Goodbye Harrowbarrow!

The last week in Harrowbarrow was a busy time for all of us. The girls were finishing up school and saying goodbye to friends. Here they were before their last walk to school – no more walking to school once we get back to Green Valley!

The morning of the last day of school Christine and Liz, our landlord, hosted a tea party in the garden. It also functioned as a goodbye party for Christine and her friends. I was there, making tea and coffee for the 15 or so women who came over. We had a beautiful day so we set up in the garden behind our cottage. Christine and Liz both baked wonderful treats and snacks. Christine’s savory scones were a hit! I’m not surprised, because they are my favorite.

Our neighbor, Les Haylor, also came to the party. We’ll miss his friendly hellos and his excellent produce. He was one of the few true Cornishmen that we saw on a regular basis.

Next it was time to say goodbye to the O’Shea family. They were departing for a holiday in France after school was dismissed the next day. Erin loves to spend time with Rebecca. She was upset that they were going on holiday because she didn’t want to say goodbye to her buddy Rebecca. Rebecca has made great friends with many of the little girls in the village and at school. She is so good with them and they love the attention that she gives to them.

Gwendolyn and her friend Niamh had a great time laughing the entire evening. Gwendolyn is going to miss her buddy.

Christine and I are going to miss our good friends Paul and Bev, the parents of Erin and Niamh. We spent a good deal of time lobbying them to visit us in the US.

We also spent a good deal of time the last couple of weeks visiting with Steve and Liz Matcham, our landlords. We’ve written about them many times, and here they finally are for the first time in our blog. They were so kind and welcoming to us, introducing us to friends, getting us acquainted with life in the village, finding us health care (we are fans of the NHS!). I could go on and on. We are truly going to miss them.

While Christine and I were busy packing and getting the cottage cleaned, the girls spent a lot of time in the garden, jumping on the trampoline, swimming in the pool (yes, there is a small pool that Steve and Liz set up in the garden!), playing football, and most importantly, going to the shop to get ice creams. Here they are enjoying themselves in our garden.

Friday, July 29, was our last full day in Cornwall. The girls were treated to a day at Seaton Beach with Lisa Hartill and her children, Joe and Nancy. They had a great time and it gave us the chance to do our final packing and clean the cottage. I also had to deal with US Customs, who had held up delivery of my field equipment to ASU until I was able to fill out detailed paperwork. To do this required printing, signing, scanning, etc. It literally took a village, actually two, to find the right equipment to get this done, including the final scan at Phil Holman’s cottage in Metherell. We went there, of course, for our final ‘Friday night at the Carp’s’ pizza, and we were happy to be joined by a big group. The Gehrels, of course, were there

as were the Holmans, with whom we went hiking with on The Lizard, the Downings, and the Wherrys.

All of their kids were there, too. Surprisingly, they are all girls! Here they are ‘pulling’ funny faces.

It was sad to be saying goodbye to new and old friends. We have loved living close to Roland and Maria Gehrels and their daughter, Rosa. We can’t say enough about how much fun we had with them the past seven months. They are great friends. Here are Christine and Maria

and Roland and I having a final prost to our successful research project.

There were other friends of ours there that night, too. Our neighbor, Kate, and her daughter, Chloe, here pictured with Christine,

were there, as were our friends Rick and Bev, also Friday night regulars. We’ll miss our Friday night ritual!

We left for London on Saturday morning. Steve drove us to the Gunnislake train station. Fortunately, he has a large vehicle because we acquired an extra bag of items during our stay. We were very sad to have to say goodbye to Steve and Liz and a couple of other friends who stopped by to wish us well. The Gehrels met us at the station and rode to Plymouth with us.

Roland had offered to help us with our transfer of luggage between trains and Maria and Rosa came along for the ride. Rosa was quite excited to be on the train, especially with her buddy Rebecca.

Here is the rest of our crew. Goodbye Cornwall!

