Cornwall II
Aug. 18th, 2006 08:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakLandlord's computer again, much less time.
Wednesday did indeed greet us with a shower, but we armed ourselves with umbrellas, left our car at Marazion and took the next boat to Mount St. Michael. The next boat, as it happens, was there pretty quickly, but it waited for eons until twelve passengers were assembled. Dad guessed the boatsman didn’t want to risk oblivion just for a few pence. Not that it was that stormy, really. Anyway, St. Michael obviously reminded us of St. Michel in Brittany, the mother house, which we had visited a couple of years ago, though in the case of St. Michel, we had taken the foot way, as the tides had been low then. Here, the flood was at a high point, which meant boats. St. Michael stopped being a monastery once Henry VIII didn’t get his divorce the Pope, and since then has been privately owned by nobility. Which made my Aged Parent get into revolutionary mood again, muttering “get rid of all of them!”. He did, however, stroke the castle cat which came to greet us at the very entrance. A trusting cat, too, with yellow eyes.
St. Michael is something like the minitiature edition of St. Michel; or, as the lady who supervised the chapel told us, the intention behind both was to symbolize the crossing into another, new life by having the waters close after you once you enter the monastery. Of course the later non-clerical owners had no such intentions, but one of them seems to have been either a Western or a celebrity hound, because there was an old Victorian photograph showing Willam “Buffalo Bill” Cody “with unknown child”, visting St. Michael.
Once we were shipped back to Marazion, the rain was over. We drove through Penzance and a place named Mousehole which as the guide informed us was not named after the hole of a mouse but was actually the adaption of a Cornish word and was pronounced “mousl”. In any case, it was small, full of crooked alleys, grey stone and pink and red flowers, and we were charmed.
Next we arrived at an amphitheatre which a theatre enthusiast, a strong-minded lady named Rosemary Cade had hammered out of the rocks at the start of the 20th century mostly by her own hands, Minack’s theatre, which I’m sci-fi geek enough to hear as “Mynoch’s Theatre” at first. (A mynoch being the worm who nearly swallowed the Millenium Falcon on the asteroid in The Empire Strikes Back.) Since its conception, there have been regular performances in this theatre during the summer. Now the guardian from the National Trust asked us whether we were here for a performance and we had to confess we weren’t, which resulted in him saying that due to the afternoon performance, the theatre was closed to visitors but we could loiter around in the surrounding area for about 20 minutes. However, this only served to make my Dad feel challenged. He dug up his teleobjective (aka the thing that would make a paparazzo feel proud), dragged me to the opposing cliff and could indeed get a shot not just of the theatre but of the actors who were doing some last minute practice. When we returned, we actually managed to smuggle ourselves into the crowd enough to take a closer look for the upper ranks. Incidentally, we would have bought a ticket and attended the performance, of course, but it looked as if would start to rain again very soon, and three hours shivering in the rain isn’t that compelling an experience. However, one thing is sure: you can’t beat Minack’s for a nature-given background!
The next hours were filled with what I’d like to call the „duty tour“ of Cornwall, as we made our way from one overcrowded tourist magnet to the next. Land’s End, the most western point of Cornwall, got changed into a kind of mini Disneyland by the owners and had the according crowds and ads, and St. Ives was the horror of horrors. “Rimini”, Dad & self said to each other after a moment of speechless silence and after having barely found a parking space after a lot of trying. Admittedly neither of us never actually was in Rimini, but if you’re German, this unfortunate place in Italy is code word for the true sardine experience. Which St. Ives was. It was actually raining again, but nonetheless, I had never seen such a town overflowing with people and postcards. Horrible.
After we left it behind, we drove up the coast to Boscastle, which was far more agreeable. Its natural harbour was left high and dry because of the low tide which meant all the fishing boats were lying on the sand, which looked odd. Dramatic cliffs left and right, which we climbed. Then we went to nearby Tintagel, both because the inn where we would stay for the night was about five kilometres away from Tintagel and because we wanted to see the legendary birth place of King Arthur. As it turned out, we could have hoped for no patter spot to drive out the remaining bad taste St. Ives had left in the mouth.
I did know in advance that there were only a few ruins left of Tintagel and that those were 13th century and left by Richard of Cornwall, not 5th century and left by Gorlois, though Richard supposedly build here precisely because the place was already associated with the legend of Arthur. But what I had not known and what stunned and overwhelmed me was the fantastic exact location. Tintagel was spread across two individual cliff. Which means that to reach the remains of the castle today, you have to climb a narrow and long staircase to get to the first, descend, and then climb up again to reach the second. This isn’t just an ideal way to lose weight but also a way to filter out larger groups of tourists. The AP and self were very amused that by the time we reached the second cliff, the only voices we heard around us were nearly all German, because this had happened before, when we climbed up to the roof of one of the towers of Notre Dame.
