One last tour round England.

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Big stones at Stonehenge
Homity pie is yummy
Big break in Launceton.

Wow, less than 12 hours in my hostel here in London and I’m back at the Haggis office ready to take off on another four day/three night tour of Cornwall. I should have just slept on the sidewalk last night so as to save £15. haha We will see stuff like Newquay, Land’s End, Stonehenge and Bath again. It should be good…or at least that is what I’m hoping for in any case!

I’m excited about this coming weekend when I’ll get the chance to see Robyn again. Robyn and I met back in India so it’ll be cool to see one another again. Robyn was actually in London the exact day that I left London to head north to Scotland. Doh! What timing. So I’ll make a small day trip down to Winchester where she’s working and has a few hours off. I’m so excited! I should try to contain my excitement so as to enjoy my time in Cornwall. Lol

I also got a hold of Richard whom I met while on tour in Cambodia and Laos and will be staying with him when I get back to London. It will be cool to catch up since it has been since the end of March since I was in SE Asia. My how long ago that seems!

Speaking of which, I got a text message from Shannon that I met while in Scotland. She’s currently on a tour in Spain. Well, in her text she mentioned that she’s on tour with Heidi whom I met while on tour in Thailand! What a crazy coincidence! Especially since Intrepid groups are never larger than 12. I really need to email Shannon to find out how they figured out both Heidi and I had been on tour before…

Our morning stop was at Stonehenge. They have free audio tours with paid admission. I guess because the audio recordings are so long winded that if they had signs up everyone would be crowding round the signs. Plus it’d sort of ruin the field where these stones stand. They have it all roped off so you can’t touch the Stones but thinking about it, that’s probably a good thing since there are so many tourists that flock there…don’t want them all in my picture. Haha

I went in with Sarah and of course start listening to the audio commentary but we continue talking to one another while “listening” so we really aren’t listening at all! I might as well have been listening to the commentary in Swedish. Lol We started to take some pictures when this guy from Boston starts talking to us. If he didn’t tell us where he was from I wouldn’t have been able to pick out his accent. In other words, he didn’t have your typical Bostonian accent. “Pahk your cah in the dahk.” Haha Sarah and I continue walking around Stonehenge and this guy keeps walking along with us the entire time. Thank goodness we met up with Andy from our tour (Picture a huge hulking guy covered with tattoos. So we felt “protected”) while walking around. The American even followed us through the gift shop and waited for us at the exit to wish us well. In the parking lot he gets into a convertible and proceeds to open up the roof but both Sarah and I didn’t want to “encourage” the guy and pretended not to notice. Then Sarah said that he was actually scoping us out from the queue when we were waiting to get our tickets and even waited for us while we got our audio tour guides (he didn’t get one.) Guess cuz he was traveling alone and saw the two of us goofing off in line that he may have gotten lucky. Haha

After Stonehenge we had a really long drive with a break at our lunch stop around 1ish. By this time I was absolutely famished and was just about ready to eat anything in sight. Our guide, Cai, mentioned that the butcher/delicatessen, Barry Moore, has the best homity pie (veggie) and Cornish Pasties. Not only that but Barry has a slight resemblance to David Hasselhoff and is always trying to get lucky with the ladies. He proposed to some. Asked others what they would be doing on the weekend and also invited others to join him in the hot tub. We were given 30 minutes to find something to eat for lunch and then another 10 minutes drive to our picnic lunch spot. Most of us couldn’t wait to eat and started our picnic lunches in the parking lot. The lard filled pastry was just divine on the homity pie. Super greasy but that was nicely washed down with a coke with lemon. 😊 As for the Cornish Pastie, that was a bit disappointing. The dough was a little shall we say doughy on the edges and the filling not as flavourful as the homity pie.

At our picnic lunch stop in Dartmoor, there’s a little stone bridge that is apparently home to an invisible troll. There are two ways to cross the bridge without the troll grabbing your soul and having it for breakfast. 1) Crawl on your hands and knees and quietly cross the bridge. 2) Grab a piece of clothing (preferably a pair of pants) and run across making a whole bunch of noise.

So a bunch of us went over screaming like girls…we forgot the swinging piece of clothes bit…it was funny because we all started screaming but by half way across the bridge it all sort of died out. Oh well. Good for a laugh.

We drove a bit more. Hopped off the bus and climbed half way up the hill to get some great views of Dartmoor. The climb up was pretty easy. The only real challenge was trying to avoid all of the sheep droppings! Cai was on the phone the entire time discussing the noises the bus has been making since we left London. Some think it has to do with the clutch and gears. I’m no mechanic but it does sound like some metal parts need some oiling.