Mount Edgcumbe and the Rame Peninsula

My walking buddy Val and I decided to fit in one last long walk while the children were still in school. She suggested that we go to Mount Edgcumbe and the Rame Peninsula for a six mile circular walk. Rame Peninsula is just to the west of Plymouth, and the walk had spectacular views of the Plymouth area. Val and her family have walked here many times over the years, so she had a lot of information about the area to share with me. Here is the map of our route.

Mount Edgcumbe was the home of the Earls of Edgcumbe.  They were the same family who owned Cotehele as their “summer home.”  Their estate is expansive, varied and beautifully maintained.  Now a “country park,” it contains their large brick manor house, formal gardens, unique statuary, miles of trails, and even a former deer park where the Earls did their hunting.  We walked the perimeter of this estate on our walk.  Here is Val (posing under duress) in front of the Italian formal garden. 

The estate has a long shoreline and was vulnerable to attack by sea. Consequently, the family constructed a battery on its most exposed corner. 

The views of Plymouth Sound from the path were gorgeous. The island in the distance in the picture below is Drake’s Island, which lies just off of The Hoe in Plymouth.

Here is our first view of the sound-side villages of Kingsand and Cawsand.

Some of the sections of trail reminded me of the carriage trails at the Cone Manor on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Here is a tree that captured our imaginations. We saw both a bird’s head and a face in its trunk.

We took some time to walk through Kingsand and Cawsand. They are both picturesque and colorful, with narrow winding streets and 7 pubs between the two villages! Here is the Kingsand waterfront.

We stopped for a cup of tea and a sweet treat in Cawsand (pronounced 'Cow-sand') before moving on. Here’s a view of Cawsand from the edge of the village.

We then walked inland across the peninsula. A beautiful pink flower that moved in the wind like a field of grain was blooming on the side of the path and in the hedges. Val did a little research later and found out that its common name is fireweed, which comes from its ability to grow on old bomb sites after the last war.    

As we crested the hill going across the peninsula, we had a nice view of Plymouth Sound and its breakwater. Plymouth Sound is a major natural harbor and port for Britain, now and historically. Over the centuries it has been the site of Drake’s attack on the Spanish Armada, the Pilgrims’ departure for America, Charles Darwin’s voyage on The Beagle, and much more. 

Val and I finished up our walk with plenty of time to spare—no last minute dashes to school to pick up the children this time!  We both agreed that it had been an excellent day.

The Lizard

Our time in Cornwall is running down, but we still had a chance for one more coastal walk, this time to The Lizard. The name derives not from a preponderance of lizards on the peninsula, but instead after the Cornish word for ‘high point’ – lys ardh. It takes about two hours to get to The Lizard from Harrowbarrow.

Much of the peninsula is maintained by the National Trust

including Lizard Point, the southernmost point in Great Britain. We were happy to be doing this hike with another hiking family, the Holmans – Phil, Val and Aine – who are friends of ours from Metherell. Aine is a schoolmate of Rebecca’s, Val is a walking partner of Christine’s, and Phil is a friend of mine. Gwendolyn did not join us on this trip. Instead, she spent the day with her friend Niamh and Niamh’s family so that she could attend her schoolmate Rebecca’s birthday party.

We began our day early and decided to get some tea and coffee before heading out on our eight-mile hike. We enjoyed a fine snack at the Polpeor Café, whose claim to fame is being England’s southernmost café, before heading out on the trail.

Here is a view of Lizard Point. There is a lighthouse here

and an old lifeboat station (notice how tucked into the cliffs it is!),

but other than those two places and a couple of cafés, it is primarily unspoiled – unlike Land’s End. We bonded with Val over Land’s End. She is definitely of the same opinion about the place as we are!

We started our hike following a clockwise route: beginning up the west side of The Lizard, crossing some heathlands to the east side, and then walking south to our starting point. Almost immediately after beginning, the fog rolled in. Phil started telling the girls that the fog rolls in when the kraken, a sea monster, is about to strike. He told them that the fog doesn’t lift until it gets its victim. Sometimes you can even hear it, he said, but the sound description that he gave sounded remarkably like a foghorn. The girls had fun with this story. Here are a couple of views of the fog. They added to the scenery in their own way.

