Gwendolyn's Birthday

Gwendolyn had her sixth birthday on the 21 June! It was a different kind of birthday for her. In the US, she is always out of school for the summer holiday, and often we are travelling on her birthday. Here, school is still in session. She had a great attitude about it and was excited to go to school on her birthday.

She started the day with her favorite breakfast: soft-boiled eggs and toy soldiers. She also opened presents: there is plenty of time in the mornings here because school doesn’t begin until 9:00.

Kids in the UK wear buttons on their birthday showing their age. Here you can see that she’s proud to show off her button.

And, of course, her big sister is happy for Gwendolyn's big day.

Christine baked cupcakes for the Year 1 and 2 students in Gwendolyn’s class. Gwendolyn was happy to share them. After school, the fun continued. Gwendolyn had swimming lessons at the St. Mellion Pool, as did Rebecca. I even went along, which was a treat for them since I’m not a big fan of swimming. Their grandfather, Bill Lail, also went along: he was in town visiting.

We finished up the evening with Gwendolyn’s favorite dinner: tofu and greens over udon noodles with a peanut butter drizzle. Here I am with a wok-ful of spinach.

While Christine and I were cooking, the girls had a raucous game of cards with their grandfather.

And the evening ended with more cupcakes!

Gwendolyn’s party was on the Sunday after her birthday at the Donkey Park in Metherell, scene of a winter trip with Rebecca and her friends. The Donkey Park is a donkey sanctuary that also has indoor and outdoor playgrounds. Kids around here love to go there. Gwendolyn took three of her friends from school (L to R: Niamh, birthday girl Gwendolyn, Rebecca 2, Rebecca 1, and Nancy) and her big sister.

The best place for the girls, according to them, is the indoor playground

because it has a near-vertical slide,

a jungle-gym vertical maze to climb around on,

toy tractors to drive, and, given that this is a donkey sanctuary, donkeys to groom.

Gwendolyn was always on the move, but I was able to get at least part of her in a picture as she sped by me.

Here’s a close-up of Gwendolyn and Niamh. They’re definitely having fun.

We all came back to the cottage after about three hours at the park for some crafts and cupcakes. The girls had a great time making mobiles.

Rebecca did a great job helping to corral the girls. She was a good sport, too. Our car could only fit Gwendolyn and her friends, so Rebecca and I had to walk the mile to the park. We ran back on the way home (fortunately downhill!) so that we wouldn’t miss any of the fun.

We finished up with some cupcakes. Gwendolyn was exhausted, but had a great day.

Surfing in Polzeath

The “juniors” at Harrowbarrow Primary, Years 3 though 6, had their annual outing to Polzeath, Cornwall, for surfing lessons last Saturday. We all went along, but Rebecca was the only one to surf. Polzeath is on the north coast of Cornwall about an hour’s drive from Harrowbarrow.

Rebecca’s teacher, Mark Goodright, grew up surfing in this seaside village, and he has been teaching his students to surf here ever since joining the Harrowbarrow Primary faculty. The students were fully kitted up by the Surfs Up! Surf School,

including boards and wetsuits. Wetsuits are a necessity given water temperatures of 13.4 °C (56 °F)! There was a good contingent of 22 students participating in the trip,

and Rebecca was excited for the opportunity. It’s definitely not a trip that a school in western North Carolina would do - it's too far to the beach! Maybe Hatteras School in Buxton? There it is probably part of the PE curriculum!

Gwendolyn was too young to participate in the surfing lessons, but she did have a classmate, Rebecca, to play with.

We had time to kill, so Christine, Gwendolyn, and I all rented full-body wetsuits and a bodyboard.

You can see behind us in the picture above that the beach is incredibly flat at this site. It took almost ten minutes just to get to the surf at low tide because the tides were extreme due to spring tidal conditions. Given the chance of rain and the need to stand in the waves to view the surfing, we didn’t take our camera close enough to get pictures of the surfing.

