Cornwall Tour - Monday 2nd May

Our last day of our Cornish escape dawned with a bit of sunshine so Lou again dragged Hamish out for a run and then we hopped in the car early again to make our way back to Heathrow hoping to avoid the traffic. We planned our route trying to avoid the main roads to get a more scenic view and planned to stop in Salisbury for lunch.

Now it must be mentioned here that we had about a quarter of a tank of petrol left and Hamish specially said the day before “we should get some petrol before we head off in the morning”, which Lou took to mean “ we will get petrol before we head off in the morning”.

A Rapeseed field, they are everywhere!

Some one got into the spirit of the Royal Wedding

Not the case. We drove past about 4 petrol stations until Hamish found one he “liked” whilst Lou developed a few gray hairs trying desperately to remember whom we would have to call if we ran out of gas on the motorway.

Thatched cottage

Anyway “drama” averted we made our way to Salisbury. You may ask why Salisbury? We did too. But it had a cool cathedral that we found had the tallest spire in England (STAT that). We had a Cornish pasty for lunch in keeping with the plan to eat foods from where ever we are. Pretty nice, shame about the calories!

Really tall spire

Front of Salisbury cathedral

Mmmm pasty

The journey home was uneventful and we were back on the tube to Hammersmith before we knew it. We had a great time away and we have planned to definitely go back to Padstow and do some of the hiking tracks along the coast next time.

Highlight: Arriving home at a reasonable hour, being able to do the washing and a full night’s sleep after a weekend away. Unheard of!

Lowlight (For Lou): The petrol issue, case closed. What does “Babe I got this under control” mean?

Interesting fact: The traditional Cornish pasty has Protected Geographical Indication status and the first known recipe was from Devon in 1510.

Cornwall Tour - Sunday 1st May

Now as you may know Lou is quite hooked on this Weight Watchers thing, so she dragged Hamish for a run at 7am in the pouring rain to kick start the day (feeling very guilty about the fudge and chocolate cake from the day before!)

The weather did not improve at all – the plan today was to head back east to an attraction called ‘The Eden Project’ (more on that later).

On the way we spotted through the mist and gloom a big castle type thing in the distance. Being crazy young Bandit’s we took a detour to see what it was all about. We found St. Michaels’ Mount just out of the town of Marazion. This was a big castle on an island that is accessible by a granite path at low tide; it was really cool and looked very impressive. If it wasn’t a howling gale then we probably would have walked the whole thing but Lou was wearing very inappropriate shoes and was a bit grumpy.

The history behind the Mount is that the ancient Greek geographer Pytheas, visited the island in the fourth century BC. If this is true, it is one of the earliest identified locations in the whole of Western Europe and particularly on the island of Britain. It was originally built as a monastery in the 8th century! (man that’s old).

Happy to be back in the warmth of the car we tootled off to the Eden Project. Now this was Hamish’s choice of activity but it actually turned out to be a hidden gem. It is a garden essentially including the world's largest greenhouse. The complex is dominated by two gigantic enclosures consisting of adjoining domes that house plant species from around the world. Each enclosure emulates a natural biome. The domes consist of hundreds of hexagonal and pentagonal, inflated, plastic cells supported by steel frames. So it is very futuristic.

It is primarily targeted at kids to teach them all about the environment so we fit right in...

There were some really cool flowers and sculptures as well as the biomes (which Hamish insisted on referring to as ‘Thunder domes’ or ‘Bio domes’). There were 2 biomes, one was the rainforest and one was the Mediterranean one. It was really cool, except our camera kept fogging up in the humidity of the rainforest.

In the Rainforest biome

In the Mediterraenan biodome

One of the highlights was their café - to keep in theme with the environment and all that hippy stuff, the majority of the food was vegetarian and they had a system where you helped yourself like a buffet and then you went up to the till and told them what you had. I am pretty sure they get ripped off a lot, as their prices were quite expensive. But the food was good and we were left full.

Back on the road again we wanted to take a scenic route to our next destination of Torquay. So we ended up Paignton that is like the town before it. I don’t know what the Gods were playing at but we arrived in this town and found they had a massive motorbike rally on. Hamish had a huge smile on his face. Once all that was done, Lou insisted that we needed to have cream tea as we were in Devonshire and we hadn’t had cream tea yet. This journey to find a nice place took us up the main street of Paignton. What a scary sight. We have established that all English seaside towns must have a main street full of gross pubs, cheap takeaways and little casinos. They also do things like build a cinema on the seafront. Obviously no one comes to these seaside towns to actually spend any time on the beach or in the sea.

Lou excited about finding more motorbikes

Anyway we found a half decent café and actually had a really good cream tea, clotted cream and jam must be one of the world’s best combos.

