The country wasn’t long out of lockdown when I made my first visit to the village as a potential

tenant. I had, of course, been here decades before; clumsy toddler feet stumbling down the

cobbles, jelly shoes flapping, ice cream dripping between exposed toes. But now, as I sat on the

harbour sipping a cold pint of cider, I looked up at the steep tumble of cottages with fresh eyes.

Could this be home?

It was a fluid concept for me, the notion of roots. I’d fled my rural upbringing the first chance I

got, swapping small town Devon for the bright lights of Leeds, Bristol, Berlin. But I could no

longer stand the thought of my mother alone in the family home, wishing goodnight to empty

bedrooms with her children hundreds of miles away.

Ever the dutiful daughter, I had decided to upend my life and relocate to Clovelly, a tiny fishing

village perched precariously on the wild Atlantic coast. Almost Cornwall, although far enough

across the border to avoid any potentially fraught discussions on the age-old “cream or jam first”

debate. Close enough to my mother to be helpful and present, but within spitting distance of the

sea. Doing Devon properly, I told myself.

That day, I visited two cottages in the village. The first, tall and thin with mullioned windows

overlooking the bay, had four oddly-shaped rooms, a fake fire in the lounge, and at least one

ghost, I was sure of it. The whole place gave off the sort of creepy, someone-is-watching you

vibes that you read about in horror stories. Definitely not good for me and my overactive

imagination.

The second cottage had threadbare red carpets, a beige-and-brown tiled kitchen straight out of

the 1970s, and a huge inglenook fireplace filled with strange trinkets and spiderwebs. Months

later, I would discover two secret cupboards, hidden behind mirrors and tucked into the eaves. It

was utterly mad, and I loved it. Within weeks, I had signed the paperwork to make it my own.

Settling into my new life certainly wasn’t easy, though. First, there were the practical

considerations: lugging all my belongings by sledge down the traffic-free main street, chopping

wood for the fire, coping with the endless stream of visitors who peered shamelessly through my

curtains. I’d lived on boats before, and we would call these people “gongoozlers.” I shared the

term with my new neighbours; it earned me the odd chuckle, and the interaction raised my

spirits.

Generally, though, it was tough to make friends at first, with the spectre of another lockdown

looming and outsiders already treated with a degree of suspicion.

Grumbling, other newcomers told me that you needed “three generations in the graveyard”

before you could be considered a local. I recognised the dry Devon wit of my grandparents in

that claim, smiling at the memory. But when I finally made the trek up to the small chapel at the

top of the hill, I was surprised to see my ancestors’ names emblazoned across dozens of the

cracked, moss-ridden stones. My roots, it turned out, ran far deeper than I had imagined.