge is changed to a shining silver. It can stir the scent of wallflower, rose and honeysuckle, yes, and garlic too. And on the moors it conspires with the sun to proclaim the presence of gorse and heather and bracken.

Linger on a summer’s day on Kynance Downs, high up on the edge of the drop into the cove. From far below quiet sounds come up from the figures on the sand and from the stream that trickles steeply but gently down to the sea. The sun is un-relenting and a breeze flickers, a hot little gust, blowing down the centuries.

 The same wind blew when the morning stars sang together. It howled in the wild places of the moor-land and stirred the primeval scents of the downs before the first huts were built at Kynance Gate. It raged over the Atlantic before ever a ship sailed on it. To men at the dawn of history and to us, now reaching out into space beyond its influence, belongs the same Lizard wind.

M.C.Holden

Reprinted from The Lizard - A Magazine of Field Studies 1961

The Autumn Sky

If you found the Summer Triangle you will still be able to see it as Autumn comes along, though it will be visible earlier as the days shorten. Coming along behind you will find the constellation of Pegasus in which four bright stars form a Great Square. Well not quite, three of them lie in Pegasus, but one lies in the constellation of Andromeda.

In any constellation we use Greek letters to denote the important stars. α Peg is the brightest star in Pegasus, β Peg is the second brightest, and γ Peg the third brightest. α And is the brightest star in Andromeda and these four form The Great Square of Pegasus. They also have names; α Peg is called MARKAB, β Peg is SCHEAT, γ Peg is ALGENIB and α And is ALPHERATZ.

Alpheratz is a double star of variable brightness, Markab is a White Giant, Algenib is bluish white and Scheat is a Red Giant.

In the constellation of Andromeda, if the seeing is very good and your eyesight equally so, you may be able to find a fuzzy patch of glowing cloud. This is the Great Galaxy M31, over two million light years away, which like our own Galaxy, the Milky Way contains at least a hundred thousand million stars.

Bill Barlow. MSc. Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.