Rebecca and Aine are great hikers, and as you can see, the scary story didn’t faze them a bit.

I was excited to be on The Lizard because of the rocks, which are made up of ocean crust that has uplifted. In fact, serpentine has been mined from the area for a long time.

Our first stop on the trail was a Kynance Cove, a place recommended by Roland because of the excellent rock outcrops.

This is a lovely beach setting with a soft, fine sand. We walked down to the cove for lunch and lounged around for a bit.

Rebecca did a bit of wading, or, as they say here, she went for a 'paddle'.

After lunch and relaxation, we headed inland across the heathlands of the Lizard Downs National Nature Reserve with the destination of Cadgwith. The sun was shining up here away from the coast. We went through some varied terrain, crossed many stiles (perhaps the most varied and highest number we’ve crossed on any hike here!), covering this stretch rather quickly. Here’s all of the group but me standing on my favorite kind of stile, one with stones steps sticking out of a stone wall.

The public footpath led through a churchyard

and we were able to explore the grounds and the interior. A German family who had passed us on the trail were inside singing some sort of song with nice harmonies. This added to the ambience of the place, but it also made me feel as if I was intruding on them! From here it was a short walk to Cadgwith, a cute little fishing village. Typically Cornish, this village is tucked into a very narrow and steep valley. It seems to still be a fishing village and not much much of a tourist haunt. This is one of the Holman’s favorite coastal villages on The Lizard. They were happy to return and we were happy to be there with them. Unlike most villages in Cornwall, Cadgwith was peppered with thatched-roof cottages like this one. We see many more of this type of roof in Devon than we do in Cornwall and this was a welcome treat.

Phil has a favorite pub in the village, the CadgwithCove Inn, and we stopped for drinks before heading on down the trail.

Phil and I spent our time perusing the Ordnance Survey map, trying to figure out how much longer we had left to hike. Christine and Val hit the gift shops.

The Cadgwith Cove Inn seems to still be a fishermen’s pub. When we were ordering our Cornish ales, a bunch of salty looking customers were discussing what would be fished in the coming week. Some of them had on traditional fishing hats and they even had the right accents. I think that they were the real thing! Here are their boats

and a bit of their equipment.

Fortunately, no TV producers have discovered this village for the setting of a new Cornish comedy! Here are the dads and their girls. We’re all smiling because we just ate Cornish ice cream.

We had just under four miles to go to return to our starting point. We started off by viewing the Devil’s Frying Pan.

Phil suspects that this is how Round Hole over near Padstow, which I wrote about in an earlier blog, will end up. I think that he’s right.

The South West Coast Path signs pointed us in the right direction and we proceeded with the hike.

We had beautiful and sunny weather and the colors were fantastic. The flowers are incredible along this stretch of coast as well. I read in our Rough Guide to Devon and Cornwall that the climate is so mild on The Lizard that some Mediterranean plants grow here and nowhere else in Great Britain.

Rebecca and Aine were having fun goofing off. It was wonderful to hear Rebecca laughing hysterically for six hours, practically non-stop!

We passed the Lion’s Den, which is another natural arch along the coast. The coast of Cornwall is quite amazing with its preponderance of sea caves, arches, and sinkholes. I can’t think of a comparable coast that I’ve explored.

We continued on, but were a bit wary with the fog rolling onshore in the distance.

It wasn’t long before we once again heard the kraken, which got louder and louder, it seemed, the closer we got to the Lizard Point Lighthouse. The fog also got thicker and thicker and it even started raining. The girls were completely unfazed by the rain. Rebecca claims to not need a raincoat here, just like the other Cornish children (Aine included) who don’t mind getting wet. All of the parents, though, were more than happy to cover up. We eventually found our way to our starting point, this time in thick fog rather than sunshine. Here’s the lighthouse and the source of the kraken’s 'voice'.

It was a great final Cornish coastal hike and we were glad to be able to spend it with friends.