The south of England: a hop, a skip and a jump

Fowey, Falmouth, Pendennis ...

On Magda Vorster's recommendation we stopped at Fowey, a small town and cargo port in south Cornwall,  on the evening of 22 May 2014.  

What a lovely town

Look at the very old glass in these windows!

We walked through the narrow streets - meant for two-way traffic!

The four of us on the quay.

A sailboat in the port, which houses a yacht club.

The next morning we stopped at a small shop which housed a post office to mail a post card to the family in South Africa.  The service was excellent. 

Our next stop was Falmouth, a bigger port where Darwin arrived aboard the Beagle on the 2nd of October 1836.   

The post office where we stopped.

There are big ships in the dock yard in
Falmouth

We were impressed by the huge mobile cranes.

After Falmouth we stopped at Pendennis where Henry VIII built the first fortifications in the sixteenth century.  Today one can still visit the castle, called Cornwall's greatest fortress, which was built a century later.

Pendennis castle

A gateway to the castle

We walked all the way around the castle.  There was a group of school children enacting mock battles.  

From the castle we travelled to the most southerly point of the British mainland called the Lizard. The scenery is amazing.  It was spring when we visited and there were flowers and rabbits, but these were completely overshadowed by what felt like the craggy edges of the world.

Spring flowers

Rabbits in the fields

 

The scenery is unbelievably beautiful.





This was still not the end of the day's journey.  Our last stop was to be St Michael's Mount.  We should have been dog tired, but this castle on an island to which one can walk at low tide had us very excited all over again.

The walkway to St Michael's Mount at low tide

The castle

This is such a special place that we were not really surprised to find that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had visited it a year before in May 2013.

Our footprints would not also be set in stone, but at least we have the photo.

From here we still had to travel to Penzance to spend the night.  What an unforgettable day.