Devon and Cornwall

Last weekend we had a lovely picturesque weekend in the surf capital of England - Cornwall. On our way down to the Cornwall region we spent a night in Weymouth which is in Devon. In Weymouth we met up with Nath's parents, sister and niece, who had flown to the UK for Nath's 30th birthday. From Weymouth we travelled to Abbotsbury where we had lunch with some relatives of Nath's family that he had never met before.

We spent the night in Torquay which was much bigger than we were expecting and had a lovely built up area of restaurants around the harbour.  Here we went out for dinner to celebrate Kylie’s birthday.

The following day we drove through Dartmoor National Park where we pulled over to look at wild horses, and drove through some fairly narrow country lanes. We arrived at Polperro which is a lovely fishing village.  Here we treated ourselves to cream tea and boy I piled on the clotted cream!

That night we stayed in Penzance which is a bit grotty compared to other villages along the coastline.  We had a tacky carvery for dinner which is very popular with the English.  Carvery is just a fancy word for buffet.  We got a selection of 3 roast meats then helped ourselves to veges, Yorkshire puds and gravy.  It was nice to have some vege even though we didn’t know how long they had been out for.
The next day was action packed with a morning trip to Lands End.  On our way we saw a sign for Minnack Theatre so we detoured to check it out.  It’s a really cool theatre carved out of the cliff face, with the audience looking down on the stage and beyond that out to sea.  The theatre can seat 700 and when we were there a local company were rehearsing a play.  The most popular play is Pirates of Penzance.  From the theatre we may our way to Lands End which was disappointing.  Firstly, having to pay £5 for car parking, then having to pay to have your photo taken with the lands end sign.  As usual the Brits know how to do tacky as there were arcade rooms and a 4D cinema!  Way to ruin the moment England.  We back tracked to Mt St Michael which wasn’t open earlier in the morning.  Unfortunately the tides weren’t in our favour and we had to take a boat trip out to the Island Castle/fortress.  When the tide is low you are able to walk out to the castle.  From here we wanted to go to St Ives but we couldn’t find car parking anywhere.  We were driving around and getting caught in one way systems with narrow roads lined with hoards of people. At one point we had to reverse back and try to get out of there.  It was crazy.  After the stress of St Ives we stopped at a Cornish Cider farm and relaxed with free samples and a pint of cider. 

We stayed the night in the cutest little village of St Agnes.  We walked around the village in 5min flat!!  Maybe not that quickly, but there were a couple of take away shops and a local pub, where we stayed upstairs, and not much else.    

Next day our first stop was Padstow where we made sure to keep an eye out for park and ride signs and not make the same mistake as St Ives.  Again this was another very picturesque fishing village with loads of pasty shops and chippies.  Our last stop on our Southern Roadie was Tintagel Castle.  This castle was built right on the edge of the cliff and must have been freezing in winter.  We were there in summer on a reasonably warm day but at the top of the castle the wind picked up and it was quite cold.  Bollocks to living there 200 years ago! 

We have 3 days back in London before our next trip – to Edinburgh where we have tickets to the Military tattoo.