Big Bus Safari

by Janice Booth

It was too good to miss. When the new pensioners’ England-wide bus pass was announced early this year, we decided to celebrate in style. We sharpened a pencil and drew a beautiful straight line on a map of England, linking the far west (Land’s End) to the far east (Lowestoft). The other half of “we” was my friend Hilary Bradt, of Bradt Travel Guides, whose journeys more often involve exotic destinations like deepest Madagascar; but she gulped bravely and down-sized.

Our plan was to start from Land’s End on 1 April when our passes became valid and take eight days travelling along our pencil line to Lowestoft, using various local buses and with spots of walking and/or hitching thrown in. We checked out the main buses via www.traveline.org.uk and www.visitbritain.co.uk, pre-booked half of our overnight stops and planned some “treats”, otherwise left the details to chance. Carrying just small backpacks made us flexible.

Land’s End on 31 March was grey and stormy. Avoiding the brash, unappealing tourist “attractions”, we reached the cliff path that would take us down to Sennen Cove for supper. On the way we passed England’s true southernmost tip: the hunk of rock called Dr Syntax’s Head. As the views unfolded, wind in our hair and breakers lashing at the rocks below, we spotted a pair of choughs and our spirits rose. Over supper we watched surfers in the bay, playing the waves like a pack of exhibitionist seals. Our B&B (Weavers) was a chance “blind date” that quickly became a friendship: traditional farmhouse, cosy room, friendly owners and lots of thoughtful touches.

1 April was even stormier. Hilary was to write the trip up for The Observer and they’d sent a photographer; cold, windswept and dishevelled we posed for him against stone walls, bus stops, sign posts and the bleak horizon. Our bus arrived, and the driver submitted – with some surprise – to being photographed as we flashed our passes at him. Then we were off, along one of Cornwall’s prettiest routes, heading for St Ives. Our Big Bus Safari (safari means “journey” in Swahili) was under way.

The sun began to squeeze through the clouds as we rattled along narrow, twisty roads, between high hedges, past hidden hamlets of pastel cottages and finally through the beautiful, golden landscape near Zennor, with its soft hills and open fields. No time to stop and visit Zennor’s mermaid, but at St Ives we swapped wheels for feet and took to the South West Coastal Path, stripping off anoraks and sweaters under the now hot sun. We pampered our feet by paddling along Porthminster beach and eventually spotted the spire of Lelant church – our next bus location – in the distance. Never able to resist an old English church (St Uny’s dates from Norman times, and a few centuries ago was almost buried by sand blown in from the shore) we went inside, and found the choughs had followed us from Land’s End: there they were again, in one of the stained glass windows!

What with the sun and the paddling and enjoying St Uny’s we’d become over-relaxed about timetables; our bus from Lelant reached Truro too late for our planned connection to Bodmin, our overnight stop. As we were walking to the central bus station to look for alternatives, we spotted our Land’s End photographer on his way home to Tavistock – and begged a lift to Bodmin. No, it wasn’t cheating: we’d always intended to hitch if necessary, and how could we possibly ignore such blatant good luck?

In fact we did then end up in jail, but only because the old Bodmin jail (www.bodminjail.org) houses one of the town’s best restaurants. The imposing jail itself, already a popular tourist attraction, is being imaginatively restored by its present owners, both as an educational resource for schools and – eventually – as a Museum of Cornish Life. Completed in 1860, on the site of an older jail built in 1779, it was in use until 1927. It’s among the UK’s most haunted buildings (you can spend a scary night there...) and, during World War I, the Domesday Book and state papers were held there for safety. In the dark, atmospheric warren of passages are tableaux and panels illustrating the Victorian conditions: treadmill, oakum picking, diet, punishments, executions and suchlike. The prisoners’ stories are documented and some are sad; for example, one young woman killed her child because she had no home or money and couldn’t feed him, and juveniles were jailed for small crimes like stealing apples. Of the 56 hangings at Bodmin between 1785 and 1909, only 26 were for murder; others reasons included sheep-stealing, forgery, bestiality and burglary. A 23-year-old man was hanged for stealing a watch. Harsh times...

We also ended up in a really super B&B (www.bedknobs.co.uk – just say “Bedknobs B&B in Bodmin” quickly a few times and you’ll remember): a rambly 168-year-old house, carefully renovated, wrapped in a deep-green garden with secret corners. Landlady Gill entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of our safari (we’re still in touch) and has just emailed proudly to say she’s been listed in Alastair Sawday's 2009 Green & Organic Europe Guide.

Bright sunshine the next morning gave us itchy feet; we abandoned our bus in a village just beyond Liskeard and set off along smaller lanes. From the bus we’d spotted The Hurlers, a group of local villagers turned to stone by St Cleer many centuries ago because they’d skived off from church on a Sunday and gone hurling, so we were careful to think good and sober thoughts. Our aim was to walk for a couple of hours cross-country to Callington and catch a later bus from there. It was a green and golden landscape, the sun picking out the beginnings of spring and fields stretching gently into the hilly distance.

