Exploring Cornwall

So many exciting places, so little time

We spent two nights in the Youth Hostel in Penzance, a former Georgian mansion.  Penzance is at the south-westerly tip of England and has long been associated with pirates and plunder, but also stone circles of which I used to believe there to be only the one at Stonehenge.  It turns out there are many.

The youth hostel is housed in a really grand old building, but we spent the two nights in the smallest room we have ever had to share.  We still had a really good time.

Can you imagine this building once having belonged to just one family?

 One can't help but feel grand on such a staircase.

The really tiny bedroom

We did not really spend much time exploring Penzance itself, but did manage to get some photos of a ship portraying pirates from a time long gone.

The pirates of Penzance are now the stuff of fantasy and stories.

We were going to drive all the way to Land's End. Our first stop was to admire a stone circle. 

Then we stopped in a quaint town called Mousehole (just do not pronounce it the way it looks).  We took some pictures of the picturesque tenement houses.

Off we went through country lanes to places deep in the countryside where very few people go.  The roads were always of a fairly good quality though.

The country lanes were for the sake of reaching Porthcurno, the site of a secret World War II underground telegraph station.  There is apparently an excellent museum there, the Porthcurno Telegraph Musem, but sadly on this day it was closed. Even so we could still walk through the sculpture garden and look at some old telegraph lines on the outside.  

Kevin looks at the old lines

A piece of sculpture representing waves

An old cable connection?

These wires connected England to India (a British colony of bygone days) and ran all the way beneath the ocean's surface.  Porthcurno was chosen because it was quiet and the cables would not be in the way so much.

An old cable still visible in the sand.

The concrete cable hut and in front of it a hut for life guards.

More recent is the Minack theatre right next to the beach used for the communications cables.  The theatre is built right into the cliffside.  Here an actor told us the story of Rowena Cade, who created the theatre. One can imagine no better place for a play such as "The Tempest".  

From here one can see the beach on the previous photo.

Pieter, Kevin and Madeleine watching the actor on stage.

We were told the story of Rowena Cade by the actor who told it as if he were Rowena's helper of many years.

Rowena Cade was responsible for the creation of the theatre.

A picture of Rowena (1893 -1983)

Kevin perched on one of the first seats made in the cliffside.

Day visitors are still walking about as the stage is being set up for a performance.

Minack is still not situated at the most westerly end of Cornwall, that honour is reserved for Land's End.  You need not worry that you will not recognise it.  Bikers, hikers and other visitors show up there in droves, some of them having completed journeys all the way from John o'Groats (at the other end of the UK in Scotland).  It was windy and a bit cold when we visited so we did not stay long.

After this we just had to stop for Cornish cream tea somewhere along the road.  This is one of the great joys of visiting England, there are always coffee shops where one can stop and relax.

Madeleine at the table with our teas.

So that you think should have concluded our day, but it did not, we still visited St Ives, a truly charming place.

The beach at St Ives

A really small shop

A pastime on the beach is to build stone towers with getting them as high as possible as the main aim.  Crowds gather to watch people good at this build towers.

Kevin negotiated skilfully through these streets - but golly they were really narrow, as Pieter shows here.

Looking back I realize that we benefitted immensely from the long spring days and of course from the hospitality of Kevin and Madeleine.