We are all sunburned. Yup, the weather gods have seen fit to bless us with a wonderful beginning to the hike -- sunny pretty much all day, comfortable termperatures, no wind. On top of that, two very nice gardens were visited, the first cream tea was consumed, and we saw dolphins in the sea this morning. Yup, a good day.
Backing up a bit... last night's dinner was very good -- another gourmet experience in Cornwall -- and everyone was up bright and early this morning. We hiked up out of Mousehole... and promptly got lost. Well, not lost exactly, more like unable to find the way... a theme that was repeated a number of times during the day.
You see, I was trying to navigate using minor paths on my (high quality) map... but the map is indeed not the territory, and in this case Cornish farmers appear to have decided that common law public right of ways are a nuisance and to be ignored. Paths and even field boundaries just didn't exist in reality where they were indicated on the map. So, we did some zig-zagging and a little back-tracking, and probably walked about 25% further than expected. But it was a beautiful day, so nobody was particularly perturbed.
We reached our first garden, Trewidden, at around 11:15 instead of 10:30, and walked around it for about an hour and a half. Some absolutely monster magnolias (in several cases the largest in Britain), beautiful camellias and rhododendrons, the occasional hallucinogenic splash of azaleas, and a dell full of tree ferns that would not have looked out of place in a dinosaur movie.
Then we walked on to Trengwainton, arriving at about 2:30, and went straight into their "Best Cafe in Cornwall, 2010!"... and very good it was too. The aforementioned cream tea having been devoured, we walked through their gardens. Absolutely lovely... more "stately" than Trewidden, as befitted the superb residence that we saw from about 50 meters away across a formal lawn. And with a couple of stunning views down over the ha-ha (look it up :-) down to the sea. We decided that if we really had to, we could live there.
:-)
By the time we were done it was going on 5PM and we decided to take transport to Marazion rather than walking and arriving just before dinner. And anyway, this was what I'd planned. One bus ride and one taxi ride later, and we were in Marazion, checking into our friendly B&B. Dinner will be in a local pub and I'm not expecting there to be much unhappiness around the table tonight!
PS Forgot to mention: Mel's limit for gardens in one per day, so he and Jan walked from Trengwainton to Marazion after lunch, arriving 10 minutes before us. The tide was out, so most of the way from Penzance they walked barefoot along the sand... also not bad!
PPS It will be difficult to choose a couple of photos to post later this evening... there were just too many beautiful images today.
Sent from my iPad
