Cornwall: there is a reason it is so green

I have a few friends who absolutely love New England winters.  Often this is because they are passionate about winter sports and enjoy getting out on the ski slopes as soon as it is possible.  Hiking in winter in New Hampshire is also an attraction.

I have something amiss with my circulation that makes my body decide to sacrifice my fingers and feet for survival in the cold and so,  a few minutes into a hike I have to spend time coaxing the blood back into my numb fingers and toes.  I think it is called Raynaud's phenomenon and it has made my winter hikes with friends less enjoyable than I would have liked.

If you don't have some outdoor activity that you are passionate about, winters might be miserable.  Anne and  I would  get out for walks every day that we could in the winter often on a windswept frigid beach.

If you ask people who don't have specific outdoor activities in winter which seasons they prefer they'd often explain a preference for cool weather because "you can always dress up for the cold".  Its true that beyond a certain temperature the heat only has a few options for cooling down unless you have air-conditioning in the home.

In Cornwall the climate is very moderate.  The average day-time temperatures range from 9C (48F) in winter to 19C (66F) in summer - with some days that are outliers on either side of this.  The rainfall charts show rain every month of the year with around double the amount in the winter months. 

This means that if you like summers where you have a raincoat and a sweater in a backpack on most outings and you don't mind mud you are in the right place.

Even on the most beautiful days here there are clusters of clouds that  momentarily block the sun and make you aware of how cool the breeze is.

Funnily enough we have found ourselves playing devils' advocate with this because of how comfortable we feel here.  It feels like a place we could settle into rather easily.

So I decided to do some research on how people might choose a place to retire and I came across a blog written in 2020 where the author and her husband decided to use comparative data to help with their decision.  I thought it might be illuminating because although the process of setting up the data is fairly subjective (choosing what matters to you in a place to live, deciding how much weight to give each category) at the end you have a list ordered based on how well a place stacks up to each category.

Anne is a little skeptical of the approach but is going along with it on the strength of my argument that we can adjust the criterion and their weights until we are comfortable that we have them right.

The thing is, that this area that we are falling in love with falls near the bottom of the list in the spreadsheet.

We moved to Cornwall to a small town on the outskirts of Penzance, called Newlyn.  The town is a big fishing town with a harbour with a tall reinforced wall and a small gap for boats to go out and return through. 

 This seems somewhat characteristic of Cornwall .  A mile and a half down the road (and a 30min walk on the South West Coastal path) is a famous town called Mousehole (pronounced Mouzel) with a similar harbor and a small opening out to the sea. 

When we visited the tide was very low but I imaging during high tide when there is a storm the harbor would be a safe refuge for boats.  

The village has narrow, quaint streets and a few restaurants.  We heard that it comes to life in summer and that so many of the houses are holiday rentals that the town is incredibly quiet in the winter.  This is possibly the case with quite a few of these small coastal towns.

A small town called Marazion also on the outskirts of Penzance has a castle-like edifice called St Michael's Mount which has been there first as a priory between 800AD and 1100.  The castle dates back to the 12th Century.  

The mount is a small island separated from the coastline of Penzance by a narrow channel which can be walked across at low tide and is a few feet deep at high tide.  The island and castle are owned by a family who bought it in 1640 it from a long line of nobles. 

Today the family still lives on the island along with a few other families who work there.  There is a National Trust that, in partnership with the family, manages the upkeep of the castle as a tourist attraction.

We visited the mount on one of the few beautiful sunny days we had during the first week in this area.

Not far from Newlyn in the opposite direction is Land's End, which is the southwestern edge of England.

We took a drive there one morning and had a short walk along the cliffs on the South Western Coastal trail. 

The seas are very clear here and there are impressive sea cliffs and beautiful wildflowers.  No trees grow here on the edge of the country, apparently because of the winds that sweep across from the Atlantic.

On the way to Land's End is a turnoff to an open air theater that Anne went to for a mid-week afternoon performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. 

Anne's photo of the theater

The theater was built by a woman who came to Cornwall after the first World War.  She bought the entire cliff head for 100 GBP, built a cottage near the cliff and offered one summer to allow players in her theater group to stage a play on the edge of the cliffs below her home.  With the help of her gardener she made a stage and some rough seating.  Over the years that followed and with the help of others in her theater group the theater seating and stage were improved.  She continued working on the theater well into her 80s.  She died aged 90 in 1983.

I took a bus-ride with Anne the following day to see the beach and hike up to the top of the cliff and along the Coastal Path some distance.  We walked to a point where we could see the open air theater.

This really is a beautiful area despite the constant cool breezes and uncertainty about rain.

On our final weekend in Newlyn we drove to Lizard point which is the southmost piece of land in England.  We did a 7mile loop from the town of Lizard along the Coastal Path and then across the land inland to complete the loop.  

Our next stop is a small town on the other side of Penzance for a week before we move on to a couple of house-sits we have lined up elsewhere in Cornwall.