Now, Hilary has this tiresome adventurous streak. She’s 67 to my 69 and doesn’t she know it. Just as I’ve settled into a comfortable rhythm and am ambling along happily, a glint comes into her eye and she veers off piste. In this case, she took a sharp right turn down what looked to me like a gully carved out by a flash flood: steep, wet and stony. Not uncomplainingly, I followed. It ended in a stream. Hilary insisted it was a legitimate footpath (actually she was right) so we took off our trainers and waded across. Clear fresh water, sunlight, mossy tracks, birds, the whispering of woodland around us – and I stopped grumbling.

However, we were cutting it fine for our next bus. A couple of muddy fields or so later, we hit a road and decided to hitch. A woman in a capacious 4 x 4 beamed happily at us as she revved past, but an elderly Sir Galahad was kinder, piled us on board and stepped obligingly on the gas. It wasn’t his fault that we missed our bus by two minutes. We bought hot pastries and munched them in Callington’s bus shelter beside the Town Hall – which sported a neon decoration of Santa and his sleigh. Well why not, in April. Passers-by stopped to chat and our next bus was superbly punctual. As usual, the driver examined our passes with interest: the first he’d seen.

We were into the swing of it now. In the mornings we caught the first bus for which our passes were valid, then sat back and enjoyed the passing views until we wanted to stretch our legs or explore. These were small local buses, winding their way through villages, so there was always something to watch: gardens, trees, thatched cottages, old churches, small market towns, farms, strangely named pubs and just the gentle beauty of rural England. We were never bored. People were friendly and chatty, both in the buses and at bus stops, and most days had some new treat built in.

The next of these was Glastonbury, which I had feared might be tacky or over-hyped but which won me over completely. The view from the top of the Tor is a stunning panorama of greens and browns and misty distance; while among the ruins of the massive abbey, where H V Morton wrote in 1927 that “the shadows of the yews lie in long pencils over the smooth grass”, echoes still linger of the town’s ancient importance as a religious centre and place of pilgrimage. Frances Underwood described it so well in VISA 80 that I won’t start again here; but yes, as she says, “whichever way you look, the people are different”, and the sense of history and legend is very strong.

Avebury (photo: Helen Matthews

Avebury took us even further back in time, with its prehistoric stone circles. Part of the village is actually inside the biggest of them, up to 400 metres across, originally consisting of almost 100 rough sarsen stones averaging 3–4 metres high. They were placed around a deep circular ditch whose bank rose nearly 17 metres above its base. Inside are two smaller circles. From the large circle, an avenue with up to 100 pairs of stones stretches southeast for about 2.4km. Although many of the stones are missing, strolling among the remaining great, grey guardians of this ancient landscape is still a heart-stopping experience. There’s also a good museum, and a peaceful little church, St James’s, dating back to about 1000 AD. The National Trust owns 1,500 acres of Avebury land, and manages the museum and archaeological sites in tandem with English Heritage (www.english-heritage.org.uk). Nearby is mysterious Silbury Hill: it’s the tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe, but no-one knows why it was built.

The helpful little Tourist Information Bureau, tucked away inside a church, recommended us another gem of a B&B (www.tealcottage.co.uk), just outside Marlborough, for the coming night. Our bus driver dropped us at an obscure turning; we crossed an old stone bridge over a stream, passed a tiny village green, and rounded a corner to find a stylish, welcoming stable conversion in a pleasant garden. Later we strolled along leafy lanes and across a river into Marlborough for supper, and in the morning ate far too much breakfast because it was so good.

That afternoon, we watched the Grand National in a betting shop in High Wycombe! Two wrinklies with backpacks didn’t quite match the rest of the clientele, but they shifted up companionably to make room for us. Of course we didn’t win. The following morning we awoke to a cold white world, and crunched our way through deep virgin snow to our first bus stop. In Aylesbury, damp and frozen-fingered, we found a Café Nero complete with hot croissants. After more coffee and cake with friends near Leighton Buzzard, we arrived at Whipsnade Zoo; it was planned as one of our “treats” but turned out a pretty chilly one, with animals crouched in dejected huddles and ring-tailed lemurs trying sadly, arms agape, to bask in intermittent rays of wintry sun. Delays for roadworks in Luton meant that we watched our connecting bus pull away just in front of us, despite our kind driver flashing his lights to make it wait. We dived into a nearby Pizza Express for more comfort food – it was that kind of day – and sheltered there until another bus came. This wasn’t exactly the prettiest part of our trip and it was hard to feel enthusiastic about stopping somewhere for the night, but in Hitchin the church bells were ringing a Sunday serenade out over the central square, so we settled there.

Until now, local buses had gone wherever we wanted, with only small deviations from our pencil line, but getting from Hitchin to Bury St Edmunds without using National Express, where our passes wouldn’t be valid, looked harder. Traveline told us by phone that we’d have to go via London, which seemed silly, so we caught a bus to a few miles beyond Hitchin and then – yes, started hitchin’. Sorry. A businessman took us to Saffron Walden, choosing the scenic route in order to show us various attractions. I remembered the etiquette of hitching from almost 50 years ago: make conversation in such a way that the driver enjoys your company and feels good about having stopped for you. In Greece in the 1960s, I even learned enough Greek to praise the car and its performance, which was always a winner! Maybe I’m a touch more sophisticated now.