Polzeath is an ideal place to learn to surf as the flatness of the beach produces a consistent stream of small waves. Unfortunately, the day that we were there a continual cross wind of about 20 mph made the waves unpredictable. Still, I saw Rebecca get up on her board several times. She lasted about ten seconds each time, much better than I did the one time I tried to surf! Finally, though, the cold water and getting hit in the head by the surf board took their toll and she was done for the day. I was proud of her. Surfing is a tough thing to do, and she was very brave taking it on, especially when viewing the roughness of the surf and hearing the roar of the waves.

The girls’ favorite part of the day was the beach time that they spent with their friend, Anie, who has appeared in this blog twice before. They must have spent two or three hours digging in the sand, which gave Christine and I plenty of time to bodyboard.

We hope to return to Polzeath over the next six weeks or so for more beach fun! Gwen obviously missed the cue to look up, but I wanted to get a picture of the whole family in here.

Summer Half-Term Day Trip #4 - Lydford Gorge & Brentor

Our final half-term secret outing was also somewhat close to home. Christine and Rebecca surprised me and Gwendolyn with a trip to Lydford Gorge on the western edge of Dartmoor National Park.

This is also a National Trust property – our membership is paying off!

Here are our trip leaders, posing in front of a nice map of the gorge. Both Rebecca and Gwendolyn worked on their map-reading skills on this hike.

The National Trust has the hike set up as a three-mile loop. We started the walk at the main visitor centre and worked our way along the top of the ridge. We then had a picnic lunch, the girls, of course, had their ice cream,

and then we returned along the bottom of the gorge. As this sign shows, there are two main highlights in the park – Lydford Falls and the Devil’s Cauldron.

Lydford Falls is one of the biggest waterfalls in the South West. Coming from western North Carolina, it isn’t very big, but it was nice to see a 90-foot waterfall. This whole gorge reminded us of North Carolina.

After the falls we made our way upstream along the river,

which in a couple of places had sheer drops to the water.

The girls did a great job through here and didn’t flinch on the thin, wet, and slippery path that has been carved into the rock.

Rebecca even led us the whole way through. Here are Christine and the girls after a particularly tough stretch.

Little did we know that the best was yet to come. The Devil’s Cauldron portion of the gorge lives up to its name. Here, the gorge became even narrower. So narrow, in fact, that we could touch both sides at the same time! In the next picture you may be able to see the stairs leading down into the thinnest part. I say “may be able to see” because on this trip I was still in camera purgatory. Great geology, again, and a poor substitute for a legitimate camera.

Not only was it narrow, but the stream plunged its way down through this thin opening in the rocks. There were also plenty of Christine’s favorite geological features: pot holes! Pictures just cannot do justice to how cool this section of the gorge is.

We were impressed with Lydford Gorge, to say the least. The girls had had their treat, so Christine and I decided to have one as well. We left the park and headed for the small village of Lydford, which boasts a fine 16^th Century pub, The Castle Inn,

a castle right next door, as the name suggests,

and an old church.

Our day was almost finished, but there was one more stop. I requested a two-mile detour on the way home in order to visit Brentor, scene of some more great geology and an interesting church. I first learned of Brentor back in March when Christine and I did our second Dartmoor hike. As we were looking west from a high spot during that walk, I noticed a tall mound of rock with a building on top that resembled a castle. Upon further inquiry, I discovered that it was Brentor and that the building is a church, not a castle. Here is a view of Brentor.

The information signs at the car park pointed to more interesting information regarding the church. Like Mont St. Michel in France and St. Michael’s Mount in western Cornwall (more on our visit there in the next post), the church at the top of Brentor is dedicated to St. Michael and is called St. Michael de Rupe, or St. Michael of the Rock.