You have a spectacular view from the first cliff already (where the garrison used to be) – but from the second one, where the keep and the garden were, the view really strikes you silent with awe. The entire beautiful coast line, some caves in the cliff immediately nearby (inevitably called Merlin’s cave), and if you look back, you suddenly see all the remains fitting to a whole over a cliff of its own. No matter who actually build the place, I shall always imagine Igraine and Gorlois and Morgaine and little Arthur here. (And later Marke and Tristan and Isolde, while I’m at it.)
Our inn, The Port William, was as I said about five kilometres away and located directly at the sea; if the tides hadn’t been wrong, we’d have been tempted to go for a swim; on the next morning, the rain had returned full force, so our bathing intentions literaly were drowned.
Thursday hence turned out a mainly in the car day. We had to abandon some of the grand coastal tour Dad had planned because the rain had become relentless. Lynton, Lynmouth, you could see the scenery was beautiful with lots of heather, but the rain really trapped us. When we got to Dunster Castle the rain briefly stopped but wouldn’t you know it, the castle was closed on Thursday and Friday. We gave in and headed for the motorway.
A few hours later, we had made it to Shrewsbury in Shropshire, which was also our first dry spot. With its many old houses the town was fun to walk through and stretch our legs a bit, and we visited the abbey build of red stone to pay homage to Brother Cadfael.
By now, it was late afternoon, and the sun had finally returned. Which meant that Wales when we did enter it appeared in a fine sun-filtered mist of humid air over fresh green grass, hills and mountains. You couldn’t have asked for a more magical view, and Dad, fan of Switzerland that he is, declared spontanously he liked it even better than Cornwall. We passed Llangollen and found our B&B, Powys Country House, nearby Corwen. The landlady was another charmer prone to serve tea to her exhausted guests, and I must try and ask her whether she has a computer I can use to transmit my report before we leave...
Wednesday did indeed greet us with a shower, but we armed ourselves with umbrellas, left our car at Marazion and took the next boat to Mount St. Michael. The next boat, as it happens, was there pretty quickly, but it waited for eons until twelve passengers were assembled. Dad guessed the boatsman didn’t want to risk oblivion just for a few pence. Not that it was that stormy, really. Anyway, St. Michael obviously reminded us of St. Michel in Brittany, the mother house, which we had visited a couple of years ago, though in the case of St. Michel, we had taken the foot way, as the tides had been low then. Here, the flood was at a high point, which meant boats. St. Michael stopped being a monastery once Henry VIII didn’t get his divorce the Pope, and since then has been privately owned by nobility. Which made my Aged Parent get into revolutionary mood again, muttering “get rid of all of them!”. He did, however, stroke the castle cat which came to greet us at the very entrance. A trusting cat, too, with yellow eyes.
St. Michael is something like the minitiature edition of St. Michel; or, as the lady who supervised the chapel told us, the intention behind both was to symbolize the crossing into another, new life by having the waters close after you once you enter the monastery. Of course the later non-clerical owners had no such intentions, but one of them seems to have been either a Western or a celebrity hound, because there was an old Victorian photograph showing Willam “Buffalo Bill” Cody “with unknown child”, visting St. Michael.
Once we were shipped back to Marazion, the rain was over. We drove through Penzance and a place named Mousehole which as the guide informed us was not named after the hole of a mouse but was actually the adaption of a Cornish word and was pronounced “mousl”. In any case, it was small, full of crooked alleys, grey stone and pink and red flowers, and we were charmed.
Next we arrived at an amphitheatre which a theatre enthusiast, a strong-minded lady named Rosemary Cade had hammered out of the rocks at the start of the 20th century mostly by her own hands, Minack’s theatre, which I’m sci-fi geek enough to hear as “Mynoch’s Theatre” at first. (A mynoch being the worm who nearly swallowed the Millenium Falcon on the asteroid in The Empire Strikes Back.) Since its conception, there have been regular performances in this theatre during the summer. Now the guardian from the National Trust asked us whether we were here for a performance and we had to confess we weren’t, which resulted in him saying that due to the afternoon performance, the theatre was closed to visitors but we could loiter around in the surrounding area for about 20 minutes. However, this only served to make my Dad feel challenged. He dug up his teleobjective (aka the thing that would make a paparazzo feel proud), dragged me to the opposing cliff and could indeed get a shot not just of the theatre but of the actors who were doing some last minute practice. When we returned, we actually managed to smuggle ourselves into the crowd enough to take a closer look for the upper ranks. Incidentally, we would have bought a ticket and attended the performance, of course, but it looked as if would start to rain again very soon, and three hours shivering in the rain isn’t that compelling an experience. However, one thing is sure: you can’t beat Minack’s for a nature-given background!