After a stroll around Saffron Walden, and a visit to St Mary’s (the largest parish church in Essex), we found our bus stop – complete with chatty fellow passenger – and continued towards Bury St Edmunds, via Haverhill and (unexpectedly) Cambridge, because we missed a connection at Haverhill and had to improvise; this was the only time during the safari that our bus was crowded, with afternoon shoppers and commuters. In Bury there was still just enough daylight for us to explore the extensive ruins of the old Abbey, hazily grey in the dusk, where birds treated us to an evening concert, before indulging in our biggest luxury: the Angel Hotel (www.theangel.co.uk), just across from the ruins. It has been sheltering travellers and pilgrims since the 15th century, and does it in great style and comfort. Good restaurant too, with prices lower than the quality suggests.

The Bury tourist office bustled helpfully the next morning, setting us off on one of my favourite days: visiting village churches. I love these peaceful, patient little buildings, blending so completely into the English countryside, some crouched low in their graveyards, some with spires peeping above the treetops, all filled with the centuries-old ghosts of worshippers who trod the same path to their doors as we tread today. I hope the ancient craftsmen who built them, lovingly, stone by back-breaking stone, can look down on their work and feel proud. Visiting them is an endless pleasure; each one offers some different charm or quirk or discovery. Partly by bus and partly on foot we went to All Saints’ in Beyton, its churchyard a designated wildlife site with more than 50 species of wild flowers and grasses; St Ethelbert’s in Hessett, with medieval stained glass and lively original paintings; and wonderful St Mary’s in Woolpit, with wing-loads of benevolent carved angels and a fine medieval porch. I’ve since discovered the very browsable website www.suffolkchurches.co.uk, full of temptations for a future trip to the area.

At the approach to Hessett village, a sign had warned us to “Beware of Children” (whatever do they get up to, those Hessett kids?), but far more intriguing were the green children of Woolpit. Sometime in the twelfth century, so the story goes, harvesters found two frightened children crying in a field. They wore strange clothes, spoke an unknown language and their skins were green. Initially they would eat nothing but beans. The boy soon died but the girl survived; eventually her green colour faded. When she had learned English, she said that she and her brother had come from a land of twilight where the sun never shone and the people were green. The legend appears in various forms; it’s well covered on http://anomalyinfo.com. A similar event allegedly occurred seven centuries later, in Spain, but descriptions of it are suspiciously like those of the Woolpit tale.

We were due in Lowestoft that night and time was running out. Hilary had arranged with BBC Radio Suffolk that we’d reach Lowestoft Ness, the official easternmost point, at 10.00 the following morning, where they would interview her live by mobile phone. We caught a bus to Eye (beautiful church) and another to Diss, but onward connections from Diss’s bleak bus station weren’t promising. Traveline suggested we go via Norwich, arriving in Lowestoft late at night, which wasn’t appealing. A woman waiting at the bus stop for her husband spotted that we were in trouble, popped us in her husband’s car when he arrived, and drove us to Harleston. There we unearthed our black felt marker, wrote our hitching signs “Direction Lowestoft, please”, stuck out our thumbs and waited, smiling sweetly, beside the relatively busy A143. Three lifts later we were in Lowestoft, in good time for supper.

The next morning we walked from our B&B to England’s easternmost point and reached the end of our safari. Hilary had her radio interview. A student was sitting in a car, revising, and we roped him in to take our photos by the marker plaque. Then – I hesitate to admit it – we caught a train back to London and went our respective ways.

Had it been fun? A resounding yes! Would I do it again? Like a shot! We’ve already had one “bus day” since then, just catching buses and walking in between routes, out of nostalgia. We plan to do it in the Lake District, round the Cotswolds, in Northumberland... the possibilities are endless and enticing. What did we learn? So many things! That the English countryside is wonderful (well, we already knew that), that the Traveline phone number (0871 200 2233) given on bus stops is a good source of information, that it’s wise to go to the loo whenever the chance arises, that missing a bus needn’t be a disaster if you’re flexible, and that strangers can be wonderfully kind and helpful. We’d worried that we might be taking seats from fare-paying passengers, but this never happened; many buses were half empty. Despite government subsidies, some district councils have expressed concern about the cost to them of refunding bus companies for so many non-fare-paying passengers, and who knows what cuts may be made in the future; so, if you’re old enough for a bus pass, do make 2009 the year that you dust off your backpack and climb aboard...

First published in VISA 82-83 (Dec 2008 - Feb 2009)

A Visit to Cornwall

By Rachel Kruft Welton

We arrived at the Cornish Bed & Breakfast late on Thursday evening. It was the Easter weekend and we had come to St Just in Penwith - about as far west as you can get in the West Country. We were staying in the obscurely named Coachhouse Suite, which consisted of a spacious room on the top floor of a converted barn made of the cool grey stone so often used in Cornwall. We could see the sea from the window.
 

