day 1
The day dawned sunny and clear which I am sure was a mistake as Em and I were embarking on Bimble 2 Son of bimble! We loaded the car up, said goodbye to the cat and started to drive due south. Once we'd apologised to the neighbours for ploughing up their flower bed with the car we decided to use the roads instead. We scudded through the sunny Welsh countryside with the temperature creeping up as the mileometer ticked over. Soon we were crossing the border into Eng-ger-land, that dark and fabled place full of mythical beasts and other pop factor idol rejects.
We turned south and met with my Uncle peter for lunch in his place in Bristol. Full of homemade bread and delicious pork pies we headed back out just in time for the weather to turn dark and wet but against all prior experience and the laws of God and man it stayed at what I can only describe as oven-interior levels.
We headed through Devon and then onto Cornwall where our first nights stay was located which is a 13th century inn that had previously been a chapel and many other things. I could be wrong but I think they might have decorated it since then. The upstairs bedrooms are light and airy and feel a couple of years old at most. However the downstairs two rooms are slate floored with nooks and alcoves for drinkers a distinct lack of jukeboxes and alcopops. Beer snob heaven in fact.
We took a walk out to the coastal path that loops around Cornwall and heads down along most of the south coast. I'm thinking about trying to walk the whole distance someday but I think that might be a daydream like walking up Everest or watersking behind two tame killer whales. i.e. fun to think about but the logistics would be a nightmare.
The road past the pub heads to a vicarage and teamrooms and stops dead. That's it. There's no through road, it ends appropriately enough just before the rolling countryside plunges about two hundred foot directly into the sea. The cliffs and sand are satanic,... sorry volcanic, black but apparently only few miles further towards the tip they turn a lovely golden yellow and are therefore more popular.
I found them very striking and incredibly visually arresting. I obviously wasn't the only one as this was where Hawkers hut was located. It's the smallest property in national trust hands and is essential a series of small steps down what would be a nigh-on sheer cliff. when you've dropped a handful of feet the steps level out into a small area and there's a small hut made of a driftwood that you can sit in in all weather and gaze out to see. The original priestly resident of the vicarage I mentioned was a poet and a friend of Coleridges and every day after attending to his vicarly duties he'd walk from the church to the edge of the cliff and sit in the hut he'd made and write poetry. Oh and smoke opium. I'm pretty sure the smoking of opium was important in the whole writing poetry side of things.
By now the pangs of hunger for Em and the my thirst demon had kicked in so we wandered over the gorgeous meadows and little country lane back to our pub. The guidebook states that with no jukebox conversation is the main form of entertainment in the pub and damn were they right! We chatted to one guy about his dog and how the cafe on top of Snowdon had been tastefully changed from the portocabin he remembered another guy at the bar chimed in about how Bugle is the armpit of Cornwall and should be avoided at all cost, and then we chatted for a couple of hours to a mother from Sheffield who was on holiday with her university student daughter about all the stuff they've seen while they've been down here.
A simple meal of bread and olives, fish/scampi and chips and cheese platter/brownie followed washed down with a few pints of excellent St Austell Ale, their 'Tribute' being my personal favourite. after a few more hours and random conversations we descended into the arms of Morpheus to see what spectacular sights he would bid us hold. (I think there might have been some residual opium left in that hut!
