On the Road Again

It was interesting having breakfast at the hotel. The place was a bit flasher than we normally have stayed at and although there was a tour bus load staying there, it reminded me of a hotel in the time of George V, just after Queen Victoria had died. We must have been the youngest diners, which was great because there were no kids causing chaos. We were certainly the most under dressed. Older ladies were dressed to walk along the promenade and the blokes were wearing jackets, while we were wearing teeshirts, jeans and jandals. I must admit that I didn't see any ties, other than on the tour bus leader.

It was blowing a 20 mph wind most of today in Cornwall. It was a bit overcast most of the day and the temperature was about 20 C max.

We did a quick loop of Falmouth and managed to find the place where Paul (of Margaret and Paul fame) had lived. We had the GPS primed for St Ives and put an intermediate stop of Helston, to get off the direct route.

The next call was Marazion. It was listed as an old market town, but there was no market. It's another seaside village, but with sand on the beach and St Michael's Mount a few hundred yards off shore. The gougers were out in force. In the centre of town, it was UKP3.5 to stop and out of town a mere UKP3, regardless of how long or short. If you walked across to St Michael's Mount, at low tide, the charge was a mere UKP8. However it was near high tide, so I hate to think what the ferry charge would have been. Probably as high as the tide.

On the way again, we turned off to Mousehole. All our narrow roads came back to haunt us today. To add to the mix, we also came across severe left hand turns, up a hill, that were so steep, that only first gear would get us moving forward. I think we hit about six of those. We went down to Mousehole and poked around but could not find anywhere to park so escaped.

After that Minack was on the shopping list. Eventually we arrived and there was an open air theatre which was built into the side of the cliff. It's well known for its Shakespeare plays etc. Lynette wandered around while I read in the car.

The final objective for the day was St Ives. It's another tricky little coastal fishing (now tourist) village at the bottom of a hill, accessible by skinny roads. We got close and hit yet another roundabout. The outlet road into town had a note on it to say that you had to pay an entry fee into the congested area. The other two outlet roads had big P's to indicate parking. We turned left and went up the hill, away from the town centre. Finding the parking area was a challenge, but eventually we did, only to find it was full of resident parking and no spare slots. We stumbled on the signs for another car park but that was even further from the town centre.

So we turned around and found a third park, nearer the town centre, but also full. I double parked there while Lynette took a few photos and then we left town. A couple of miles from the town, we stopped at a quiet cafe and had a drink and a snack. The lady running the show, said that she often has people stop, who have been totally frustrated by the poor parking at St Ives. There is a Park and Ride service, but that's not well signposted and she wasn't that certain of its accurate location, so that would have been another goose chase.

We set the GPS for civilization and hit the road. We originally had planned to drive from Truro to Longleat on Saturday morning, so the closer we could get to Longleat the more time we would have looking at the wild animals. We eventually stopped at Ilchester, a small town in Somerset. The hotel room was very roomy and the meal at the pub across the street was great too. All for a modest price, so you can't ask for much more. Tomorrow we should only have an hour to travel.