More driving and we’re dropped off in Launceton for no real apparent reason at 5:30. Just in time to see all the stores are shut! We all wandered around the empty streets and walked around the town in circles. We did see a castle - the Launceton Castle - go figure! And then all sort of ended up at the pub where we were dropped off. It was supposed to be a 45 minute stop but it turned out to be close to two hours. Cai sent Sarah a text message stating they’ve been delayed while they are getting a brake problem fixed.

Not much was happening in the bar so Sarah and I went to walk around for a bit before heading back to the pub and waiting outside. Sure did get a little taste of the local town life. First there was the fight in the street with this guy and this big girl that was crying. We weren’t close enough to hear what the fight was about but they sure were loud! The other example of town life would be the loud drunken woman holding a pint of beer (mind you spilling a lot of it) that was returning to her friend’s house. She sees us and asks us what we’re waiting for and someone says “the yellow bus”. Then she invites us all up for vodka upstairs. “Is it okay if I come with 25 of my friends?” Lol Outside there were only about 10 of us so she asks us where the rest of our friends are and we say inside the pub. So she walks in there barefoot with a packet of chips under one arm and spilling beer in the other and yells through the door…”the yellow busssss is here!” It causes a bit of a stir. Then out of nowhere the big yellow bus really does pull up and our driver nearly hits her! Thank goodness the bus is here…saved! It’s crazy to see a woman so drunk out of her mind at 7PM on a Monday night. Crazy!

We’ve been on the road over ½ an hour now and I wonder when we’ll get to Newquay, tonight and tomorrow night’s accommodation…at least the rains are gone and the sun up so hopefully the weather will be good tomorrow when we make it to Land’s End.

Thank goodness we had a late lunch otherwise I think we’d all be tired and cranky by now. Lol We just pulled into Newquay and our hostel, St. Christopher’s Inn is pretty much on the water. Well up the top of the cliff. Magnificent views of the beach from our room. There are six of us but the room is pretty cramped and the washroom not as clean as I would like. Plus on the tap there are only two hot water taps. Hard to rinse your toothpasty mouth with scalding hot water! Yowzers!

Once we checked in we pretty much dropped off our stuff, looked at the gorgeous views outside our windows and Sarah, Caren and I went out for a walk on the beach. It was really nice with the sun just hitting the cliffs at the right spot. Really nice. Or perhaps it is because it has been a while since I’ve been on the beach scene.

Quite a cute little beach town with all the surfer shops, bars and fish and chip shops. We wandered the streets for a bit looking around and also for a place to eat when we decided to just eat back at our hostel BUT no can do since food isn’t served after 8PM and by that time it was 9PM. Doh! So we bought some drinks, sat outside and grabbed some take away from dinner. We ended up having chips and sausages.

I forgot to talk about the bus and my fellow busmates. There’s the driver (can’t for the life of me remember her name), tour leader, Cai, and 26 of us. We all took turns introducing ourselves on the bus but for the life of me I can’t remember anybody’s name other than Sarah who happens to be sitting beside me. Lol Throughout the course of the day I did find out most people’s names and where they hail from. There’s…
• Sarah (Originally from Australia but has been working in London)
• Caren (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
• Jose/Nacho (Northern Spain)
• Liselle (South Africa)
• Bruno (Brazil)
• Brian and Erica (LA)
• Six Japanese girls and one guy (Tsubasa) They are all studying together in Cantebury.
• Jen, Laura and Stephanie (Cousins from Burnaby and Port Moody)
• Andy (Australia/London/Middle East/Africa…he works a lot)
• ? (Australia…the more “mature” woman…for the life of me I cannot recall her name!)
• Olga (Poland)
• Dauphine (Paris)
• Vincent (Montreal)
• Fiona (Auckland)
• Pete (Australia)
• Gary (New Zealand)

We haven’t really been all that social with one another as a group. I think because we’ve been stuck on the bus all day and it’s hard to talk to one another. Oh well, three more days ahead of us to go. Things will change I’m sure. 😊

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Photos

Me at Stonehenge.
"Listening" to the audio commentary...perhaps in Swedish or Korean? haha

Comments

[Jacob Bruno]

Great Story
loved your story its inspireing makes me want to go to stone henge and all the other places you went to LoL so thanks for this story and if you dont mind whats the place where you said it was nice and that therers were surfer shops and stuff it was near a beach (I think) thats what you stated well if you do get this write me or email me @ [e-mail] K Well Till we write again<3