Cornwall 2007
I’ve sat on this write-up of my holiday in Cornwall for a few weeks now. I’ve poked and pulled at the words on several occasions, but haven’t yet managed to string together more than a couple of sentences at a time without beginning to question my objectives. What am I trying to do? Condense two weeks of experiences into a handful of paragraphs, while trying to adequately convey my appreciation of Kernow, I suppose.
It feels somewhat amateurish (I’m a professional blogger, don’t you know), but to save the entire event from going unrecognised, I’ll publish the unfinished entry so far:
Before Sam and I left for our two-week holiday in Cornwall, we were warned many times that such a venture would be foolish, for risk of tent flotation or drowning. Apparently the UK was having a bit of a wet summer. But went we did. We camped in a field near a little village called St Agnes, all the way down in the West end of Cornwall, on the northern coast. Despite being occasionally blustery, we had the most incredible weather, if the reports from home were anything to go by. Mind you, we did escape the mainland on the worst day (my birthday), and got nicely toasted by burning rays of plasma death (aka the Sun) on the Isles of Scilly:
Not once during the ferry crossing there and back did I consider the reputation the Isles once had for sinking ships, over 500 of them. Admittedly, most of them were sunk prior to the 18th century, before we had reliable methods for measuring longitude. That fact was of no comfort to the class of vomiting children whom we shared the outward voyage with. However, I understood upon arrival why the Isles are an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The sand there was full of strange little sparkling bits, and despite having been lived on for hundreds of years, the impact of human settlement is relatively slight.
St Ives is quite a traditional seaside town, but for all the tourists it does have a great deal of charm. It seems, like many seaside towns, to be composed of two parts; the sea front, which is lined with pasty shops and ice cream parlours and restaurants and wet suit rentals, and the residential area, which is full of second homes and art studios.
The Eden Project is incredible, and was an experience that I can’t fully describe with words.
We were camped next to a couple who I did suspect may have been hippies, as they were the wind charm long-haired types. The lady turned out to be very nice and on the first Friday, recommended we drive down to St Juste, a small town near Land’s End, for their festival. So we did. It was brilliant; we caught the carnival procession, and enjoyed the local food, drink, and music, including a folk punk band called
In total, we travelled over 1200 miles.
A lot of what I haven’t said is probably best described by the pictures I’ll upload to Flickr. There are a few pictures I’ll selfishly keep for myself though. Photos of secret places, and hidden treasure. It really was a brilliant holiday, and if I could do the whole thing justice in the time before my next holiday, I’d have written ten times as much as I have.
Something that does deserve mention, however, is the Lobster Hatchery in Padstow. The lobster in the back of my car now has two new friends :)