The Hidden Hut by Judy Mitchell

It was one of those late summer days when harvesting had started that I first visited Porthcurnick Beach. Wheat that had spilled from combined harvesters had mixed with sand and was thrown from our spoked wheels in golden clouds of dust on the dry, narrow roads. We were three. Two young women and one Labrador dog in a sports car, top down, our eyes shaded by flamboyant sunglasses.

For five days the sun shone down on us from a cloudless sky and the blue English Channel lapped the Cornish coast in warm, watery folds.  This was The Roseland where the sea had nibbled sandy coves from the land and where headlands, bays and cliffs provided easy walking along the South West Coast Path. To the west was Portscatho, a former pilchard fishing village and to the east, past the coastguard lookout, was Nare Head and the path to Mevagissey and Fowey.

In that shimmering heat we joined others on the path through the stile and down the steps to claim our daily space on a sandy beach awash with families and children by the bucketful.  We carried chairs and mats and bags with books, a ball, some water and towels.  We smiled and laughed and joined in with games of cricket with strangers, the dog fielding errant balls heading out to sea. There was only a tiny hut then. A place to get a drink of tea in a paper cup or an ice cream. Every time I thought of a British beach holiday I would think back to those sunny days and would hope the cove would be there, unchanged by weather or developers or the people who used it.

Many years later I returned down the same narrow lanes with tall Cornish hedgerows full of honeysuckle, celandine and rosebay willowherb. In the car park, families were still unloading their cars, arranging convoys of bearers and sharing the load of striped windbreaks, chairs and cricket sets.

They still advanced like a posse, down the hill, with children as outriders circling and checking the contents of bags, interrupting their parents’ progress. The tiny hut that had served tea and ice creams had long gone but instead, there down in the sand dunes, was a new hut bordering the Coast Path. A soft green, wooden hut with open square hatches revealing blackboards with menus and pastel coloured bunting and plates full of wonderful cakes and pastries. To the front were long wooden tables and benches with that sea view. Pots of fresh flowers sat on the tables and there was space to sit on the grass basking in the sun. The smell of fresh fish, of curry, of paella cooking on a large outdoor barbecue, greeted us together with friendly chatter and happy holiday faces with freckles and big smiles.

I visit every year now, returning north well before the leaves have turned orange and fallen in russet piles. This is before the clocks go back signalling that it is time to shut and bolt the hatches. This is when The Hidden Hut hunkers down into the dunes to lie dormant in the wind and rain and spume from the Channel. Passing walkers look at its blank face in the winter months and long to see it open to the view but that will not be until spring when its green boards start to warm in the lengthening days and the hatches creak open and clocks go forward to greet another new season.  

The Hidden Hut - fantastic, freshly cooked food on Porthcurnick Beach, near Portscatho, one of the loveliest places on the English coastline. Holiday heaven! JM.