Cornwall: It is usually much better than this

The AirBnb in Newlyn was a quaint house owned by an old lady who is in elder care.  Her daughter is using it as an AirBnb to fund the costs of a private facility for her mom.  As a result, the furniture, art and bookshelves are full of echoes of her mother's life.  She was a scholar and probably a teacher because we found lots of poetry books and the collected works of classical authors and playwrights in her sitting room with a bay window.

The dining room table was the only desk available and the chairs were severely upright in a completely unforgiving design.  By the third day of our stay I was suffering from cramps in my shoulders from sitting on the chairs with my laptop on the table, a few inches higher than my back could tolerate.  I ended up having to spend most of my working hours on a couch with the laptop on my lap - less strain on my back but not ideal because I have become accustomed to using a small flat monitor alongside my laptop monitor to give me more screen space for work.

We weren't able to book her house for all the time we needed leading up to our first house-sit in the area but our host offered us another apartment AirBnb in a tiny place north of Penzance for a discount.

When we arrived there we immediately regretted not looking at the reviews of the place- we were lulled by how nice the house in Newlyn had been.  Couched in polite paragraphs about it were a few warnings that we would have heeded had we read it.

The entrance to the AirBnb is around the side of a house on the property of a MOT garage (MOT is the shorthand for the annual road worthiness and emissions test in England) and the owner of the MOT clearly has had some run-ins with the AirBnb owner because we were warned not to park in front of or on the parking area for the garage.

From the garage parking lot we entered into a narrow lane and found a large, sunken single room which has a mezzanine built above the bathroom on one end and a narrow sitting room at the entrance. 

There is a fridge but no stove or microwave which meant that we'd have to eat out.  

The house is one of a few on a short, narrow Cornish farm road ending with the MOT and then farmland.   We thought we'd walk to a restaurant on the first day and then saw that the route was 25min of walking along single-lane roads and decided we'd rather drive (which took 20 min).  

We cursed the price of restaurant food and the host for thinking that someone would be happy with an AirBnb with nowhere to heat or cook food.

On the second day we decided to brave a walk along the single lane country road and noticed a woman crossing a stile - a small wooden structure that allows you to step over a fence - into the field and then across it and over a second stile.  

We decided to follow her but when we came to the second stile we were confronted by a herd of attentive bullocks with a massive bull lying on the grass behind them as we got to the top of the first stile.  

We paused, looking at the bullocks, which only made them curious, so they all started to stand up and crowd towards us.  For some reason Anne decided to sing to them at this point which had them even more interested, and then the bull stood up.  The brave woman before us had simply climbed over and walked across this field without a pause, but we, the intrepid world travelers, were frozen on the spot and after a few breathless minutes and when Anne had finished her song, we retreated back the way we had come.

We had one trip on a morning to the town of St Ives which we had to abort because we couldn't find parking and had to make a second attempt the next day, this time parking in Penzance at the train station and catching a bus.

St Ives is a pretty town with a sheltered beach along which there are plenty of little shops selling Cornish Pasties and other street food.  We stopped for an early lunch and heeded the warnings about the seagulls who love to steal food from absent minded eaters.

 

Halfway through eating my carefully shielded pasty I had a lapse in concentration and the next minute something hit my hand hard and knocked the pasty down onto the beach below the wall we were sitting on.  A screeching colony of gulls followed, fighting over the prize.

I sat there flabbergasted and spent the rest of the time fuming, watching the human adults and children around me eating their pies and waiting breathlessly for one of them to fall victim to these thugs of the sea.  Fifteen minutes later I gave up, thinking I must have been the only klutz there that day and bought another pasty which I ate out of the paper bag as we walked back to the bus-stop for our ride home.

Our next stop was the start of a house-sit in a town called Camborne which is near the northwestern edge of Cornwall close to Newquay but a little further inland.  Because the hosts of the house-sit were leaving early the next morning we had a night where we had to find accommodation and so we spent it in a small bar/hotel in the tiny seaside village of Portreath.