St Just is a small town about a mile and a half's walk across fields from the B & B. It has a couple of shops, cafes, pubs, a chippie and some souvenir and craft shops. A narrow road leads down to the coast and to Britain's only Cape - Cape Cornwall. It has a small monument on it that the National Trust unaccountably decided to put there. The breeze was fresh and salty and the walk back up the hill was a little taxing to us computer blimp escapees, as our most tiring job usually is pressing the 'return' key.

Seaweed at Penzance

Discarding walking for the motorised comfort of Ember, the trusty red Fiesta, we drove around the spectacular coastline, past derelict tin mines. There are many prehistoric sites in Cornwall, but one of the most famous is the Men-an-Tol. This consists of a circular stone with a hole in the middle, flanked by two upright stones. Legend has it that crawling through the hole cures everything from infertility to rickets. As we have been waiting for a child for four years already, we have heard many suggestions for fertility charms. We crawled through the Men-an-Tol, giggling like schoolchildren.

 

Close by is the 9 Maidens stone circle, somewhat overgrown with heather and moss. Then back to Ember and round the coast to St Ives. If you ever have the chance to visit St Ives' wonderful steep and narrow streets, do remember not to park at the top of the hill. It's a long way up. We wandered round St Ives, enjoying ice-cream and sea views, streets of pretty whitewashed cottages and a meal at a vegetarian restaurant. We didn't, however, manage to find the pub advertising itself as sporting a "large collection of Toby Jogs". Shame.
 

The coastal road home must have been as delightfully precipitous as it had been on the way to St Ives. However, in the dark, we couldn't see, so we didn't care. We sped back towards the B & B, pausing only briefly to pick up two teenage boys who were hitckhiking. They enlivened our journey by giving us helpful tips and expounding their theory that long bus journeys are considerably shortened if you smoke a good joint beforehand.
 

The following morning started foggy, but cleared later. Our first stop was Modran's well and the ruins of a Benedictine chapel. The area is wet woodland - green trees, smothered in feathery lichen and dripping with moisture. In the mist, the air was still and quiet. The precise location of the well proved impossible to find without wellies and a love of mud. The approximate location, however, was clearly marked by hundreds of differently coloured wishing knots, ribbons, rags, ropes and strings, tied to every available branch, twig and stem, each representing someone's wish. This is a wishing well of the old style.
 

Piper Stone, Lanoma Cove

On to Penzance, a pretty city, friendly and busy, but lacking the magic of our previous stop. We bought postcards, avoiding the ever-present ones of eclipses, and a couple of books and had lunch in the Dandelion Cafe. I took some neat photos of the seaweed-encrusted hawser lines in the harbour and we went on to Mousehole, which has streets as narrow as the name suggests. The highlights here include some scrummy gooseberry ice-cream, finding a foot-long ex-shark and outwitting a barnacle fast enough to dislodge it from the rock.
 

Lanoma Cove, a few miles further on, is famous for its smugglers and wreckers and for being pretty. I think the parking attendant was a direct descendant of the wreckers mostly from his ingenious policy of blocking nearly everyone in, using a van full of scuba divers. We left without parking. A little further along the coast road, we stopped and climbed over a gate to visit the 2 piper stones. These are magnificent - 14 feet tall, they dwarf all else. They are connected with a stone circle in an adjacent field called the Merry Maidens. The circle is fairly large and the stones are about waist high. There were a few merry hippies about, absorbing the atmosphere. I guess they must have been going on a long bus journey later.
 

Last stop on our coastal tour appropriately was Land's End. We objected strenuously to forking out £3 to park and so we parked in the pub car park for nothing and walked. We did have to climb a few dry stone walls and brave a scratching of brambles, but we got to see Land's End and the striking rugged cliff sides around that part of the coastline. We walked back the easy way, along the road, and had a meal in the pub before going back to St Just.
 

Easter Sunday: and not even a huge chocolate egg for breakfast could quite clear my hangover, or the fog. We drove down to the Miracle Theatre, hoping the fog would burn off. It didn't. The Miracle Theatre is an amazing amphitheatre, carved into the steep cliff face, overlooking the sea. They perform plays there outdoors and the stage includes a stone throne, gateways and balconies. It is truly spectacular, even in fog.
 

We decided to try the other coast to shake off the damp mist. We went to Hoyle and visited Paradise Park, a delightful bird sanctuary. I loved the sleepy owls and the fish-feeding frenzy of the Humboldt's penguins. Nick fell in love with the incredibly ugly ibises, with their long beaks and wrinkled faces.

 

We walked down into Hoyle centre, which was totally uninspiring. The highlight there was a little egret wading through the estuary poking for food in the sand. For non-ornithologists, little egrets tend to live in Spain and Morocco, so this chap was a smidgin off course - must have been the fog.