Our landlord, Liz, told me that in the 13^th Century a rich merchant who shipwrecked in Plymouth Sound looked up, saw Brentor in the distance, and, inspired by churches at Mt. St. Michel and St. Michael’s Mount, decided to pay for a church dedicated to St. Michael on that tor. Brentor certainly is noticeable from a distance. I was waiting for the train at the station in Gunnislake this morning. I looked across the tracks, and there it was in the distance. Here is a view from near the top, showing how it rises above the surrounding landscape.

I climbed up ahead of the girls and Christine and you can see them far below me.

The rocks comprising this peak are also interesting. Unlike the rest of Dartmoor National Park, which lies on granitic bedrock, the mound at Brentor is made up of pillow basalts. Basalt is a form of lava – think lava flows in Hawaii. This particular basalt, however, forms little “pillows” as it extrudes underwater, sort of like a tube of toothpaste being squeezed.  Here is a view of a “pillow”

and here are the girls enjoying the basalts.

Finally, a parting shot of the Church of St. Michael de Rupe.

That was the final installment of the Half-Term Hijinx. Next, it’s on to the Penwith Peninsula for the final weekend of half term!

Summer Half-Term Day Trip #3 - Morwellham Quay

Our third half-term outing was close to home. Gwendolyn and I teamed up for a trip to Morwellham Quay, a 19^th-Century-era mining town that is being restored as part of the Cornwall and WestDevon Mining Landscape UNESCO World Heritage site. Morwellham Quay, which was once one of the busiest ports in Britain, exporting copper from the mines in this area, lies on the River Tamar in Devon, just across the river from Calstock, where I grab the bus home from work.

Morewellham Quay has been turned into a living history museum, and we’ve been wanted to visit it since we arrived but have been holding out for better weather. An added bonus for our visit is its proximity to us – it was only a 15-minute drive!

Perhaps the highlight of Morewellham Quay, and certainly our family favorite, was the chance that we had to take a train into an old mine. The trip lasts about an hour and works its way about a mile through the bedrock. Our train driver

gave us some good stories about life in the mines. We enjoyed travelling on the train.

Here is the mine shaft that we travelled through.

The staff at the museum are restoring the tracks that used to take the mined materials down to the River Tamar

in these old mining cars.

From here, the ore would travel to Wales, where there was coal to run the steam engines necessary for processing the ore. This was the reason that the port was so busy.

Much of Morewellham Quay celebrates life in Victorian times, although activity at the mine and in the village lasted into the mid-1900s. The girls had a lot of fun dressing up in Victorian costumes.

Even Christine and I got in on the action.

I think that Rebecca’s favorite activity was the Victorian school. We were able to sit through a 30-minute lesson covering typical Victorian themes, including reading, copper-plate writing, arithmetic, religion, drill, collage, and object. There was also a lot of discipline. Here, Gwendolyn volunteered to wear a dunce cap. Unfortunately we had yet to replace our broken camera. This was taken with the girls’ iPod and is a bit unclear, but you’ll get the idea.

Morwellham Quay was also the site of the 2010 BBC television show Edwardian Farm.

In this show, a couple of archaeologists and an historian moved to the village and farmed using Edwardian (1901-1910, named after the reign of King Edward VII) methods for a year. They had previously done a Victorian-era show, Victorian Farm, and this was a sequel. The historian, Ruth Goodman, lived in a house, now called Ruth's Cottage, in the village.

We were able to tour around the outside

and look at some of the rooms, including the bedroom

and a children’s bedroom. The girls were particularly impressed with the chamber pot beneath the bed.

The farm lies at the other end of the museum and it is where the two archaeologists, Peter Ginn and Alex Langlands, worked for a year. It is a pretty little farm. The work horses from the TV show still live there. Here, one sticks out its head from the barn.

The barns have been fixed up nicely,

and the farm is still actively raising sheep, cattle, pigs, and chickens

in addition to growing crops. We’re looking forward to watching Edwardian Farm on video when we return home in August.

Only one more half-term surprise trip to go!