Wednesday - Penwith Tour

The very first day I started planning my trip, I found the Penwith tour online and couldn't wait to go.  It was as wonderful as expected, even though the weather let me down for the first time.

I drove to Penzance, parked in all-day parking and boarded the #300 bus that goes through Porthcurno, Land's End, the Greevorr Tin Mine, St Ives, Marazion and back to Penzance.  I had visited some but not all of these places a couple of days ago, but this open top double decker bus with the hot pink seats let me sit back and enjoy the view.  Well, sort of.  The roads were still narrow and twisty, and this bus is a lot bigger than my car so the death-defying cliff-hanging turns were even more dangerous than before but this time I could just look off to the sides and enjoy the views.  I could get off the bus several times during the tour if I wanted to explore on foot and then catch the next bus.

Off to one side are treacherous cliffs and off to the other dozens of little patchwork farms, each with stone walls about waist high, overgrown with mosses, gorse, hawthorn  currant brambles and lots of other wild growth.  I saw lots of horses, hundreds of cows, and hundreds more sheep.  A couple of the horses looked almost like Clydesdales with their huge hairy front feet (fetlocks?).  All traffic was stopped for about 20 minutes while a herd of cattle crossed the road.  There were four men herding them along, but to my disappointment I didn't see any dogs.   The Westminster Dog Show has a lot to answer for. It seems like their "working dog" category includes all these wonderful herding dogs but they must be just a theoretical myth.  The cows did seem very well-behaved and obedient so maybe the dogs were just taking a day off, having trained the men to do their job for them.

When I look back at my pictures from today, I see that I am still more impressed by the widths of the roads than by anything else!  Many times the bus or an oncoming car would have to pull over and stop, hugging the side of the road, to enable safe passing.  I never heard a horn honk or an angry reaction - it was almost like a well choreographed ballet.  When I am driving and that happens, I suppose I don't remember any honking or rude gestures but it never seemed so simple when I was the one pulling over or assuming the oncoming car would be gracious enough to do the same.

St Ives is perfect.  You can almost believe the past fifty years haven't happened.  I sat in the harbour and watched the tide come in.  This used to be the pilchard (disgusting little fish like sardines) capital of the world, but the pilchards have disappeared and the mackerel fishing that took its place never brought in the big bucks like the pilchards.  Artists discovered the steep cliffs and wild beauty of the place though, and it has become an art colony and a tourist center.  I am so fortunate to be here now.  School doesn't let out until the end of May, so the tourist business hasn't picked up for the year,  There is aa famous Tat's Art Gallery here, with the attached Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Gallery.  I enjoyed those very much and then saw signs for a "craft fair".  I followed the signs all over town, thinking maybe I could see some local amateur art, and found a church bazaar sale with tea cozies and handmade earrings.  Nothing too interesting I'm afraid.  This was not the talent that has made St Ives famous.

The temperature was the same as it has been the whole time I've been here - about 65 degrees.  Great temperature for walking around and working up a slight sweat (Oops, I forgot - we southern ladies glow, we don't sweat).  Anyway, walking around in 65 degree weather is a whole lot different from sitting on the top of an open bus with a brisk wind blowing.  Adding insult to injury, it started to rain.  One of the women on top of the bus with me insisted it was just sea spray from the ocean, but it was rain.  I think we were making sure we wouldn't be the first to chicken out, so we both sat there in the gentle (ha!) rain and punishing winds for about 45 minutes until it finally stopped.  The sun came out them, and the day was beautiful but I was very cold all day.  (She reached in her handbag at one point and pulled out a little bag of jelly beans and asked me if I wanted a sweetie.)

I met a woman from Denver in St Ives.  She couldn't wait to tell me every detail of her experiences and where I should stay and what I should do, etc.  I hope she was just showing off her ugly egocentric self to me because I was a fellow American and doesn't impose that side of herself on the locals.  After all, we are supposed to be amateur ambassadors, aren't we?

The place I ate lunch had a table covered in what looked like copper.  I was watching the people at the table next to me, and the guy spilled ketchup on the table.  He wiped it up with a napkin and few minutes later and the acid in the ketchup had eaten into the copper, leaving a bright pinkish scar on that beautiful table top.  I looked closely at my own table after that, and saw lots of little scars.  It looks like they fade over time but never disappear.  How horrible.  I asked my waitress and she was not sure if it is really copper, but said the stains will never completely disappear.

All the horses I saw were covered in blankets and the sheep had their woolly coats but the cows had nothing!  It seems like they would get as cold as the horses.

I made it back from Penzance to Truro and my hotel without one wrong turn!  I am still expecting a pat on the back from the TomTom but it still doesn't realize what a big deal it is for me to drive that far with no wrong turns.

I went into the lounge and ordered a pot of tea as soon as I got back.  This is the first time I have been warm all day!

I take my Kindle with me everywhere and I am reading Horatio Hornblower again.  That is one of my favorite stories ever, and I think I could reread it over and over again.  I took it to read in the lounge and finished one book and couldn't remember the next in sequence.  I have a list on my phone, so I trudged through all three flights of stairs and five fire doors just to find out what was next.  The first time I read it (there are over a dozen books in the series) I read them out of order so this time I am determined to do it right.  I am definitely going to visit Portsmouth (maritime museum and Nelson's Trafalga are there) so I am getting in the right frame of mind with my friend Horatio.

Being a fan of Foyle's War series, I am also hoping to go to Hastings.  I am definitely visiting Weymouth,  where my family lived for a little over a year when I was little, and I think that will be back to the little windy roads according to the map I have.  I will suffer those roads to try and find our old house, but I will not suffer them to visit Hastings.

Tomorrow the general plan is to visit Helston, the flambard experience (recreated Victorian village) and the tin mine museum at Poldard.  It is not supposed to rain, so I am looking forward to another good day.

Goodnight dear diary.  (I like saying that).  I can't remember what Anne Frank called her diary, but I understand the impulse to turn a journal into an animate thing.