The next hours were filled with what I’d like to call the „duty tour“ of Cornwall, as we made our way from one overcrowded tourist magnet to the next. Land’s End, the most western point of Cornwall, got changed into a kind of mini Disneyland by the owners and had the according crowds and ads, and St. Ives was the horror of horrors. “Rimini”, Dad & self said to each other after a moment of speechless silence and after having barely found a parking space after a lot of trying. Admittedly neither of us never actually was in Rimini, but if you’re German, this unfortunate place in Italy is code word for the true sardine experience. Which St. Ives was. It was actually raining again, but nonetheless, I had never seen such a town overflowing with people and postcards. Horrible.
After we left it behind, we drove up the coast to Boscastle, which was far more agreeable. Its natural harbour was left high and dry because of the low tide which meant all the fishing boats were lying on the sand, which looked odd. Dramatic cliffs left and right, which we climbed. Then we went to nearby Tintagel, both because the inn where we would stay for the night was about five kilometres away from Tintagel and because we wanted to see the legendary birth place of King Arthur. As it turned out, we could have hoped for no patter spot to drive out the remaining bad taste St. Ives had left in the mouth.
I did know in advance that there were only a few ruins left of Tintagel and that those were 13th century and left by Richard of Cornwall, not 5th century and left by Gorlois, though Richard supposedly build here precisely because the place was already associated with the legend of Arthur. But what I had not known and what stunned and overwhelmed me was the fantastic exact location. Tintagel was spread across two individual cliff. Which means that to reach the remains of the castle today, you have to climb a narrow and long staircase to get to the first, descend, and then climb up again to reach the second. This isn’t just an ideal way to lose weight but also a way to filter out larger groups of tourists. The AP and self were very amused that by the time we reached the second cliff, the only voices we heard around us were nearly all German, because this had happened before, when we climbed up to the roof of one of the towers of Notre Dame.
You have a spectacular view from the first cliff already (where the garrison used to be) – but from the second one, where the keep and the garden were, the view really strikes you silent with awe. The entire beautiful coast line, some caves in the cliff immediately nearby (inevitably called Merlin’s cave), and if you look back, you suddenly see all the remains fitting to a whole over a cliff of its own. No matter who actually build the place, I shall always imagine Igraine and Gorlois and Morgaine and little Arthur here. (And later Marke and Tristan and Isolde, while I’m at it.)
Our inn, The Port William, was as I said about five kilometres away and located directly at the sea; if the tides hadn’t been wrong, we’d have been tempted to go for a swim; on the next morning, the rain had returned full force, so our bathing intentions literaly were drowned.
Thursday hence turned out a mainly in the car day. We had to abandon some of the grand coastal tour Dad had planned because the rain had become relentless. Lynton, Lynmouth, you could see the scenery was beautiful with lots of heather, but the rain really trapped us. When we got to Dunster Castle the rain briefly stopped but wouldn’t you know it, the castle was closed on Thursday and Friday. We gave in and headed for the motorway.
A few hours later, we had made it to Shrewsbury in Shropshire, which was also our first dry spot. With its many old houses the town was fun to walk through and stretch our legs a bit, and we visited the abbey build of red stone to pay homage to Brother Cadfael.
By now, it was late afternoon, and the sun had finally returned. Which meant that Wales when we did enter it appeared in a fine sun-filtered mist of humid air over fresh green grass, hills and mountains. You couldn’t have asked for a more magical view, and Dad, fan of Switzerland that he is, declared spontanously he liked it even better than Cornwall. We passed Llangollen and found our B&B, Powys Country House, nearby Corwen. The landlady was another charmer prone to serve tea to her exhausted guests, and I must try and ask her whether she has a computer I can use to transmit my report before we leave...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
In full nerd mode
Date: 2006-08-18 08:26 am (UTC)...sorry, had to set that straight...
< /nerd>
*points to icon*
Date: 2006-08-18 05:44 pm (UTC)Re: *points to icon*
Date: 2006-08-18 06:32 pm (UTC)The poor thing has no name! (Both Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Wars_creatures#S) and the Official Star Wars Database (http://www.starwars.com/databank/creature/spaceslug/index.html) call it a Space Slug.) Now why George named the thing that lives in the Death Star garbage compactor (a dianoga) and not this one...
Re: *points to icon*
Date: 2006-08-18 09:09 pm (UTC)Perhaps he was traumatized by the singing of "Pardon me George? Could this be Dia Noga poo-poo?" (to the tune of Chattanoga choo-choo.)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-18 08:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-18 11:24 am (UTC)Aaaargh! Normally I'm silent on these sorts of entries, but I can hold it in no longer. JEALOUSY. Pure, undiluted jealousy. You don't have any pictures, do you?
no subject
Date: 2006-08-18 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-18 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-18 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 09:11 pm (UTC)