 

On the way back to the B & B, we stopped at a ruined village called Crysanster, dating back to 3AD or so. Despite being overgrown with grass and heather, it was still quite clear where the walls and doorways were. The hearth stone and grinding stones were still there, too. All of it was still covered in drifting, unnecessarily atmospheric mist, but it drew me just the same.
 

Easter Monday: time to go home to Worcestershire. We bribed Ember with a full tank of diesel and left about 10 am. It quickly became clear that so had everyone else. After queueing on the A30, we opted for the scenic route through Devon. It was worth it for the scrumptious scones in the calorific cream tea we had. We stopped at Cheddar Gorge and saw the caves (and about 700 tourists). The caves were great and the tourists were everywhere. With hindsight, leaving Cheddar at 5 pm on Bank Holiday Monday might be seen as a bad idea. Every road heading north towards Bristol was stationary with traffic going nowhere fast (as it were).

 

Eventually, we decided to go to Bath for an evening meal in a great restaurant call the Bath Tub. Enough food and a surfeit of wine and I was all for breaking into the Roman Baths in the town centre for a skinny dip. Fortunately, our plans were foiled because the windows were unaccountably locked and anyway, we would have disturbed the infamous nesting duck that was holding up Bath city council's restoration plans. We hit the M5 north of Gloucester and, by the time, we got home at midnight, I think Ember was as tired as we were.
 

First published in VISA issue 33 (summer 1999).

 

 

 

 

Westward Ho!

by David Gourley

Our stay in Cardiff was to mark our wedding anniversary. Hunting for ideas, we for the first time explored lastminute.com and really did hit on a bargain, a two-night stay at the St David's hotel in Cardiff. This is Wales' first five-star hotel and is owned by Rocco Forte, who has re-established himself in the hotel business, this time at the luxury end, following the hostile takeover of the old Trusthouse Forte chain (R.I.P) by Granada. Normally staying there would cost an arm and a leg but lastminute.com were virtually offering a half-price deal.

As well as being interested to stay in the much written-about St David's, I rather liked the idea of visiting Cardiff. I have something of a soft spot for this city for we nearly lived there. I was all set, in the late sixties, to transfer to Cardiff with my then employer but a better job opportunity presented itself and it was to be life in Surrey rather than life in Glamorgan. I sometimes wonder how things would have turned out had we moved to Cardiff.

The St David's is a striking modern building, located on Cardiff Bay. This is now a thriving area with fashionable shops and restaurants, as well as the new Welsh Assembly building. In days gone by, though, this was the rough-tough Tiger Bay district, where Shirley Bassey was born and bred. Our welcome to the hotel was a mixture of the warm and the cool (using the latter word in its original sense). We were very professionally met by the charming front-of-house manager. Having checked us in she took us along to the restaurant and found its manager. The temperature now dropped. He made no great effort to be friendly and responded to our request to reserve a window seat as if to reserve a table in a restaurant was unheard-of. Silly us, we should have known without being told that the restaurant has a 'no reservations' policy. This contrast between warm and cool persisted during our stay. But we did like our room, which commanded fine views of the bay. The hotel is so constructed that all rooms look onto it.
Our terms were room only so meals were quite a significant extra. We were to be continually disappointed. We went down to dinner and in fact did have a window table, which turned out to be in a draught so we had to request a move. I ordered venison, and was straight away told that "chef only serves it rare". I always think of the clever response after the event - I should have said "customer only likes it medium to well". I thoroughly resent this type of attitude, especially when I'm paying good money. It's as if I'm being regarded as somehow lacking sophistication for not liking my meat rare; it's not as if I was asking for it to be drenched in HP Sauce. This fastidiousness on the part of the chef was not otherwise much in evidence, for the vegetables were some rather tired-looking carrots and broccoli and a large and unappetizing jacket potato. Breakfast the following morning was also disappointing. I think there is a vital ingredient that makes a restaurant meal great. It's called "TLC" and there was a lack of it here.

We had hoped, the next day, to go by waterbus, up the River Taff to the city centre. However weather conditions weren't right and we instead went by bus. In our ignorance of Cardiff bus routes, we boarded a bus going the wrong way but the friendly driver let us ride to the terminus for free, then we headed off the right way. The journey took us through the Grangetown district, quite pleasant looking with its rows of well-kept Victorian terraces.

We had a walk along the main shopping thoroughfare, Queen Street, now pedestrianized though in the sixties it had had trolleybuses, Cardiff being one of the last cities in the UK to retain this form of transport. There was an exhibition of sculpture along its pavements. I am not into sculpture if it's modern art we're talking about but these examples were very good, the work of a local sculptor and including a fine statue of local hero Aneurin Bevan, founder of the NHS. Then we visited Cardiff Castle, where we had lunch. I had Welsh Rarebit but it was on focaccia bread so not the real thing (for first class Welsh - actually known in this instance as Yorkshire - Rarebit, I'd recommend Betty's in Harrogate or York). We had a guided tour of the Castle, which we much enjoyed. The Castle dates back to Roman times but the present-day building is essentially the creation of the Marquess of Bute in the Victorian era. He owned much of the South Wales coalfield and was thus one of the richest men in Europe. This was his private residence. The rooms are exquisite. The Bute connection ended in 1947, when the Castle was presented to the city of Cardiff, though the name lives on, in nearby Bute Park and in the district of Butetown further away.

