A hundred people chose Penlee’s old lifeboat station over the beach

The beach was right there. So were the cafes and the ice cream vans, on a day made for all three. And still, one after another, a hundred people turned off Cliff Road and went down the steps instead, into a building most of them had only ever seen from the outside.

📷Credit: Colin Lawry

Down the steps on the hottest day

On one of the hottest days of the summer, the volunteers of Penlee Lifeboat Station‘s Visits Team opened the doors of the former Penlee Lifeboat Station for the day. With everything the coast had to offer only a short walk away, a hundred people still made their way down the steps from Cliff Road to step inside and learn the story of the building.

Some arrived knowing a great deal about the station’s history. Others knew little of it, or of the RNLI at all. Everyone left grateful for the chance to see inside a place that means a great deal to Cornwall, and with renewed admiration for RNLI crews past and present.

📷Credit: Colin Lawry

Who came down to look

The visitors came from near and far. David and Sheila were among them. David is the Coastguard Station Officer at Bideford, and he spoke of his close working relationship with the RNLI crews of North Devon.

Ida Middlemiss Frost, from Hayle, is working on her degree dissertation, looking at Cornish identity and its links with fishing, lifeboating and mining. Alistair and Diane Burton had come down from York. Having been to Porthleven Lifeboat Day at the weekend and to the Lizard Lifeboat Station to watch a training launch, they came to Penlee Point to complete a trilogy of lifeboat events on their Cornish holiday.

📷Credit: Colin Lawry

Two more chances this year

Others were back for a second look. Hannah, Guy and Ada, from Thame in Oxfordshire, were on a return visit, having also come last year.

Welcoming everyone were Visits Team members Robert Andrews, Trevor Thorne, Kevin Lander, Mike Sagar-Fenton and Colin Lawry. The team will be back at the station on Monday 31 August and Sunday 27 September for the two remaining open days of the year. On both dates the doors open from 11am until 3pm.

For anyone who spent today on the sand, that leaves two more chances to go down the steps before the season is out. The doors open again at 11am on Monday 31 August.

📷Credit: Colin Lawry