Bath and Cornwall

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My last epistle was written with us visiting Bath on our way down to Cornwall. I didn't write any more as it was getting a touch late at night and Terry was asleep and starting to snore. We broke our trip to the south west by stopping in Bath and visiting the main tourist site of the Roman Baths. We spent a couple of hours there and quite enjoyed ourselves. I've added a few photos that are no doubt pretty similar to those taken by most other tourists that visit Bath. Bath is known for its architecture, mostly Georgian, and so I dragged Terry for a walk through the city and up the main pedestrianised street. Unfortunately his arthritic knee started to hurt and so he decided to loiter on a street corner while I walked on further to a couple of streets renowned for their fancy terrace houses - these were the The Circle and The Cresent and I was invited in to one of the old mansions on The Circle that was open to the public that day. I returned to Terry via the edges of the Royal Victoria Park and then we visited Bath Abbey. Terry was a bit tired so I left him sitting in pew where he had a couple of short naps while I had a look around the Abbey. It's a beautiful church and has magnificent fan-vaulting over the nave. While in the nave an organist was playing which certainly added to our visit. One of the things that we liked about Bath were the buskers in the main squares near the Abbey as well as others further up in the pedestrian shopping area. These buskers seemed pretty professional to us and it was obvious that those in the Abbey squares were on some roster system. After a cup of tea we attempted to leave Bath at about 4:00 but it was an hour later before we were on the outskirts of the city. We'd overlooked traffic in this part of the world and the fact that it was a Friday afternoon with fine weather forecast for most of the weekend. Eventually we cleared the traffic of Bath, Bristol and their surrounding suburbs and finally reached our B&B in Cornwall at about 8:00 pm, just as the sun was setting.

We've been staying on a farm just outside the village of Boscastle on the northern coastline of Cornwall. The farm that we are staying at is part of an old estate and the house that we are in is the original manor house. It was built in 1642, has incredibly thick Cornwall stone walls and the window sills and surrounds are granite. It's still a working farm and in addition to catering to tourists they run 90 head of cattle for beef and some sheep. The village of Boscastle sits on a sheltered harbour and much of the surrounding land and coastline is owned by the National Trust. The village has links with Thomas Hardy as it's where he met his wife.

The main thing that attracted us to this region is it's proximity to the Great Southwest and so we took advantage of the magnificent weather on our first day to walk from Boscastle to the next village of Tintagel. What a great walk - it was along the cliff tops with magnificent views along the coast in both directions. The walk itself was about 12 km with lots of ups and downs, we'd not taken enough water with us and so by the time we got to Tintagel we were reasonably tired and enjoyed a drink at the local pub. Tintagel is the village associated with the legend of King Arthur and there are remains of a castle there. We caught the local bus back to Boscastle.

Unfortunately the weather was forecast to deteriorate the following day and so we drove out to the western part of Cornwall to visit The Lizard, Lands End and a tin mine. The Lizard is the most southerly point of England and Lands End the most westerly. The cliff top views around both areas were quite spectacular although the environment at Lands End is marred by the presence of a tacky hotel or theme park right on the headland. Our last stop of the day was at the Levant Tin Mine. This was a tin mine that was operational during the 1800s to early 1900s but most impressively they had shafts that extended out under the ocean - the deepest shaft was at a depth of 350 fathoms but the deepest that they ever worked was about 300 fathoms. These shafts extended over a mile offshore. By the time we left the tin mines it was blowing and had started to rain. It was a pleasant day but we probably spent too long in the car going from place to place as it was about 2 hours from Lands End back to Boscastle.

Today we've kept our touring more local. First stop today was Port Isaac which is the village known as Port Wenn in the Doc Martin television series. We had a walk around the village, up the street past the Doc's house for a walk along the cliff tops and then tea and scones with jam and clotted cream in a local tea room. Our next stop was Padstow, the home of Rick Stein. I can't say that I was all that impressed by Padstow. It was in a pleasant enough setting but seemed to be wall-to-wall Cornish Pasty shops, souvenier shops and "The Stein" empire. Tonight we went for dinner at a local pub on the cliff tops. The food was mediocre but the pub was attractive and the setting impressive. The Cornish coast is known for its surfing and there were people out surfing and boogie boarding in the small cove at the base of the pub - we were feeling the cold dressed in jeans and polar fleece jackets.

Tomorrow we leave Cornwall and head to the New Forest for the last leg of the road trip part of our holiday.

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Photos

Roman Baths and Bath Abbey - Bath
My version of one of the most photographed scenes in England.

Cornwall Stone Wall
The walls in this region are made with a herringbone pattern

Comments

[Moira]

Looks a bit cold at Lands End Terry!!!!