For a while afterwards we went our separate ways, which we sometimes do, as Cathy enjoys looking round shops and I don't. I took myself off for a stroll through Cathays Park, the leafy administrative area just north of the city centre, Bute Park, and along the River past the Cardiff Millennium Stadium. This of course is where the FA Cup Final has been taking place whilst Wembley is being rebuilt. In 2006 it was to take place in Cardiff yet again, albeit it had been expected that the new Wembley Stadium would be ready. Let us hope we do better with the 2012 Olympics. There won't really be the option of transferring those to Cardiff! I'd rather hoped we could visit the Stadium but I found no sign of any information in this regard nor anyone to ask.

Back at the hotel, we decided to chance the restaurant again. This being a Sunday, a number of the nearby restaurants were closed. Also it was freezing cold so we didn't much fancy the idea of a walk. There are times when it is nice to relax in one's own hotel. However dinner was again disappointing. Next morning we complained to the front of house manager. She was very concerned and we ended up not paying for the previous night's meal. But I'd rather have paid and had a good meal than not paid and had a poor one. I think that if one is staying at a first-class hotel one is entitled to a first-class dining experience, and St David's was not providing this.

We were determined not to have breakfast at St David's on our second and last morning. Finding somewhere else, however, was something of a problem: plenty of restaurants in the vicinity but none offering a cooked breakfast. We wandered into an American-style diner. Breakfast was not being served but the very helpful lady who was preparing for later in the day recommended Georges, a couple of blocks inland: "it's a bit downmarket but they serve a cracking breakfast". It was indeed a workman's caff and maybe not somewhere we'd normally venture, but the lady was right. It was clean, the staff were friendly, and we had an excellent breakfast for a fraction of the price at St David's.

Had the Millennium Stadium been open, we might have lingered in Cardiff. We did have a final wonder along the waterfront and visited, in the historic Pierhead Building, an exhibition about the work of the Welsh Assembly, which was interesting, but not very. The Assembly Building itself is nearing completion and has incurred none of the controversy aroused by its Scottish equivalent, which ran considerably over budget. Some nationalists wanted the Assembly to be in Swansea, a city more to their liking as Cardiff, like the eastern half of Wales generally, voted against devolution, in what turned out to be, nationwide, a neck-and-neck vote. Most however would regard Cardiff, the official capital of Wales since 1955, as the appropriate place for it to be.

We headed back into England, diverting to visit the Painswick Rococo Gardens near Stroud. Reason was that we'd discovered, having Googled the word ‘snowdrop’, that it boasts a large number of these. Maybe it was because this was rather a grey sort of day with the snowdrops thus not looking their finest, but we were not as impressed as we'd been a year or so previously with the display in Hopton Hall in Derbyshire, which opens its doors to the public only a couple or so times a year, once for the snowdrops, or the display in the Physic Garden in Chelsea.

A couple of months later, we headed west again, this time to Lundy Island, off the coast of North Devon. Cathy in particular had long wanted to stay there. This meant self-catering for there is no hotel. The island is owned by the National Trust and properties there are rented out to visitors by the Landmark Trust, which has a large portfolio of historic buildings across the country; we met one couple who always holiday in a Landmark Trust property. There being just two of us, we rented one of the smaller properties, Castle Cottage, which as its name suggests is by the castle, a not particularly grand edifice which is itself subdivided into flats for renting. We decided to stay for four nights and then indulge in a bit of luxury by having another two nights away, this time in the Carlyon Bay hotel in St Austell, Cornwall, where we'd stayed a couple of times previously.

An advantage of going to Lundy, as we did, before the end of March is that one gets to go there by helicopter, a six-minute trip from the heliport in Hartland. Thereafter one has to go by boat from Bideford or Ilfracombe. The flights are around midday and whilst we could have made it had we left home at the crack of dawn, we opted for a more leisurely drive down the day before, selecting at random one of the nearby b&b places listed in the Island's literature. We were pleased with Gawlish Farm, a very friendly place where our room looked over a field of cows. Dinner was not available but we acted on our host's recommendation that we go to the Anchor Inn in Hartland village. We were not disappointed: an atmospheric sixteenth century inn, a friendly landlord, and an excellent meal.

The next day we firstly went into Bideford, aka the "Little White Town" and rather pleasant, for some shopping. We were here in the vicinity of the seaside resort Westward Ho! but, despite the title of this piece, we didn't go there. The place name has two great distinctions: the only one in Britain to be named after a novel and the only one to include an exclamation mark.
There are four helicopter flights and on the outward journey we were on the fourth. But all was fair as coming back we were on the first. There were wonderful views to be enjoyed during the short flight, of the Devon mainland and then of Lundy itself. Once on Lundy we reported to reception where the lady made it rather obvious that she was very busy and we were hurriedly directed to our Cottage. This is at the southernmost tip of the island and possibly offers the finest views of any of the Landmark Trust properties, looking out as it does towards the mainland. The Cottage is small and fairly basic and I didn't much appreciate the fact that the toilet was outside. But it was cosy and the bed was very comfortable.