We then continued our short trip to Torquay for the night where we came across a really interesting sight. We were driving down the main road which hugs the coastline and there were these massive waves that were coming up over the barrier onto the road with so much force that there was seaweed everywhere! Because we like cool stuff like that we parked up and went to go have a look. That’s when we noticed a few police cars and saw that a yacht was being smashed up against the rocks! We hung round and watched for a while and it was clear from the behaviour of the cops that there were no people on board so we just watched as all the boards and rubbish from the yacht was being swept round everywhere.

There is a yacht in there somewhere....

We found our hostel and checked in. Then we went exploring in Torquay and found pretty much the same things that we had seen in previous seaside towns, although it did seem a bit nicer. Especially as it’s tourist tag line was “The English Riviera”. Now we haven’t been to the actual Riviera but I really hope that it’s not windy and cold and grey and have 24 hour Bingo pubs….

Torquay’s historical economy was initially based upon fishing and agriculture but in the early 19th century the town began to develop into a fashionable seaside resort, initially frequented by members of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars while the Royal Navy anchored in the bay and later by the crème de la crème of Victorian society as the town's fame spread.

We had yet another budget dinner at the hostel and another early night.

Highlight: The Eden project was much better than expected, reminded me of being on a school science trip.

Lowlight: The weather was bit rubbish.

Interesting fact #1: Torquay was the home of the writer Agatha Christie, who lived most of her life there. The town contains an "Agatha Christie Mile", a tour with plaques, dedicated to her life and work.

Interesting fact #2: Torquay was also the setting of Fawlty Towers.

Cornwall Tour - Saturday 30th April

There is one great thing about B&B’s and that is the breakfast. This lovely old lady cooked us up a proper English breakfast, while her husband told us all about his great granddad who emigrated to New Zealand...Dave, you would have loved it. Jeez, the breakfast was good though. We left pretty soon after breaky, after the other couple that were staying came down to the dining room and engaged our hosts with thrilling talk about magnolias.

Next stop, Padstow. The weather was kind to us, with the sun shining but with a cold wind. We arrived in this pretty little town and basically the first shop we came across was Rick Stein’s Deli. Lou was in foodie heaven. And then heaven was about to get a little better when Hamish noticed a poster saying that the man himself, was going to be doing a book signing that afternoon!!!! You wouldn’t read about it.

Lou outside Rick's Seafood Restaurant

Boats moored up in Padstow

The May Pole!

So plans were altered so we could stay in Padstow a little longer than anticipated. We then wandered around the town itself, as it was May Day the next day, all the streets and moored boats were draped in flags which was extremely impressive. There were so many great shops around that you could tell they were all there for the tourists as Padstow only has a permanent population of about 3,000 people. We found a little park on top of a hill looking down on the village and played around with the time settings on our camera, we have found that we can’t jump in unison.

Classic jumping shot

Really little houses in Padstow

Even though we were still full from breakfast we made our way back to Rick Stein’s café for lunch, and lucky we did as whilst we there the waiting list blew out to about an hour. Now we must point out that the Rick Stein Café is different from the Rick Stein seafood restaurant (the restaurant is more expensive). So we had a glass of Rick’s own Sauvingnon blanc which was really nice, salt and pepper prawns and a fillet of sole followed by the best chocolate cake we had ever eaten. Sorry Tracy this was on another level. What an experience, and it wasn’t too pricey either. So glad we went.

Gold

We thought we would head down to the book signing early to get a book and have another quick look around, lucky we did as a line had formed a good hour before he was due to arrive! So we joined in, and waited in the rain (what hardcore fans). And then the time came – I have to admit I was a little star struck, I was planning on saying that we had just been to his café and it was great etc, but I didn’t say anything! Anyway we got a book signed and we were off in the rain to our next destination – St.Ives.

We are not really sure why we thought we had to go to St.Ives, maybe because Lou have been using St.Ives face wash for 10 years but glad we went, it was a very pretty beach town. We found that almost all of the places we visited had a distinct lack of parking in the main centre which was annoying, but having said that we also found that British people don’t think it’s weird to park on double yellow lines, like all the time.We also happened on this random abandoned building that we took some snaps of. Think its something to do with the mining they used to do in the area.

Random building

Next spot was Land’s End. Again, not really sure what compelled us to visit, but the name of it was pretty cool. On the way our handy Lonely Planet guide recommended that we stop off at the Minack Theatre. This was very very cool, unfortunately we arrived 5 mins after closing time but we could still have a nosey round. Basically it’s an open-air theatre, constructed above a gully with a rocky granite outcrop jutting into the sea (minack from Cornish meynek means a stony or rocky place). The view was spectacular, even with a gale force wind. Even though it was closed we have included a photo from their website to show what we are on about

At Minack's Theatre

Land's End

Not sooo dangerous

Miniature village

We were staying in Penzance on the Saturday night so we checked into our hostel and had a quiet night in after cooking our budget dinner at the hostel.

Penzance was a little disappointing, Lou had it in her head that it would be a cool town with heaps of pirate relics but there really wasn’t. There seemed to be lots of pubs and small casinos, and that’s about it.

