What an incredible place Cornwall is. It's located on the Southwest coast of England, overlooking the Atlantic, sometimes from cliffs and we were lucky enough to take a long weekend to visit. We will definitely be going back because in the few days that we were there, we only were able to explore a very small part of Cornwall.
We took the fast train from London (which still took 5 hours and 20 minutes) into Penzance (yes, the same Penzance in the play Pirates of Penzance), which, at first glance, we determined was a complete dump. But, on our way back to London, we had time to spare and were able to see some other areas of Penzance besides the bus stop and train station and found that it's not that bad after all. We weren't staying in Penzance, though. We were staying in Mousehole, which is about 3 miles from Penzance, in a shed which had been converted to a B&B at the top of a tall hill, and overlooked the village of Mousehole and beyond. Here is JIm standing on our front porch the morning after we arrived.
And a picture of the shed from the front.
To get into the village, we could either walk down on the road or we could take this much more fun and scenic route on a trail that that went through the woods and dropped us into the winding and narrow streets of Mousehole. This was especially fun at night, when it was pitch dark (no streetlights!) and the stars were piercing down from above (no pink sky!) and we had to use a torch (flashlight) to make our way back up the hill.
On our first day in town, we headed back towards Penzance, walking along the beach and then, when that became impossible, along the road. We were a little disenchanted by the scenery and later, when we looked at our map of Cornwall, discovered that the three miles between Moushole and Penzance that we walked were the only part on the map that hadn't been highlighted as "scenic, natural beauty" areas. That's pretty typical of us. Plus, about five minutes into the walk, I stepped in dog poop and then, on my way down to the rocks/water to get it off my shoe, I fell down the algae covered stairs. No bones were broken...I drink my milk.
Some boats in Mousehole's harbour:
Artistic scarecrows (to keep away the seagulls, we assumed.)
We took the bus out of Penzance and headed to a neighboring village, passing Daffodil farms along the way. Cornwall, we were told by one of the many people we met over the weekend, is one of the best places to grow Daffodils and they were everywhere--wild and on farms. People in Cornwall were eager to tell us all about Cornish history and where we should go while we were there. It was nice to talk to such friendly, welcoming people after being in London where you can be surrounded by thousands, but go through a day without talking to anyone. We were shocked when a woman in Cornwall saw us looking at our map and offered to help us find where we needed to go. On the train over, a family from Penzance told us some places we should try to visit and one of them was St. Michael's Mount, which is an island off the coast of Cornwall with a castle on top and which you can reach by foot when the tide was down. Unfortunately for us, the tide wasn't down and the castle was closed and we waited around in a pub for a while for the rumored boat that would take us across, but it seemed to not be running either. Things start to open up again on Easter weekend, we found, which was actually nice because there weren't many people around...it also was a problem at times, which I will detail later in the blog.
Since we couldn't go to St. Michael's Mount and it was suddenly cold (notice I'm wearing Jim's argyle sweater over my many layers) and rainy and the bus wasn't coming for an hour (we found out the hard way, the next day, how truly "dodgy" the bus service can be in Cornwall), we decided to peruse some of the art galleries nearby. I found this fabulous hat that sort of looks like a magicians hat/purple cow patty! Very couture!
When the bus finally came and after we realized that we had been walking along the un-scenic parts of Cornwall, we decided to head in the opposite direction. We discovered that the entrance to the coastal path was just minutes from our B&B.
The scenery was spectacular and the further we walked, the more spectacular it got:
There were some points where we could walk out to the edge of a cliff and look down. The tide was rough and waves were crashing into the rocks below us. The next day, when we came back, the tide was out and we could have accessed caves and crannies that we couldn't have the day before.
But, we ran out of daylight on that first day, so our big hike on the coast was put off until Sunday, when the weather was predicted to be snowy and cold.
Fortunately, some of us remembered to bring our jackets, hats and gloves, while others just brought hats and gloves (Jim is now well prepared for arctic temperatures and has many stylish options for cold weather):
On our way home, we picked up a cat friend who just wouldn't go away. Oreo (that's what we named him) followed us from his house all the way back through the fields to our B&B, where he sat on the porch until he was chased by the owner's dog:
At 2am, with the wind whipping outside, I was awakened by a concerned Jim who had,in turn, been awakened by a yowling cat at our door. And that's how we ended up spending our second night with Oreo...until he got on my nerves so much that I kicked him outside again, fully intending to take him back to his house the next morning.
The next morning, though, Oreo was no where to be found and the weather was beautiful and not snowy at all! The sun was shining and we packed up our picnic and our water and our many layers and headed for the coastal path!
