Cornwall weekend

Oh my goodness! I just got home from the longest weekend of my life!! We’ve spent the last three days in Cornwall, the Southern coastal section of England. We stayed in a youth hostel in Coverack and then traveled all around Cornwall seeing the sites They split up our houses so we could supposedly mingle and meet new people but my housemates and I spent most of the weekend missing Prior Park. I am so exhausted... but in the end, as usual, it was worth it.

On Thursday night before we left, my house (31 Prior Park) and the house around the corner (5 Clarendon Villas) got together at Clarendon for a pot-luck. We wanted to get rid of all the food we had that was going to go bad over the weekend. It turned out to be the best meal I’ve had since I’ve gotten to England (I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing...). We baked chicken, made pasta, had vegetables, pizza, lots of random mixtures of food... it was awesome.

We left for Cornwall Friday morning at 7:45 (ugh!) and drove for 3-ish hours to Tintagel Castle - the supposed birthplace of King Arthur and the home of the wizard Merlin’s cave. We hiked up the cliff leading to the castle and walked all around up above the coast. We had amazing views all around the ocean and the fields. The ocean water here looks like the Caribbean - there’s white sand and it’s bright blue.

From there, we made it to Coverack, a teeny tiny little town on the Western coast of Cornwall. The town has one main road about half a mile long with a few windy side streets leading away from it. There’s one church, one post office, one store, and one hotel/pub for probably about 5 miles in either direction. We spent the night at the youth hostel. That night for dinner we had Cornish pasties (past-ees, not pay-stee), this fairly disgusting pot-pie like thing with meat and vegetables. I don’t really recommend it.

Saturday morning we were up bright and early for a trip to The Lizard, the southern-most town in England. We hiked around the Lizard’s cliffs led by this geologist/botanist (aka Morgan and Rachel’s favorite old man) old guy named Pat Sargeant. He told us what plants were edible/not, where orange carrots came from (made especially for William of Orange ... go tribe!), and took us around on our hike. He made some strange presentation where attempted to demonstrate the geological history of the world through a role of toilet paper??? We were all a little bit lost on that one.

After our hike on the Lizard, we drove another 2 hours to St. Ives, probably the most touristy beach in Cornwall. My friends and I braved the FREEZING cold waters and swam in the English side of the Atlantic ocean! It was fantastic! (Morgan, you would have totally loved it!) We walked around St. Ives and went to the Tate modern art museum and the Barbara Hepworth museum. It’s a really cool little town. I wish we could have spent more time there. That night we headed back to Coverack for a traditional English BBQ consisting of chicken, steak, and bacon (Blaakman, you would have been in food-heaven lol :) ) and french fries, followed by Cornish ice cream made from clotted cream, SO GOOD.

That night my friends and I headed to Coverack beach and sat out on the rocks watching the sunset - really cool. (Emily, we found this one beach that to get to it it was seriously like walking into the Secret Garden, I was expecting Dickon to pop out of the woods with a sheep or something any second, lol, I wished you were there to see it!)

Today we all woke up and felt so sick because we’re all exhausted from the traveling. Luckily, the staff caught on that we were not happy campers and shortened the day’s itinerary - instead of going on another hike in the town Widecombe on the Moore, we left early and headed back to Bath. THANK GOD.

Now we’re back in 31 Prior Park - and I never thought I’d say it but it’s good to be home.

PS HAPPY FATHER’S DAY DAD :)

Tintagel Castle (Birthplace of King Arthur)

Beginning the hike, we had to cross this really narrow bridge (left) over the ocean to get up to the castle ruins
Merlin's cave, two of my friends swam in there and looked around - you can get in when the tide goes down, but they obviously could not wait :)
View backwards of our hike
Me at Tintagel
Tintagel ruins

Coverack (where we stayed)

Main road through coverack
the Paris Hotel
Coverack boats

Hike at The Lizard
Our guide, check out the bandana. Haha
Me at the Lizard

Me and Kristen at the Lizard
The end of the hike - the water was so blue!

St. Ives
We totally swam in that water :)
Awesome doorway and lintels with sea shells and glass
Main beach area in St. Ives