The Cornish Riviera-Cornwall

Mousehole-typical Cornwall town

Mousehole

Cool door across from the Art Gallery I bought a ceramic vase at. Cornwall is known for its art galleries. Tons of artists flock here because the light is good.

Liked this sign

Mousehole

The hydrangeas were gorgeous and grow wild all over Cornwall. They are such a brilliant blue and pink!

The Merry Maidens- a stone circle in between St. Buryan and Boskenna. They don't know much about them. Used as some sort of measure of time/a calendar and built around the same time as Stonehenge (about 4,000 years ago). There were 19 of the stones, 20 including the heel stone which didn't quite make sense to us. 24 would have made more sense...

Porthcurno-Minack Theater-maybe one of my new favorite places in the world

GORGEOUS clear water!

They were setting up the theater for a play that night.

Look at the beautiful color of the sea!

Can just see the cafe at the Minack where we ate lunch overlooking the sea.

The woman who created the theater-Rowen Cade

Obviously I couldn't get enough of this view...

Somewhere in our driving through Cornwall, we saw this lovely house!

Old abandoned Tin Mill-they are all over Cornwall

St. Ives

St. Ives-This is the view from the car park. AWESOME!

St. Ives-when the tide is out

St. Ives in town

The Market Place had been there since 1490!

These Celtic crosses were in just about every Cornish town we drove through- this is still St. Ives

St. Ives

Cathedral in Truro- Centre of administration, finance, and retail in Cornwall-basically the capital

As we are already down in Devon, I asked Clair if we could drive over the next county-Cornwall- which is supposed to be gorgeous (she has some postcards taped up in her kitchen cupboards of Cornwall beaches). Although the weather said grey clouds, we took a chance and saw just how unreliable the weather predictions here are-the weather was perfect! So we woke up at 7 on Saturday monring and spent about 12 hours driving around the western most part of England-Cornwall. Explaining Cornwall in comparison to Devon-Jeanie and Clair say it is more 'wild and overgrown'. Devon has softer, more manicured fields which glow yellow in the sun. Cornwall has more shrub covered green fields and also white sand beaches-which I didn't know existed in England. Devon's vernacular homes are usually made of the red dirt seen in the photos of the cliffs in Budleigh Salterton, and a lot seemed to have thatched roofs in the countryside as more hay is harvested (right word? no..) there, where as the homes in Cornwall are made of a grey granite which is mined all over the area. The granite is cut into large blocks of variying sizes to make the boxy homes. I think it's great how each area of England showcases different styles of homes which are very distinct and known by all Englanders immediately.

We drove for about 3 hours to the town of Penzance (think Pirates of Penzance) which starts out the Western peninsula of England. Here we saw St. Micheal's Mound which is a castle that sits on top of an island. When the tide is out, you can walk from the mainland to the island. When it is in, you must reach it by boat. From here, we headed to Mousehole-a typical Cornish fishing town. I don't think Clair was intending us to stay here too long, but I thought the town was so chamring, that we should spend some time walking along its steep cobbled streets and through its many art galleries! The towns in Cornwall reminded me of Italy with their steepness and quaintness.

From here, we drove around to Porthcurno where Clairs favorite place (and now mine) is in England-Minak Open Air Theatre. As you can see from the photos above, it is absolutley beautiful. This theater holds plays most of the year, and today, they were setting up for the opening night of a new play (something about a Bride? last week was Romeo and Juliet) so we couldn't go down to the lower level.

http://www.minack.com

We stayed here for quite some time, just taking in the scenery. We ate lunch at the cafe, and even topped it off with ice cream with meringue, caramel, and clotted cream (a thick cream produced mainly in Devon and Cornwall) which I know Mom, Dad, and Bob LOVE. Afterwards, we headed around the coast more to the Sennen Cove and St. Just. On our way, we stopped to see the Merry Maidens stone circle pictured above. All over Cornwall were rock formations similar to these which are thousands and thousands of years old (and these are not guarded by security gates and guards so you can just walk right up to them)! Unfortunately, when we tried to go to St. Just, there seemed to be some kind of festival going on in which filled the streets with cars, making it impossible to pass through the narrow (NARROW) lanes of the countryside. So we skipped St. Just and headed onto St. Ives (close enough, right?). It is peak tourist season here (school just let out) and St. Ives is a peak tourist destination, so finding parking took FOREVER! By this time, it was about 6 p.m., so while most of the shops on the side streets were closed, we found a few nice ones on the main street in which I bought some pewter earrings. After St. Ives, we drove to Truro which is where Clair's dad lived before he died. We went by his old cottage just on the outskirts of town, and drove through town, only getting out around the Cathedral which was massive and beautiful (and under scaffolding) as it was about 8 p.m. at this point.

From Truro, we headed to Bodmin which according to Clair is an "uncle-brother" type area with some creepers. We winded through the old dirt farm roads and had to wait for wild rabbits, cows, sheep, and horses to move out of our way. We just stopped by quickly at Colliford lake as the sun was setting (about 9:30) to eat some Cornish steak pasties we got in St. Ives (which later gave me heartburn, haha). After quickly eating (this apparently isn't a place you would want to be after dark although it looked fine to me), we finally headed back the hour and half or so to Budleigh Salterton. It was a long and exhausting day, but one of my favorites of my travels so far! Thanks Clair and Jeanie for a LOVELY Cornwall day!