Trip to Cornwall

A view from the walk to our hotel, St. Ives

Wow, it's been a while since I posted anything to the Oxford Omnibus.  Sorry for the gap -- guess I've been having too much fun!  I'll try to catch up...

Last week, my friend Sandra and I ventured down to Cornwall for a 3-night stay at St. Ives.  St. Ives is on the northern side of the Cornish peninsula; Penzance, a larger town, is on the southside.  We had wanted to stay in Penzance, but had problems finding a room, so we settled for St. Ives.  It turned out to be a great choice.  St. Ives is a quaint resort beach town, with lots of shops, galleries and restaurants.  The part of Penzance we saw looked more like a London neighborhood, with its standard shops:  Curry’s Electronics, Tesco, Peacock’s, etc.,  and an Oxfam store, of course.  I’m sure if we’d ventured further from the harbor we’d have seen more scenic views, but there wasn't time.

We stayed at the Porthminster Hotel, a.k.a., the St. Ives Harbour Hotel, an old hotel that sits perched high above one of St. Ives's many beaches.  We had a great room with a view of a beautiful beach.



View from our hotel room

The Porthminster Hotel

On our second day in St. Ives, we took an all-day sightseeing bus tour around the peninsula, from St. Ives, to Land's End, then Penzance, then back to St. Ives.  We didn't get out at Land's End (we would have been stuck there for 3 hours), but here's a shot I took at Sennen Cove, a beautiful beach just before Land's End.

 

The third day of our stay, we decided to go back to one of the sites we'd seen on the bus tour:  St. Michael's Mount, which is situated on a small island just off the shore by the town of Marizion (near Penzance).  This is a very interesting historic site, now owned by the National Trust.  It's a castle and a church, with architecture dating back to the 12th century.  You get there by boat -- unless the tide's out, in which case you can walk.  The tide goes out around 4:15pm, so it didn't work out for us to walk.



St. Michael's Mount

The walk up to the castle is not for sissies.  The steps start out as cobblestone paths, then then morph into laid stone walkways, and at the end they're just rocks.  We really got our exercise!

Once at the top, we got to tour the castle.  The St. Aubyn family still lives there; this family has owned the castle for centuries.  Of course we didn't go in their living quarters -- but there was still plenty to see.

View from high atop the castle, looking down at the gardens. Those are people down there!



Dining Room inside castle; those are "folding" chairs.  They're called Glastonbury chairs.  These are reproductions.

We spent the whole day on St. Michael's then headed back to St. Ives for a meal at the Sloop, one of the pubs on the beach.  My fish and chips were great!

Our last morning, we walked through the streets of St. Ives and visited the museum, which is filled to the brim with local history.  St. Ives was once a thriving fishing village.  Not much of that left now.  Now it's a tourist mecca.  Even though the weather was not so warm, the place was crowded; can't image what it's like in the summer!



One of the quaint, narrow streets of St. Ives.  Note: This was taken around 7pm; most of the tourists were at the pubs by then!



Footnote:  Thanks to Sandra for most of the photos; I left my camera at home that day!