When we got back, Lou did some research on what pirates actually had to do with Penzance and was extremely disappointed to find that Penzance is the home of the pirates in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera, The Pirates of Penzance. “At the time the libretto was written, 1879, Penzance had become popular as a peaceful resort town, so the very idea of it being overrun by pirates was amusing.” Gutted.

Highlight #1: A clear winner, meeting Rick Stein.

Highlight #2: A great food day, from the massive breaky to Rick Stein’s lunch and the Cornish fudge.

Lowlight: Missing the Minack

Interesting fact #1: Rick Stein opened his first business in Padstow in 1974 and was Stein was awarded the OBE in the 2003 New Year Honours list for services to tourism in Cornwall. Some locals call Padstow Padstein as Rick owns pretty much half the village.

Interesting fact #2: Rick’s beloved companion Chalky died in January 2007. RIP Chalky.

Cornwall Tour - Friday 29th April

Another long weekend and money was tight. What better way to celebrate the nuptials of the future King of the British Empire than to hire a car and do a tiki tour around Cornwall.

We were then faced with a conundrum, do we A: stay in London for the Royal Wedding and go and join in the celebrations and risk not getting to Cornwall until midnight or do we B: get up super early and start driving to Cornwall and stop off at a country pub along the way to watch it and miss the traffic?

Option B won, which saw us on the tube to Heathrow to pick up our racy 1.5L Fiat Punto. We managed to pack more clothes than we did when we went to Italy but considering its England we had to pack for winter as well as spring. 

Louise had planned the route with the help of Google maps but found that the GPS was an even better friend, once you got used to the lady’s voice and realised there was a difference between “turn left” and “bear left”.

London being London meant that it took us a good hour to find Avis and get going in our car, but we were soon off zooming down the M4 heading East. Hamish did a stellar job driving in a new country, even though we didn’t know what the speed limit was and 90% of cars seemed to be passing us (haven’t had any speeding tickets come through so fingers crossed.

Group shot!

 The first major city we passed was Bristol, don’t think we will go there again in a hurry.

By the time we reached “critical Royal Wedding watching time” we were in Taunton, which is one of the major cities in Somerset. To be honest, it was a bit like Palmerston North (I take it by know we are not fans of Palmy). We were convinced that all the local pubs would be bursting with locals at 10am drinking Pimms and watching the wedding live on telly. This wasn’t exactly true. We stumbled across lots of people setting up village celebrations and things but it seemed like 10am was too early for a lot of British people and they were watching it at home. Nevertheless we found a pub showing and there were a handful of other punters in there. To celebrate we had lots of tea and fruitcake and the odd champagne and a pretty decent pub lunch.

First of many teas in honour of the wedding

Fair to say that the wedding is all people talked about for 4 straight days.

Taunton castle with pretty flowers

Our first planned destination was Bodmin. A few interesting facts about Bodmin – their visitor information centre decided that a Bank holiday weekend where they probably get 2 times their population in visitors, was a good day to close. There are also rumours of the “Beast of Bodmin” a 4-foot long creature that roams the moors. We were quite keen to spot this cat (and because we now have a super duper camera, the chances of getting a good photo were high). So we set off in the direction of Dozemary pool which is claimed to be the home of the Lady of the Lake (for more on this intriguing take, see Interesting fact #1).

Now you will see from the photos below that the “pool” is quite large. That is because Louise got it wrong, which we didn’t discover until we were in a touristy gift shop and Lou looked at a local map. Telling Hamish this was a bad idea. We were back in the car driving back towards the correct “pool” this time before you could say “Excalibur”.

What we thought was the pool in the background

Hamish and the Punto...rock on

Some of Bodmin's finest

Hamish trying to make friends

iphone GPS instead of a map

Hamish with the pretend sword...

We experienced a few little GPS related setbacks before we found the local pub to have dinner, a cheap and cheerful affair. Then we were off to Menkee Lodge, the B&B we were staying in. It was a lovely old manor with lovely old people. It did make us feel like we were too young to be staying in B&B’s. We just don’t have the knack for mindless chat that older people do. Anyhoo, we had an early night pretty tired after all our adventures.

Our cute little room

 Highlight: The pretty country lanes. England is actually pretty beautiful, especially with wild spring flowers.

Lowlight: The lack of atmosphere at the pubs for the wedding

Interesting Fact #1: According to the legend, Dozmary pool is where King Arthur rowed out to the Lady of the Lake and received the sword Excalibur. The pool is also the place where Bedivere returned Excalibur as Arthur lay dying after the Battle of Camlann.

Interesting Fact #2: Taunton was a place of considerable importance in Saxon times, guess things have changed.

Interesting Fact #3: Lou (aka the conspiracy theorist) thinks that the Royals knew about Bin Laden’s impending capture and that’s why they postponed their honeymoon…