Post 44/2023. Our neighbors gave us an article from The Wall Street Journal (Journal Report l Encore, November 16). Title: “Two Minnesotans Retired in Cornwall, England. They Love It–Even the Food.” Subtitle: “But the thing that makes them most happy are the people around them.”

The writer is Ellen Hawley, who with her partner moved to Cornwall in 2006. They fit into a narrow British immigration category (now closed) that allowed them to stay.

Marty and I love County Cornwall, aka the Duchy of Cornwall. Friends and family and Cornwall Cogitation blog readers can attest to that.

Some wonder why we leave northern Indiana for winter and spring for “home from home” in Cornwall. In answer to that, we echo Hawley’s points, such as what envelops one includes “the rugged cliffs and the tiny, hidden waterfalls that let me understand how people could believe in fairies. It’s a walker’s paradise, crisscrossed with footpaths that are legal rights of way as surely as roads are.”

Hawley continues: “The first year we were here, we lived like visitors who’d forgotten to go home. We wrote in the mornings and in the afternoons we walked. In the beginning, we’d walk several times a week, sometimes just with each other, sometimes with friends, occasionally with a village walking group whose motto, in the face of the Cornish rain, was, ‘We’re not too proud to cancel.'”

We echo the sentiments. Footpaths drew us to Cornwall and still do. Friends draw us back. Church provides community and communion. We could say the 50 degrees F climate is ideal for walking. That the areas of outstanding beauty are breathtaking. That the food is lovely. That the sea air livens our steps. But centrally, that it’s people who call us back to Cornwall.

There’s a new book, The Cornish Sabbatical, by Johnathan E. Cox that I’m anxious to read next year. Subtitle is “Observations Through a Returning Pirate’s Kaleidoscope.” He writes about returning to Cornwall after 30 years abroad. He “wanted to write about Cornwall in an entertaining and humorous way, covering serious issues, but not browbeating the reader.”

Back home in Indiana

A sign of weather change ahead. My boots, heavy coat, and cap are at the ready. I think I am, too.

I’m ready for a Cornish pasty. I can wait. It’s a good afternoon for a walk in Goshen.

-John