Boscastle & the witchcraft museum

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At the weekends we are free to roam Devon and Cornwall. This particular Saturday we decided to visit Boscastle. It is a small town much like most of them round these here parts. We went to the witch museum which we both found interesting and also disturbing as there were many witch hunts and trials during the 15th to 17th centuries, these were known as the 'burning times'. Pretty nasty stuff, torture was used to obtain confessions of being a witch. One of the many ways to do this was to strap them on a chair and weigh them against a bible, if they were lighter than the bible they were hung. Another form of torture was to put them in a sack and throw them into the water, if they floated they were witches and if they didn't they weren't and were dragged out of the water. However by this time they were dead anyway or if they did survive were sent to trail anyway and executed. Lots of men in those times became witch-finders and there was a renowned one called Matthew Hopkins, despicable man, in two years he was responsible for the execution (murder) of 230 alleged witches. Despite this hideous history the museum also told about the celebrations we have in our society and how most if not all came from the old times of worship, for example the word Easter comes for the word Easter which is the Saxon goddess of spring and dawn represented by the sacred beast the hare.
After the museum we went for a walk. Boscastle is on a harbour and beautiful, we strolled to the end of the coast line. It was pretty cold and a bit windy but it was still lovely to view the land and sea. We did go to Tintagel briefly to walk around the courtlands of the castle but by the time we got there it was closing so we headed to the King Arthur pub for some dinner and mead, delicious! RM was driving so AP had a few meads! We then drove back to Boscastle where we went to the aptly named drinking well The cobweb inn. A band called ten feet tall were playing, AP knew most of the songs as they were playing covers form the 80's rock scene. We both enjoyed this, had a drink or two and drove Charlie home whilst listening to the legendary Jimi Hendrix, great day!

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