Just Another Blog: 30th Birthday: Surprise number three: Cornwall!

On Thursday the 13th, I opened some presents. Birthdays are great.

We spent the day in and around Bristol, and at lunch I found out the third surprise - a trip to Cornwall for a long weekend. Hooray!

Cornwall is a county at the far Southwestern tip of England. We stayed in St. Ives, known for its artistic community, which is about three and a half hours from Clevedon. Mark had rented a house for the weekend - here is the street we were on, just above the harbor:

It was a nice house and well located. When we weren't out and about, we hung out there, playing a game that Mark and I introduced Mom and Dad to, called Carcassonne. It may be making an appearance at Christmas, so here is a preview:

We spent the first day walking around St Ives, which has some nice views.

And further proof that Dad I tend to photograph the same things - here's Dad's:

and here's mine:

We visited the Tate St Ives. We actually didn't tour the galleries, but we did visit the balcony cafe area, which has a really lovely view. Here is a picture of Dad taking a picture from there:

And here is the picture he took:

The next day we drove around and saw some stuff that's around St. Ives. We visited St. Michael's Mount - the British version of the abbey on the hill that Mark and I recently visited in France (known there as Mont St Michel - those crazy French!).

Apparently they filmed Twelfth Night here - for which they painted this fake map on the side of a building, which is still there. I took a picture in case Julie and Tony had seen the film when studying interpretations of Shakespeare:

It's a nice place, though smaller than the French one. The buildings were closed because it was out of season, but we walked around the open bit. Like the one in France, it's built out a ways from the land, so when the tide comes in, the causeway is covered and it becomes an island.

We also saw some wildlife:

We visited Land's End, the Westernmost tip of the island. They weren't selling down vests and fleece jackets there, though they did want to charge us to take our picture with the famous signpost that points to New York and John O'Groats (the northernmost point of the island). So we just took our picture with it anyway, just not quite standing next to it. (Mark is grumpy in that picture because he is still mad that they were charging people to take their picture next to it.)

Here we are at the actual end of the land. Mom was having a cup of tea in a warm place at this point.

Here is Dad contemplating Land's End.

Here is me having fun with my tripod. I love my Gorillapod and I used it a lot!

We also went to Sennen Cove, which is nicer than Land's End, but very close by, and a good place for surfing.

The next day, we started heading north again, stopping at Tintagel, the fabeled birthplace, or conception place, or something, of King Arthur. Whether Arthur was born there or not, a castle did exist there, and there are still some ruins. Here I'm standing where they thought the bathroom had been:

And this is the view from there. They may have lived a long time ago, but they definitely already knew about "location, location, location!" To give you a sense of scale, Mom is the red dot in this picture - you may have to load the full-sized one to see her!

We also stopped in Lynmouth, a nice village on the north coast of Devon. We had a proper Devon Cream Tea, which is basically scones, strawberry jam and Devonshire cream, a kind of cross between heavy cream and butter. Yum!

Then we stopped at the Hunter's Inn for the night - a lodge on the north Devon coast that we took Dad to the last time he was here. It's really cozy and right on the coast, with a nice walk to Heddon's Mouth, the place where a river (not sure which) joins the sea.