Portreath is very small but has a strong community vibe with a mixture of houses and a rather nice beach - assuming you are willing to brave the weather.  I think it is a sign of the climate that people are out at the beach in large numbers in cool wind and light drizzle as if this is the perfect weather for a day on the beach.

On the way to Portreath we stopped at a monument to a mine owner who in the early 1800's had developed a reputation for fairness among the miners and their families - there were thousands of people who formed a funeral procession when he died and the town and miners collectively raised money for the monument. 

 
The monument itself was not really much to look at but nearby we found a castle-like structure built on a hill with a couple of large rocks supporting one corner of the building.  It is operated today as a restaurant.

Carn Brae castle

The towns inland in Cornwall are a little more run-down.  A report in 2022 identified many of Cornwall's districts as being in the top 10% of the most deprived in England.

Our house-sit was in a housing estate in a respectable area on the outskirts of the town Camborne.  It was a relief to be in a full sized house with a desk and office chair.  

The animals in these house-sits are always a pleasure, in this case two dogs - one of which was crazy active, a small tortoise, an axolotl (an unusual little salamander from Central America) and a large aquarium of marine fish with a really sophisticated system for managing the water purification, temperature and lighting.

True to form it continued to rain most days.  We never trusted the look of the sky and took our raincoats everywhere.  We needed them almost everywhere. 

We were able to take morning trips before my work starts to two impressive locations within an hour of where we were staying - the first being the Eden Project - a project that was started in the late 1990s when a group of like-minded people bought an extensive open mined clay pit in Cornwall and converted it into a large garden and educational center with biosphere's containing plants from a wide variety of climate zones.

A partner of the Eden Project offers an exciting option while you are visiting, a zipline that spans across the project's biospheres.  It is the longest and fastest zipline in the UK.  There are also high wire obstacle courses that are adrenaline-driven entertainment.  We didn't have time to try out the zipline so that one has been filed away for a future visit.

Our second visit was to the Lost Gardens of Heligan, the largest garden restoration project in Europe.  Once a large estate that was mostly self-sufficient, growing almost all of the food needed for the family and their guests (and I'm assuming their staff), the farm was abandoned by the grieving owner during World War I after many staff who went to serve never returned.   The grand house of the estate after being abandoned for 50 years was sold in 1970 but it wasn't until the aftermath of a hurricane in 1990 that events conspired to inspire the restoration.

A small room called the "Thunderbox Room" (a euphemism for a long-drop toilet) that was used by the gardeners was discovered during excavations with penciled inscriptions on the wall.  These were signatures of the gardeners who worked there and had a date, August 1914.  The toilet has been designated a war memorial in honor of their sacrifice during the war.  When we visited it, there was a small swallow's nest in the eves of the toilet just inside the door.  It was full of babies with a parent that was flitting in and out between the frequent visitors' comings and goings.

The gardens are huge - with cultivated fields and extensive vegetable gardens, large playing areas for children and a wild section called the jungle with a rope bridge that is constantly full of the "10-at-a-time" visitors crossing from one side of a stream to the other.

I haven't mentioned this before, but Anne has two small containers that have accompanied us on our travels.  In each are a portion of her parent's ashes that were given to her after they were cremated.

I've worried about them being confiscated by airport security who don't like "powder-like substances" at the best of times.  Anne has done the research and these are on the list of permitted carry-on objects, but we have had things confiscated (like round nosed scissors) that prove that the list of permitted items are mere guidelines in the mind of the security officer regardless of what any airport regulation might say.  Our closest call was evidence after one trip from Mexico to the USA that the small bags had been opened.

Anne has thought that she would scatter the ashes somewhere beautiful that her parents would have loved or where we end up settling but the final decision might be a while away.  In the meantime we know that they would have loved the destinations that we have taken them to.