We had lunch at the only eating establishment, the Marisco Tavern. I'd fondly imagined that old-fashioned home cooking would be on offer, so was surprised when I asked if the burgers were home-made only to find that they were of the bought-in variety. I passed on those but we still had an indifferent meal and for the rest of the time I instead enjoyed Cathy's excellent cooking. There is quite a well-stocked shop on the island, and meals included some of the local venison as well as the chilli con carne which Cathy had made at home. Fortunately we had brought our portable radio: Lundy doesn't do TV. Lundy is near, and is indeed part of, Devon but it is also quite near the Welsh coast, visible from further north in the island, and the local radio station which we picked up was Welsh.

The weather on this, our first day, was fine and there was time for a walk halfway up the island, finishing at the furthest flung of the Landmark Trust properties, Tibbetts, which is without electricity. One can go inside any of the properties that are unoccupied and we availed ourselves of this opportunity. We were not always to be so lucky with the weather. For the whole of the next day there was a thick blanket of fog. So much for our view! The island's literature confidently asserts that it is impossible to get bored on Lundy but one is quite weather-dependent if one wants to make the most of the island and there was little to do other than stay indoors, apart from a walk to the shop and a look inside the small church. I didn't actually get bored: there was the radio, our Sunday papers and their umpteen parts to get through, and the jigsaws which the Landmark Trust thoughtfully provides in its properties. I hadn't attempted one for years and enjoyed only partial success.

The weather was a bit better the next day but still not wonderful. It was showery and not really a good day for walking. We did a couple of trips, one to the Old Lighthouse, which we ascended, and another to the beach, where the boats from the mainland arrive. In the summer daytrippers come here. Some renovation work was taking place around the beach and there were warning signs as we headed there so we thought we might have to turn back, one of the few possible walks now not possible. But there was not an outright prohibition: one was merely warned that going further would be "on your head" and, since there were no signs at all of any work taking place we reckoned we'd be safe and are here to tell the tale. On our final day the weather was glorious and we walked right to the northern tip of the island, about 3½ miles. This really is a beautiful island and we regretted that the weather had prevented us from exploring it further, for there are many good walks. But nevertheless our stay there was a worthwhile and enjoyable experience.

Back on the mainland the next day, we drove across the Southwest Peninsula to our hotel. We diverted into Clovelly. There used to be adverts for "lovely Clovelly" leading me to suppose that Clovelly was pronounced "Cluvley". I wouldn't call it lovely. To start with one has to enter it via a hideous visitor's centre, a privilege for which one pays £5. Actually we bucked the system without actually intending to. There was no-one around and we just walked through, only realizing afterwards that we should have paid. One descends through the village via a steep cobbled street but it is not otherwise picturesque. We looked forward to finding a quaint old harbour at the end only to find there is nothing very much. If there are friendly locals we didn't find any. A passing lady hauling some heavy luggage looked right through Cathy when she made a friendly remark to her whilst the receptionist in the hotel didn't know whether their bar offered lunch and clearly wasn't going to bother to find out. This place is 'touristiness' at its worse.

We hurried away and found an excellent place for lunch on the road back to Bideford, Hoops, a very attractive old building where I enjoyed steak with an Exmoor blue cheese topping. Then drove through the scenic Devon countryside to the pleasant town of Tavistock. Here we turned right, entering Cornwall via the back route and thus avoiding the Tamar Bridge and its tolls.
The Carlyon Bay is some distance from the centre of St Austell, which we've only visited once, just to use an ATM. It is on the coast, on the eponymous stretch of water in, appropriately enough, Sea Road. Shortly after our first stay it came to national attention when Tony and Cherie Blair stayed there, having decided in the aftermath of the foot and mouth epidemic to do their bit for the hard-hit British tourist industry, though St Austell actually sailed through this unscathed, thank to its twin attractions, Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Heligan. We've been to both and whilst Eden is worth a visit, we might not hurry back there whereas the Lost Gardens are fabulous, their re-creation an amazing achievement. Subsequently another Cornish hotel reported that they'd turned down a request, on behalf of the Blairs, to stay there for a discounted price. The Carlyon Bay is tight-lipped as to whether they gave a discount. The Carlyon Bay is part of the Brend chain of hotels, which is confined to Devon and Cornwall. It is old-fashioned in an agreeable sort of way with entertainment to the taste of people of my age group. "Do we want Eminem? - noooooh!" was the refrain of the DJ during our last visit. One can count on the meals being good.

