Dear Colin and Helen,
I have been meaning to write this letter for a long time, about eight years, in fact, and I have finally stopped making excuses. You probably won't remember me. I walked the South West Coast Path from Minehead to Tintagel in 2007, and I stayed at your campsite for one night. I was walking alone, carrying everything I needed on my back.
I was walking to celebrate something. The previous year I had undergone surgery for cancer, and when I had recovered sufficiently, I wanted to do something that tested me, that put me in contact with the natural world, and that gave me a sense of accomplishment. I had wanted to walk the South West Coast Path for years. This seemed like the right time.
By the time I reached you, I had been walking for almost three weeks. I was tired, more tired than I had expected, but the walk had given me everything I had hoped for.
I remember arriving at Stoke Barton in the early evening. The light was extraordinary, that particular quality of Atlantic light that you get in the west of England in late afternoon. My cell phone had stopped working, and Helen offered to help me send a short email back to Chicago to let my family know I was safe and still walking. That small kindness meant a great deal to me.
I also remember talking with Colin. He mentioned a private standing stone on the property, only a few minutes' walk from my tent in a pasture. I walked over to see it, and watched the sun set over the coast behind it. It was one of those moments that seemed to belong to a different kind of time, older, quieter, more permanent than the ordinary world.
I ate at the Hartland Quay Hotel that evening, as you suggested. The food was good, the ale was good, and the walk back up to the campsite in the dark, with the sound of the sea below me, was exactly the kind of experience I had been hoping for when I started planning the trip.
Although I spent only one night at your campground, it was a most memorable one. Re-reading my notes eight years later, it stands out as one of the highlights of a very wonderful adventure.
I hope you are both well, and that the campsite continues to thrive. You offer something genuinely rare: a quiet, beautiful place, looked after by people who care about it.
With gratitude and warm regards,
Steve Volkening
Chicago, Illinois