DISCOVER BUDE, Cornwall
Bude (Cornish: Bud) is a small resort town in north Cornwall, England, on the coast at the mouth of the River Neet.
It is suggested that the modern name is a shorterned form of Bude Haven and that this in turn was a curruption of the name Bede Haven meaning "Harbour of the holey Men" suggesting Bude might have been a landing place for early christans.
Notable buildings include the early English parish church, St Olaf's in the village of Poughill just outside of Bude, the parish church of St Michael and All Angels, Ebbingford Manor, and the town's oldest house, Quay Cottage in the centre of town. Bude Canal, which once ran to Launceston, now runs only a few miles inland.
 BEACHES OF BUDE
There are a number of good beaches in the Bude area, many of which offer good surfing conditions. Bude was the founder club in British Surf Life Saving.
- Summerleaze and Crooklets beaches are both within the town;
- Widemouth Bay is a few miles south of the town and offers a long, wide sandy beach;
- Sandymouth Beach is owned by the National Trust, and has spectacular cliffs and rock formations with shingle below the cliffs and a large expanse of sand at low tide.
- Northcott Mouth Beach is situated north of Bude
The beaches around Bude are the main reason that the town is a huge tourist resort for all ages during the summer and is catching up with its bigger neighbour Newquay further south.
BUDE HARBOUR AND CANAL
There is a small tidal "Haven" protected by a breakwater, which most people refer to as "Bude Harbour". Around twenty small boats use these tidal moorings during the summer months. Most are sport fishermen, but there is also some small-scale, semi-commercial, fishing for crab and lobster.
The harbour proper, however, is a wharf on the Bude Canal and is accessed by the sea lock that links the canal to the haven. This can be opened only at or near high tide, and then only when sea conditions allow.
North Cornwall District Council administer the canal, harbour and lock gates. These gates were recently renewed, as the originals were damaged in a storm. They are the only manually-operated sea lock gates in England, and of great significance. The pier head by the locks is a Grade II listed structure.
The canal is one of the few of note in south-west England. Its original purpose was to take small 'tub' boats of mineral-rich sand from the beaches at Bude and carry them inland for the sand to be used on the fields. A series of inclined planes carried the boats 400 vertical feet to Red Post where the canal branched south along the upper Tamar Valley towards Launceston, east to Holsworthy and north to the Tamar Lakes that fed the canal. The enterprise soon began to fail and was never a commercial operation.
Much of the canal fell quickly into disuse, but the wharf area and harbour enjoyed a longer success. Coastal sailing ships carried grain across to Wales and coal back to Cornwall. This trade continued until the arrival of the railways made it uneconomic.
In 2005 a major project to re-develop the canal was approved. Work included improving the banks and opening-up a long-closed section of canal.
TEMPLE OF THE WINDS
At the northern most point of Efford Down Farm, over looking Summerleaze Beach and the breakwater, a former coastguard lookout stands. Known as Compass Point and built by the Acland family in 1840 of local sandstone, it is based on the Temple of Winds in Athens. It was moved to its current position in 1880. It is so called as it has points of the compass carved in each of its octagonal sides.
LANDSCAPE AND GEOLOGY
Bude and the surrounding area has impressive coastal scenery. Many ships have been wrecked on the jagged reefs which fringe their base. The figure-head of one of these, the "Bencoolen" lost in 1862, is preserved in the churchyard.
The Carboniferous sandstone cliffs that surround Bude (and stretch down as far as Crackington Haven) were formed during the Carboniferous Era, around 300 million years ago. The folded and contorted stratification of shale and sandstone, is unique in southern Britain (although the Gower Peninsula and the Vale of Glamorgan, across the Bristol Channel in Wales, have a similar stratification).
During what is known as the Variscan Orogeny (which affected the entire Cornish coast), the cliffs were literally pushed up from underneath the sea, creating the overlapping strata. As the sands and cliffs around Bude contain calcium carbonate (a natural fertiliser), farmers would come down to the beach and load up sand for spreading on their fields.
The cliffs around Bude are the only ones in Cornwall that are made of Carboniferous sandstone (most of the Cornish coast is made from Devonian slate, granite and Precambrian metamorphic rocks). The stratified cliffs of Bude give their name to a geological event called the Bude Formation. All these locations can be viewed from the South West Coast Path which passes through the town.
THE BUDE BOOM
On the 26th of October 2006 at approximately 11:50 am, Bude was the apparent epicentre of a loud and unexplained noise which rapidly became known as "The Bude Boom". The local media reported some damage to properties around the Bude area and local authorities received many calls about a suspected explosion, although no evidence was found to support this.
Experts have ruled out the possibility of an earth tremor and have suggested that it may have been caused either by a military aircraft breaking the sound barrier or a meteor exploding in the atmosphere.
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View of the beach in Bude and the canal coming to an end as it reaches the sea lock (on left of image). Photo by Scott.
Gerrans Bay, Cornwall, England
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Doorway in Wall Leading to Kitchen Garden Trevarno, Cornwall
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Stone Path Leading Through Old Apple Orchard, with Trees in Blossom, in Spring, Cornwall
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