October 12 - Cornwall, UK Part 1

It's a long way to get to Cornwall, but for us it has been a worthwhile trip.  Lyle and I flew from Alberta to Heathrow and then it was a five and a half hour train ride from Paddington Station to Penzance.  Yes, that is the same Penzance of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.  Although there are no pirates here now there is a history of pirates along the Cornish coastline.

Cornwall is located on the southwest peninsula of England.  We have only been here for a day and a half but already we love the area.  We came thinking that we would do lots of walking, eat some seafood, and take in a bit of history.  So far, we have been successful on all these three levels.

Today, we walked from Penzance to Mousehole (pronounced "MOW-zle).  It was a six kilometre one-way hike along the coastline.  Many parts were a wide promenade and easy to follow. Others were quite tricky, with narrow streets and no footpaths.  At these points I tried to follow behind Lyle with my cane.  In the end, when I heard a vehicle approaching, I simply stood still, trying to flatten myself against the stone walls of the buildings.  Mousehole is a quaint fishing village.  It was low tide so we walked down to the sandy beach - a beach that is entirely covered with water at high tide.

Last night we took an inland walk across several fields to an ancient church at the top of a hill, here Lyle could see for miles across the fields to the sea.  There was a cemetery beside the church and Lyle read the inscriptions on the headstones to me.  The ones he could decipher dated back to the early 1800's. Many headstones were so old that all the inscriptions have long since eroded away.  Walking along the edges of the fields was pleasant and reasonably easy, away from all traffic.

We know there are many walking trails and footpaths in this area, and we hope to explore as many as possible during our stay here.