A Visit from Bill Lail

One of the highlights of June for us was a visit from my stepfather, Bill Lail (lots of Bills in this family!), also known as “Papa.”  He was able to arrange an 11 day visit, so we were able to show him a lot of Cornwall while he was here.  He quickly understood why we like it so much.  He also had the opportunity to do several day trips on his own, including a tour of Plymouth via the Tamar Valley Train Line, a lovely walk to Chimney Rock on the Devon side of the Tamar River near Gunnislake, and a full tour of Cotehele by taking the 79 bus to Calstock and walking from there. 

Papa stayed at the Tavistock Arms Hotel in Gunnislake, which has a full restaurant, pub with bar meals, a local jam session on Thursday nights, a small town to explore, and access to the bus and train lines.  I think it suited his needs very well. 

Here is a map of the highlights of Papa’s visit, made by my favorite cartographer and travel writer.

Bill met Papa at the train station in Plymouth after he arrived from London and they commuted home together.  The girls and I met them at the Gunnislake train station with lots of smiles and hugs.  We spent that first afternoon and evening showing Papa around Harrowbarrow and our cottage and “garden”.  It was a wonderful reunion.

The next day Bill went to work while I took Papa to the picturesque town of Tavistock, one of our favorites. It was 14 June, Flag Day back in the States, and my mother’s birthday.  We toured the church, and Papa noticed a sign on an arch in the church grounds that said Abbey Cloisters.

This reminded him of the abbey in his hometown of Belmont, NC, where he and my mother got married in 1977—a touching memory for him on that day, especially.  Here is an expanded view of the architectural feature.

Both of us liked the church tower with its clock.  We enjoyed looking around the inside of the church as well.

It was a pretty day.  We had fun window shopping and walking along the River Tavy, and we had lunch at Donellas, a cafe Bill and I had discovered on one of our Friday dates.

Evenings were spent in our little cottage. The girls had a lot of fun playing with Papa while we cooked dinner. 

The next day Bill joined us for a short trip.  We decided to take Papa to Launceston (pronounced by the locals as ‘Lan-son’), the ancient capital of Cornwall, to see its castle and the Lawrence House Museum, a history museum I’ve wanted to see.   I like this picture of him in the gateway to the castle grounds with the attractive Guild Hall building behind him.

The castle is in ruins now, but English Heritage has done an excellent job with their interpretive panels and historical information.  We spent a really enjoyable hour or so touring the grounds and the ruins.

Bill insists on taking pictures of me at every site we go to.  I’m flattered really, despite the nose crinkle. (I like the nose crinkle. - Editor)

Bill took this picture from the top of the keep of Papa and me to show how tall the keep is.  The holes in the walls would have held wooden floor beams; there were three levels to this keep. The walls would have even been whitewashed.  While we’ve been here we’ve learnt to imagine castles as they were in their heyday; reading Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett has helped as well. 

The views from the top were excellent and showed both the Tamar Valley and Dartmoor in the distance. If you look closely you may even be able to see Brentor with the Church of St. Michael of the Rock at the top in the upper right of the picture.

Launceston is also well-known for its intricately-carved granite Church of St. Mary Magdalene, which was completed in 1524 and sports an old clock on the tower.

Here it is from the front.

The church is adorned with carvings in its granite exterior all over its façade. The most famous part of the carvings is the recumbent image of St. Mary Magdalene.

We finished our day in Launceston with an excellent lunch in the Brasserie Jericho on the first floor of the old Liberal Club building.

The food was excellent. It was nice to see that such good food could be found in a non-touristy part of Cornwall!

Bill stayed home on Thursday and accompanied Papa and I to Restormel Castle, an impressive keep originally constructed in 1100 to protect the valley of the River Fowey. It was a very cold and rainy day, and surprisingly, Bill forgot his rain jacket! Fortunately, the English Heritage reception had loaner umbrellas for us to use.Here is the castle, surprisingly constructed of shale, a rock not known to be particularly strong.

This castle has a moat around it that is still in place but lacking in water.

The inside of the castle was fairly large, with an array of rooms around the outside walls. You can see in the next picture where the wood beams would have been placed to support the wooden floors. Again, our reading of Pillars of the Earth helped us to understand how this building would have been used.

Papa accompanied us to Polzeath for the Juniors Surfing Trip, which we’ve already blogged about. Sunday was Father’s Day, and we decided to go to Cotehele and walk to the Tamar Inn in Calstock for a traditional Sunday Roast dinner to celebrate. Here are Bill and Rebecca getting some father-daughter time.

The walk from Cotehele Quay to Calstock is lovely, and we took advantage of the good weather. It was so much nicer than the day we went to Restormel! The public footpath follows the River Tamar and is nicely wooded.

Here are the fathers with the Calstock Viaduct in the background,

and here is a close-up of the bridge itself: such a landmark for the region!

The food at the Tamar Inn is great. Bill had a mushroom & nut roast with onion gravy, roasted potatoes and roasted vegetables. This may sound like the ‘strange’ food that Gwendolyn requested for her birthday to some of you, but it’s actually very tasty. Rebecca had her first ever cheddar ploughman.

Here are Gwendolyn and Papa. He didn’t opt for the mushroom and nut roast!

Here is Bill with his two girls. It was a great lunch and a great way to spend Father's Day!

After walking back to Cotehele Quay, we, of course, had to get some ice cream. We also were happy to see that the old river barge, the Shamrock, was open to the public, so we went aboard. This ship used to transport manure up and down the river, but now it is nice and clean (and not smelly!). It appears in the picture below that the boat is grounded, but this just means that it is low tide – the River Tamar is tidal all the way up here. If you look closely you can see Rebecca and me.

The whole ship was open, including the areas below deck. Here’s Rebecca poking back up from below.

Papa wanted to see the legendary Dartmoor National Park after reading about it in so many books over the years, so the next day he and I headed to Tavistock and then the park itself. We ended up going to the carpark for the Great Mis Tor and did the hike that Bill and I had to abandon way back in January due to the wind and cold. Our ultimate destination is the peak in the distance.

It was a bit chilly, but we succeeded in completing the hike up to the tor. Here’s Papa on the trail

and standing next to a standing stone, one of perhaps thousands in the park.

We finally did make it to the tor.

The next day was Gwendolyn’s birthday, which has already been described in the blog, and the day after a field trip with Gwendolyn’s class to the Monkey Sanctuary in Looe. Bill also left town for two more days of field work in Hallsands. The last day trip that I did with Papa was to visit the Eden Project, one of my favorite places in Cornwall. Here is Papa standing in front of one of the biomes. The white building in the foreground is where the Eden Project hosts concerts. We were lucky to see the Fleet Foxes there at the beginning of July.

It has been fun for me to visit and revisit the park throughout the various seasons that we’ve been here. It is so lush now compared to our first visit back in February.

A new thing that I was able to do this time was to climb up to the viewing platform in the Rainforest Biome.

The views up here at the top of the dome were excellent. Here is the waterfall

and a view down to the palm trees and the stream.

Papa and I had a nice lunch in their newly-renovated café. Cornwall had massive rains in November and the café was flooded – this was my first chance to eat here.

Here is a parting shot of the great colors at the Eden Project.

That was it for Papa’s visit. I took him to the Gunnislake train station the next morning, Bill’s point of departure each day on his commute to Plymouth.

This station is known as the “station of tears” as it has seen its share of farewells as miners left the Tamar Valley for other mining areas – the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Tasmania, and a number of points in between. We’ll soon be adding our own tears to this history.

Goodbye Papa!