More Cornish Coast

I continue to enjoy my time here in Cornwall. I will actually wind up staying here a little longer than I originally planned - I just booked my onward ferry, and it was a choice between leaving a day early and staying two extra days, and I chose the two extra days. Not only because I like it here, but also because if I took the earlier ferry, it meant either attempting to catch a bus or find a hotel in France when I arrived at 10 PM, and after my experience in Cardiff, I opted for an overnight ferry which will arrive at a French port at a very manageable 8:00 AM.

One of the items on my "to-do" list in Cornwall has been to go down to Land's End, because apparently the scenery there is very beautiful and I hear there's an outlet store. However, for the second day in a row, I managed to miss the bus that would take me there, mostly because I keep forgetting which day it is, which presents a problem when confronted with bus schedules. (Also, I think I will mail home the bus schedules at some point here because they are just so ridiculous that I want to keep them - when I purchased my bus pass, I was given two books, each probably 75 pages in length, of bus timetables. One is the "actual" bus schedule and the other is the "winter amendment." I have to consult them both to catch a bus - and these are only for about six towns in the Southwest of Cornwall. This may shed some light on my lack of understanding regarding the Land's End bus.)

Yesterday when I realized that I had missed the bus and another one wasn't coming for two hours (and it was beginning to rain), I just gave up, went back to my guest house, and read The Forsyte Saga for the rest of the day. Today, as I watched the bus go by in the opposite direction while I walked to the bus station, I decided that I would have to find somewhere else to go. (Shelley: luckily I was in the middle of town and not on some ridiculous hilltop.)

I settled on going to St. Ives, which is a popular seaside resort (and artist's colony). It is on the Atlantic side of the peninsula - Penzance is a bit more protected - I was promised the St Ives coastline would be much more dramatic.

I WAS able to catch the bus to St Ives, because that one comes every half hour. When we arrived, this was the view from the bus stop:

[click any picture to enlarge]

Apparently a key selling point of St Ives is that it has SANDY beaches - and the sand did look quite nice, though it was only about 50 degrees F so I didn't feel like doing any wading.

I walked around the town and along the boardwalk, there were some very pretty cottages and houses. I had a chicken and chorizo pasty for lunch, which was pretty good. I really struggled to decide between fish n'chips and pasty, and finally reasoned with myself that if I REALLY wanted fish n'chips, I could come back tomorrow.

Another interesting fact about Cornwall is that it's the surfing capital of the UK! Apparently the good surfing starts at St Ives and goes North up along the coast for a couple dozen miles, with Newquay as the epi-center. There were some surfers out in the water at St Ives - here is a picture I took of one:

Mat, the guy who runs the place I'm staying at, is pretty much a surf bum, it seems. He told me that St. Ives was, "...really nice, lots of artists and surfers and stuff, very laidback... quite like California, really." I just nodded and didn't disabuse him of his idea that California is "really nice" - I assume he's never been there.

Continuing along the coastline, I followed the Southwest Coastal Path for a little ways. IT WAS REALLY WINDY - so much so that my ears hurt. However, the promised dramatic scenery was definitely present!

Here is the beginning of the path, looking back towards St. Ives:

No surfers here - it looks really dangerous with a lot of rocks and swirling water!!

There were dramatic cliffs:

And a lot of big rocks:

The weather forecast called for rain around 3:00, so even though the day looked quite nice, I turned back at around 1:30 and walked back to St. Ives, where I caught my bus. Well done weather forecasters - it started to rain quite hard while I was on the bus!

When I got back to Penzance, I walked back to my hostel, stopping at Boots because my travel size toiletries have all run out.

Still on my Cornwall to do list:

• Lost Gardens of Heligan (get excited for more pictures of plants!!)
• LAND'S END
• Eat more fish (n'chips!)
• Rent a bicycle for a day and "just cycle round", as the Brits would say.