Monday the 28th August 2007 marked the 100th anniversary of the Poet's birthday in 1906, and from those early days before the first world war right up until his last visit to Treen, his home in Daymer Lane, Trebetherick in 1984, some of his happiest times were spent on the north Cornish coast. On 23rd May, 1984, the day after his funeral the following Article appeared in the Guardian Newspaper:

"It began when a boy from the London suburbs was taken by horse and cart on his first holiday to
Trebetherick on the north Cornish coast before the first world war, and it finished yesterday when Sir John Betjeman, Poet Laureate and the Wordsworth of Suburbia, was laid to rest by the light of oil lamps in the Norman village church of St. Enodoc, on the Camel Estuary."

His love of this area of Cornwall is first mentioned early in his autobiography "Summoned by Bells" when he delights to be taken, `washed and scrubbed!', to Waterloo Station to catch the steam express train to Cornwall, when at last:

"On Wadebridge station what a breath of sea
Scented the Camel valley Cornish air,
Soft Cornish rains, and silence after steam,
As out of Derrys stable came the brake,
To drag us up those long familiar hills,
Past haunted woods and oil-lit farms and on
To far Trebetherick by the sounding sea."

Then on the next morning, rising early, with what excitement

"Before breakfast down towards the sea
I ran alone, monarch of miles of sand
I walked where only gulls and oyster-catchers
Hod stepped before me to the water's edge
The morning tide flowed in to welcome me back!"

Although generally, a lonely little boy, his one constant companion, even on those train journeys, was Archibald Ormsby-Gore. his teddy bear:

"Whatever rush to catch a train,
Whatever joy there was to share
Of sounding sea-board, rainbowed rain,
Of seaweed-scented Cornish air,
Sharing the laughs, you still were there,
You ugly, unrepentant bear!"

Then, after the war in his teenage years:

"An only child, deliciously apart,
Misunderstood and not like other boys"

With what delight he rode off on his bicycle through the:

`Dear lanes of Cornwall! With a one-inch map,
A bicycle and a well-worn Little Guide,
Those were the years I used to ride for miles
To far-off churches. One of them that year
So worked on me that, if my life was changed
I owe it to St. Ervan and his Priest
In their small hollow deep in sycamores.

His love of the north coast remained throughout his life, and in a letter to a friend in 1958 he wrote:

"I will always enjoy cornwall more than anything
that happens to me in the rest of the year, and this
year I can say that I enjoyed myself more than ever.
My, how we laughed!"

His whole passion and delight is summed up in the one poem "Trebetherick" with that memorable line recalling childhood picnics on the beach:

"Sand in the sandwiches, wasps in the tea"

Until finally, winter comes and:

"Then roller into roller curled
And thundered down the rocky bay
And we were in a water world
Of rain and blizzard, sea and spray,
And one against the other hurled
We struggled round to Greenaway,
Blessed be St. Enodoc, blessed be the wave
Blessed be the springy turf, we pray, pray to Thee,
Ask for our children all the happy days you gave
To Ralph, Vasey, Aiastair, Biddy John - and me".

And what `happy days' he gives those who delight in his poetry, and those who will discover his works for the first time through this centenary year.

Published by kind permission of
Cliff Snell