Cornwall III.

5-4-18 PENZANCE, CORNWALL, UNITED KINGDOM: After breakfast at Chapel House, we drove to Marazion on the Lizard peninsula, south east of Penzance. St. Michaels Mount is a rocky island at high tide, but connected to Marazion at low tide by a causeway. The tide was in so we boated out to the island. We were there for a couple hours and could almost walk back, but took the boat, which had to stop much further away from the pier.


St. Michaels Mount at high tide. It has been a pilgrimage site, a fortress and a tin trading post.

Steps begin the long climb to the castle. Pilgrims climbed the steps on their knees.

Wild flowers on the hillside.

Almost there.

The flag of Cornwall.

The site belongs to the National Trust at present, but the family is still in residence. There are great views from the castle. The tour includes several furnished rooms and the chapel.


A terrace with the flagpole.

The causeway beginning to emerge from the water.

The chapel, I assume that's St. Michael on the right.

The room to which the ladies retired after dinner.

The dining room itself.

After the castle proper, we walked down and did part of the gardens, which meant walking back up a different part of the hill. It is a very rocky rock garden. They had snow last winter for the first time in 30 years during a severe cold snap. There are photos of the snow. Many tender plants died from the unusual chill.


Garden plants and stones.

The garden  tour involves many steps.

Big succulent almost looks like a snail.

Onward to The Lizard at the end of the Lizard peninsula, the southern most point in Britain. The attraction there is Annie’s Pasty Shop for a meat and veggie combo wrapped in dough, a much-touted Cornish treat. We thought it was so-so at best, a drab calzone.


Pasty place.

We did a drive-by at Kynance Cove and then went on to Cadgewith. Cadgewith is a coastal town down steep road, we parked at car park at the top and walked down to the town, which was becoming a familiar MO. There are two harbor beaches separated by a rocky headland, thatched roofs, white houses, sheep on top of the hill, and a corrugated metal, blue church. We talked to a couple from Boston who were renovating an old house for a vacation get away. It’s a very long, long way from Beacon Hill.


Approaching Cadgewith from the hill, a tiny fishing village.

The harbor/beach on the right side. The other one had the boats.

Renovation on the left, thatched roof on the right, slate roof in the middle.

Thatched roof. Sheep pasture at the top.

Back in Penzance, we had dinner at the Cornish Barn and explored a bit more.


Here's a couple birds, Eurasian jackdaws and...

Eurasian blackbird with an orange eye ring.

Another pub on Chapel St. in Penzance.

Also a Chapel St. hotel.

Maybe there are pirates here.

Cornwall II.

5-3-18 PENZANCE, CORNWALL, UNITED KINGDOM: After our first English breakfast at Chapel House, our B & B, on Chapel St., we set off for St. Ives on the north coast of Cornwall only a few miles away from Penzance.


St. Mary's church on the left and Chapel House, in brick, on the right, our window is the top one. The church site is the location of the oldest church in the region with remnants remaining in the church yard.

St. Ives rises up a steep hill from the water. We parked at the top in a big lot and walked down to the center. There are row houses, narrow twisting streets, old stone buildings, churches, the waterfront, a farmers market and a big boathouse for the rescue boat. They go out in the worst weather and storms to rescue ships in distress.


Looking down on St. Ives from the top of the hill.

Chimney pots, the Celtic Sea and St. Ives harbor.

The Three Ferrets pub.

Ruddy turnstone at the waterfront along with lots of herring gulls.

Typical stone Cornish church with square tower.

Weather vane atop the boathouse.

After St. Ives we headed west on the coastal road looking for Gurnards Head in Zennor. The road is sometimes as wide as two lanes, sometimes not, very curvy and up and down over ridges and valleys. It gets narrow when it wends its way through farms. All the farm buildings are stone and packed together amid the fields and pastures. There was also moorland with granite outcrops and yellow gorse and wild flowers. We had lunch at the Gurnards Head Hotel after a walk down to the headland through cow pastures and over stiles.


Moors, pasture and fields, and ocean on a hazy day.

The Gurnards Hotel.

Stiles let humans cross fence lines but not cows.

Trees show where the prevailing wind comes from, the west.

Gurnards Head, that tiny pink dot is a hiker.

Then it was back on narrow winding, winding road past moors, ocean, stone farms, to St. Just and to Lands End, the westernmost point of Britian.


The center of St. Just with a stone pub in front of a stone church.

Moving on we passed through a tiny town, Crows An Wra, with a old old Celtic cross and stone road sign on our way to Carn Euny. Carn Euny is a Neolithic to Iron Age settlement ruin. There are large circles of stone and sod, maybe six, that were covered with thatched roofs. The circles are all about four feet high. There is an old well. The whole site is about two acres. Access is by a footpath through the woods after a long drive down a one-lane road, two-way, but one lane. The road runs through crossroad towns and farms.


Crows An Wra with old road sign, new road sign and old Celtic cross.

Fox weather vane on an old farm building.

Old farm. That slate rood needs work. The road is part of the farm.

Carn Euny has circles made of stone and sod that were the walls of stone age houses.

Here's the road to Carn Euny.

We went through Newlyn and Mouse Hole on the way back to back to Penzance.


Low tide at Mouse Hole. Cornwall has a big tidal excursion.

We had dinner, after our naps, at Shore restaurant, which was excellent, followed by a little more walking around Penzance.

Cornwall I.

5-2-18 PENZANCE, CORNWALL, UNITED KINGDOM: We flew from EWR Tuesday evening, got a little sleep on the plane, waited in an interminable line to get through passport control, found Avis and our rental, dialed the address into the GPS, and headed southwest away from Heathrow.

The trip was good, 300 miles or so, except for an hour lost to a closure on the M5 that had us wandering around Devon for a while. Sitting on the right side of the car and driving on the left side of the road is an adventure.

We got to Penzance, checked in and collapsed until dinner. More about the town, B & B, and restaurant later.


The view from our room at Chapel House on Chapel St. That's Penzance Harbor with lots of sailboats.

Also from our room, Saint Michael's Mount is built on a granite outcrop in the harbor. It's cut off from the mainland at high tide. Doesn't that sound like someplace else not too far from here?

Judy on Chapel St. after our dinner at Black's Restaurant.

Old stone church on the waterfront.

Back in March.

4-30-18 SHORT HILLS: Today is nasty, in the low forties with a brisk, cold wind and scattered showers—I’m staying inside. It’s like early March even though the calendar says tomorrow is Uno de Mayo.

Yesterday I cleaned up branch debris on the road, pruned along the road, pruned in the bed under the living room windows, raked up the sweet gum tree seed balls once again, and dumped it all in the compost area. That was after we got back from a brunch with Anna and Gardner in NYC.

Tomorrow we go to the UK for a week of driving around Cornwall and looking at quaint.

New blooms: quince, apple, boxwood.


Quince, a shrub usually with a red flower, but in white resembles the other fruits.

Grape hyacinth is a cluster of little bells, another spring ephemera.

Apple resembles quince above and pear below.

Boxwood is an evergreen shrub with inconspicuous flowers.

Pear has been out for a while. Pear and apple are trees, of course, as is the Yoshino cherry I showed a few weeks ago.