We had just one full day in Cornwall, and once more drove across the Southwest Peninsula, here of course a far shorter distance than in Devon, to one of our favourite spots, Tintagel. Exploring its rambling ruins, and enjoying the superb views along the coast, is a delight. It is a romantic place, steeped in Arthurian legend. But of course Arthur was a mythical figure. He was - wasn't he? Back in the village we had, what else, Cornish Pasties for lunch. Then we went on to Boscastle, long a popular beauty spot, which had, since our last visit, suffered from devastating floods, which mercifully produced no casualties, unlike in Lynmouth some fifty years previously. Certainly it looked as if normality was returning and by all accounts it has been making a strong recovery. We rounded off the day with a visit to Truro, a city we'd passed through but never actually visited. It was a trifle disappointing. By no means an unpleasant place, just nothing very special. Even in this far-flung part of the kingdom, high street homogenization has had its impact. Its Cathedral is the same, pleasant but hardly one of our greatest. On the following day, we drove home. We had worthy intentions of stopping off at Stonehenge, but just felt like getting home so drove past.

First published in VISA issue 71 (Feb 2007)

Go West

by Malcolm O'Brien

There are probably very few International Airport car parks in England where you can sit quietly and listen to the noise of cattle in nearby fields. Newquay Cornwall International Airport, as its marketing department would have us call it, is one such. Situated on the North Cornwall coast just a few miles north-east of Newquay, and with the end of the runway within a mile or so of the sea, it is a very typical small regional airport with only one terminal serving both domestic and international flights.

For our journey today, no passports are required, although most of the flight will be over water. If the passengers are lucky, the winds will favour a departure from the westerly runway at Newquay. This allows the little twin turbo-prop to climb out over Watergate Bay, which now houses the Cornish branch of Jamie Oliver's "fifteen" restaurant, before heading west towards Newquay itself and its famous Fistral Beach, the home of many international surfing competitions. From Newquay, the 17-seat De-Havilland DHC-6 (aka "Dash 6" or "Twin Otter") levels at around 1,000' above the sea as it picks up the coastline and starts making its way along the dramatic North Cornwall coast towards St Mary’s airport on the Isles of Scilly.
The next town passed is Perranporth, with the town lying in a gap between the hills down by the beach, followed shortly by the exposed airport sitting on the top of the cliffs overlooking the sea.

Only a short while later, those passengers sitting on the left hand side of the aircraft are treated to the sight of Godrevy Lighthouse, at the north-eastern end of St Ives bay, standing guard over the Stones, a reef stretching out for 1.5 miles. The lighthouse first lit up on 1st March 1859, and was built at a cost of £7,082 15s 7d. In 1939 the keepers were withdrawn when the lighthouse was made automatic. Since 1995 it has been solar powered, and is monitored and controlled from the Trinity House Operations Control Centre at Harwich in Essex.

As the passengers' eyes follow the large bay around, they see the town of Hayle in the middle of the bay and then St Ives itself at the south-western end of the bay. The large white building overlooking the beach is the Tate St Ives. The passengers who rushed to take the twin seats on the right hand side of the aircraft rather than the single seats on the left are probably realising by now that their views for pretty much the whole trip between Newquay and St Mary’s will be Atlantic Ocean and little else - although possibly with one exception.

Continuing down past St Ives, the aircraft passes just to the north of Gurnards Head, apparently so called because the outcrop of rock resembles that of the fish known as a Gurnard. Anticipation heightens as the aircraft rushes towards Pendeen Watch, the last lighthouse on the Northern coast of Cornwall, and also monitored and controlled from Harwich. From here, on a clear day, the passengers can look south towards the town of St Just, the most westerly town in England and one of the most ancient mining districts in Cornwall. A little further in the distance Land’s End airport can be seen, followed quickly by Sennen Cove with its beautiful sandy beach and then Cape Cornwall, the point at which the Atlantic splits into the Bristol Channel and Irish Sea or the English Channel.  Only four miles south from Cape Cornwall lies Lands End, the most westerly point of mainland England.

That's it, the mainland passes away behind, and from here to St Mary’s airport the sights from the left of the aircraft are Longships Lighthouse - with a dramatic looking helipad on the top, and then Wolfe Rock further away to the south. Around 17 miles out to sea from Land’s End, those sitting on the right hand side of the aircraft may find that they are looking down on the Seven Stones lightship, which marks the reef where the Torrey Canyon ran aground on 18 March 1967, with the resultant oil spills devastating wildlife in Cornwall and Northern France. The Seven Stones Reef is also the presumed site of the mythical City of Lions of the sunken lands of the Lyonesse.

Some 30 minutes after leaving Newquay, the Twin Otter touches down at St Mary’s airport, sometimes an interesting experience given that the airport slopes away on sides sides from its centre, and can be very susceptible to the strong Atlantic winds.
It would not do justice to the Isles of Scilly to summarise the many things to see and do around the islands in this article, so this can wait for another time. For those wishing to visit the Isles of Scilly, there are really only three options. Isles of Scilly Skybus flies from Newquay and Land’s End to St Mary’s year-round, and additionally from Bristol, Exeter and Southampton from around March to November, Isles of Scilly Steamship Company operates a seasonal ferry service from Penzance to St Mary’s (www.islesofscilly-travel.co.uk). 

First publised in VISA 78 (Apr08)