Lands End, Minack theatre, Penzance, St Michaels Mount

The day following the wedding some of us headed off for a look around the South Western part of Cornwall. We started by heading down to Lands End at the far South Western end of the mainland of the United Kingdom.

After looking at the miniature houses (the second of which is the Tintagel post office, pictured in an earlier post),

we enjoyed looking out over the beautiful coastline and doing the obligatory standard tourist shots.

They even have a sign here which they will manually adjust (for a fee) to include your home town.

We also got an excellent view of a Royal Navy Rescue helicopter.

The Minack theatre has a beautiful vista with theatre goers watching a play with the ocean in the background. We unfortunately timed it badly and weren’t able to go into the theatre.

We stopped in Penzance for lunch, where I had some excellent Fried Pilchards and Jane had a generously filled Lobster tail ciabatta.

In case you’re interested, there is also a Guinness World Record attempt for the most pirates in one place on June 26th. Tom’s head was the perfect size for this shot.

Just down the road, St Michaels Mount emerges from the sea. We took the boat across since the tide was in. An hour later and we apparently could have walked back via the causeway.

Janna and Ants -The Wedding

Our travel plans to this part of the world only began once we had friends getting married in St Agnes. We are grateful to have been able to share their special day with them and to meet up with lots of people we had heard about and renew existing friendships. We also wouldn’t have got to Cornwall, and are very happy that we have had the opportunity to do some exploring in the region; there is so much to do and we would happily return.

The wedding was held at the main church in the centre of town at St Agnes, where bell ringers rung the bells prior to and following the wedding for all to hear that something was happening.

I really liked having some live music at the wedding, with Christian playing the guitar and harmonica and singing. He was superb.

Buses took guests out to the wedding breakfast that was held at a lovely estate about 15 minutes away. The newly weds had made their own travel arrangements.

Starting with a Pimms & lemonade (or at least that’s what we think it was) with strawberries and mint was a nice and refreshing way to start the afternoon.

The weather held out and there were races outside and the speeches occurred out there also, which were all superb.

At the breakfast we got to meet relations and friends at the table we were seated at and enjoy a lovely meal; the green chicken curry in particular was beautifully tender and flavoursome.

The first dance, reminiscent of that famous scene from Dirty Dancing, was a spectacle to behold and it will inevitably be up on YouTube by now.

Congratulations again Janna and Ants (or should I say Jants) and all the best for the future! Thank you so much for allowing us to share your day with you.

Healey’s Cornish Cyder Farm (cider + cornish tea), Cornwall

We headed out to Healey’s Cornish Cyder farm (yes it is spelt Cyder here, not Cider) in Truro yesterday morning with Jesse and Judith and tasted a variety of their cyders.

The Scrumpy cyders are all not bubbly and in terms of non-bubbly cyder it just doesn’t taste right to me (maybe I just need to drink more). Jane & I particularly liked the Pear Rattler, which is a bubbly apple cider with pear juice added.

We walked through a doorway and had a Cornish Tea which is very similar to Devonshire Tea and consisted of scones (normal or cyder based), jam and a “gurt dollop of clotted cream”. Having looked up gurt afterwards there are many definitions, but “generous” seems to be the most appropriate here. As for the clotted cream and scones, they tasted great.

Tintagel to St Agnes via Bodmin Moor and Padstow

After breakfast this morning we drove across to Jamaica Inn in the Bodmin Moor, referred to by historians as Cornwall's most famous smuggling inn. We found a geocache here and extracted a couple of trackables.

We didn’t actually know what a Moor was, but as it turns out this one is a green open landscape with some rocks scattered amongst it that is at a higher altitude than it’s surroundings.

Padstow was our lunch destination, and on our way we only got stuck in one small town for 15 mins, as we thought we’d try to be smart and avoid some traffic.As it turns out the smarter thing to do would have been to continue like sheep.

Padstow is a lovely little seaside town that is over-run with tourists.

We had fish and chips on the waterfront in Padstow,

then wandered around a little an coming across one of Rick Stein’s many places, and some beautiful little alley ways.

Narrow lanes where it only wide enough for one vehicle (or barely enough for two) comprised the remainder of our journey down the coast, through Newquay and eventually to St Agnes where we caught up with lots of friends for dinner at the St Agnes Hotel, most of which were from New Zealand.