We saw views like this along the entire 9 mile walk and, even though we had to hike up cliffs and hills that were the equivalent of fifteen stories, it was worth it to get to the top and look down below. These pictures are beautiful, but they just can't capture how majestic the scenery was in real life.
All along the walk, there were creeks and streams and waterfalls coming down the hills and cliffs to the ocean (have we mentioned that we love our goretex hiking boots??):
a mile or two into the hike, we entered a nature reserve,where pine trees had been planted. The flora and fauna (or whatever) changed dramatically in this little part of the walk and there were remains of stone walls that had been built to help with farming of potatoes (another big crop of Cornwall...potatoes, cauliflower, and broccoli. So, if for some reason you find yourself eating English cauliflower, it might very well be coming from Cornwall.)
There were lots of opportunities to take hokey pictures on rocks overlooking the sea:
And more perfect scenery (and hills to climb. These stairs were nothing compared to others on our hike).
We were struck by how blue the water was in Cornwall. From above we could see the tides moving in all directions.
Ever handy with the map, Jim made sure we had a pretty good idea of where we were at all times. Soon after this break to eat a snack and check the map, it started to pour. We hunkered down under some slightly spiny bushes and stayed dry until it passed. This happened several times during our walk, but the wind was blowing so hard that the rain only stayed around for a few minutes at a time. We could see it moving off across the ocean from our cliff positions.
The wind got a little out of control at one point and we were glad that when it did we were merely walking down fifteen stories worth of steps and not balanced on the edge of a cliff, because it was enough to push us around a little bit:
We crossed a beach made of large round walks and found ourselves in another wooded area with large beach homes tucked into the woods. We decided that we could definitely live in one of them and that if we ever came across 3 or 4 million pounds, we would look into it.
After 8 or 9 miles, the charm of the hike had worn a little thin and we started to get tired. I started making my "I'm getting tired" face for all of the pictures.
Our aim was to get to Porthcurno, where, according to our map, there was a cafe and where we figured we could catch a bus back to Mousehole....
On our final push to Porthcurno, we saw some incredible wave action and Jim fantasized about the good old day (singular) when he was a Galveston surfer. The three foot waves! The stinging seaweed! The syringes floating in the water and the everpresent fear that by swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, you are dooming yourself to three eyed children later in life! It was nothing compared to the Cornwall coast:
We finally made it to Porthcurno, tired, hungry, cold, and looking forward to pub food and then the bus home.Just a word of advice to anyone planning on visiting Cornwall: it's a farming community, so buses are few and far between once you get out of the more major villages. Also, it's a beach community, so during the off peak times, the pubs and restaurants have really strange hours. The pub closed at 3pm, moments before we arrived. A bus was nowhere to be found. No friendly surfers offered to give us a ride back to Mousehole and finally JIm had the innovative idea to look through the window of the pub, where he could just see the number for a taxi. Because of the cliffs, our cell phones got no service. We contemplated hitch hiking and then, lo and behold, a phone booth! We made it back to Mousehole (still couldn't get any real food at the local put until 6, so we settled for Doritos.) Here is a picture of Jim at the CLOSED pub in Porthcurno (I was extra bitter because it had a large sign outside proclaiming its openness).
That evening winter came back with sleet and a rainbow across the sky.
We ate our pub food and walked back up the dark hill with our torch and put Winged Migration into the DVD and got tucked into our separate twin beds and just as we were about to settled down for the evening, what should we hear but....Oreo, yowling outside of the door. I couldn't help but be reminded of the kids song "The Cat Came Back." Just in case you don't know it, the chorus is "Well, the cat came back, he woudln't go away, he was sitting on the porch the very next day." In the muppets version they shoot the cat off in a cannon and he still comes back. Poor Oreo was just a little too dense to find his way back home by himself, so we let him in again, bu this time shut him in the bathroom, where he proceeded to make a ruckus the whole night. I got up early the next morning and led him back to his house. I felt a little like the Pied Piper (what's with all the nursery rhymes?) But it was a relief to know that he was back home again and we didn't have to worry about him starving under the B&B.
On our final day in Cornwall, we walked around Mousehole and peered into the closed art galleries. We ended our stay with Cornish pasties, which are sort of like a cross between a chicken pot pie and one of those Italian inside out pizza things. Mine was vegetable and cheddar cheese, the main vegetable being potatoe,and JIm got a steak pasty. Mine sat like a brick in my stomach for the next 8 or 9 hours, but it was delicious! I have asked repeatedly for Jim not to take pictures of me while I'm in the middle of stuffing my face, but he never respects that wish, so I'll close with this beatiful picture of me tucking in a Cornish pasty.