We (the agnostic and the atheist) also have a small superstition: that our departed family members visit us occasionally.  I suppose it is less of a literal thing than in moments when something profoundly moving reminds us of a lost parent.

For me it started on a weekend out in the wilds of the Cederberg having just got news of my mother's sudden death.  We were hiking and came across a lone butterfly which sat on a bush on the edge of the trail for a long time as I stood there and watched it.  I am still reminded of my mother in moments where I come across a lone butterfly like this.

For Anne, it is the sight of an English robin - the little red breasted bird often seen in the bushes nearby on walks in England.  It unfailingly prompts one of us to say to her "Hey! Here's your mom!".

Anne's father was a gardener.  He loved working in his garden and experimenting with pruning and grafting plants and she had told me that her parents had visited this Lost Garden with her brother on one of their trips to England and had found it absolutely enchanting.

So, as we entered one of the vegetable gardens we saw this scarecrow with a little toy robin stitched to his shoulder and immediately concluded that these were her parents: the gardener and the robin.  

Anne hadn't thought to bring the little bags with us on our outing but we did talk about whether this would have been the perfect spot for them.  I think Anne would secretly prefer to scatter them where we end up and not in some garden that we might not visit very often so she didn't think too long about whether this was the place she should have chosen.

We stopped for one night after our house-sit at a small hotel in Falmouth a short walk from the beach.  The wifi did not reach our room so I had to sit in the bar for the day.  It got a little noisy after 8pm with a number of chatty people who filled us in on the area.  

Most of the people heard our complaint about the weather and said "It's usually much better than this", assuring us that there are many days of warm weather most years.  

Our last stop in Cornwall is the small town of Roscastle which is 3mi away from Tintagel, the supposed birth place of King Arthur.  The town is small with lots of stone walled houses and buildings and our guest house is above a restaurant and bar called The Riverside. 

There are the ruins of a castle across a bridge to a wild rocky peninsula about 3mi away but they were closed on the Saturday of our visit due to the high winds of the first named tropical storm of the season which gave us pause because in 2004 there was a flash flood at around this time of year that tore through the town, flooding on both sides of The Riverside building and dragging parked cars out to sea. 

 

The harbor, another of these narrow natural inlets protected by stone walls, is a short walk from the guest house with the South Western trail clearly visible on either side as it arches into the town and back out along the bottom of the hill.

Our last Sunday in Cornwall was sunny and clear and we have rebooked for a visit to Tintagel which was described as the birthplace of King Arthur in poetry as far back as the mid 1800's when Lord Tennyson in his poem Idylls of the King described this location.  

The site is significant because it has evidence of settlements going back into the Dark Ages where it was a hub for trade.  There is plenty of evidence of walls from the homes and storerooms from those long gone days but the town is geared now towards the legend.

On the hill of the ruins of the ancient castle (which is also associated with the legend of Tristan and Isolde) is a statue of King Arthur called "Gallo" which was commissioned by English Heritage and installed in 2016.

At the bottom of the hill, a cave which is accessible at low tide is named after Merlin the magician and also mentioned in the narrative poems.

In the town itself is a great hall build by an English businessman who wanted to celebrate and honor the legend - it has many stained glass windows and is itself a draw of tourists.  There is a modern "Honorable Society of the Knights of the Round Table" that is still active today - it was founded in 1720 and is an active charity for promoting the pursuit of the arts and also the scouts organization.

The Knights Templar is also an active organization today doing charitable work and they apparently come to this hall for meetings annually.   A blogger describes the organization but warns that there are some organizations who have co-opted the name to further hate messaging which, given their history in and after the crusades, might not surprise you.

From Tintagel we drove back to Plymouth, leaving the lovely Cornwall behind and leaving us with really mixed feelings about our plans.

Do we trade cool, windy summers and cold rainy winters for the sun and beaches in exchange for a place that we feel so comfortable in and where we know we'll find plenty to do?