Today I went North

Although I nearly didn't get anywhere at all as I came across the first proper traffic-jam on Lighthouse Road. It's a very narrow, typically Cornish lane. However it has plenty of passing places and we all have a reverse gear on our car. Except the one car causing the problems apparently. I'm not quite sure what went wrong with the universally acknowledged hand-signal of "no, you're all right mate, I'll reverse, there's a passing place just back here" followed by a thank you hand-signal followed by a you're welcome hand signal. But it didn't happen this time. This time there was a small white car with foreign number plates practically carved into the dry stone wall cunningly hidden with vegetation and we all had squeeze past him. I digress.

And then I picked up a hitch-hiker on the outskirts of Porthtowan. Well, not a proper one as it turns out. Just a lady about my age who stuck her thumb out and I stopped. Turned out her car had broken down and she was hoping one of her friends would pass by, but she got me. It's amazing how much ground you can cover in three minutes flat. We wished each other well and I carried on to St Agnes. Another digression.

I remembered my lettings agent mentioning St Agnes as a possible area to live but I'd already fallen in love so it fell on deaf ears. Three months to the day after I arrived in Cornwall I made it there. It is indeed a beautiful village surrounded by equally beautiful places so I will have to go back and visit some of them.

After pottering around a couple of rather lovely shops and NOT BUYING ANYTHING I had a lovely lunch at Taste. An amazing mushroom and asparagus stroganoff (spell check just offered me "strongman" instead of stroganoff) with risotto, absolutely beautifully presented. In case you're wondering at all this extravagance, I don't usually go out for lunch, especially not twice in a week, but I didn't do a proper shop so I'm eating up the fridge and freezer and store cupboard for the rest of my meals. Ok?

Then off to Chapel Porth. My first impression was that the beach was a little scruffy.

But the longer I was there the more I realised how lovely it was. As the tide went out and the expanse of rock pools and sandy beach fully emerged I discovered what a perfect Enid Blyton type beach it was. I read for a while, well quite a long while as Lucy Diamond has just brought out a new book; Summer At Shell Cottage and I love her books, and then wandered off in search of ice-cream. Result. I had forgotten that this beach cafe sells the unique Hedgehog Ice-cream. Vanilla ice-cream topped with clotted cream then rolled in toasted hazelnuts. So good!

Then it was off for a wander around the beach. Lots of lovely rock pools with little streams to dam.

Then I got chatting to a lovely man from Derby who was waxing lyrical about Chapel Porth and what an amazing time they'd had and why does his brother always go to Skeggie and then he mentioned that when the tide goes right out you can access lots of little coves and caves. Like this one:

They're my footprints. The very first footprints on the newly exposed sand that afternoon. By this time I had completely changed my mind about Chapel Porth. It's delightful and definitely on my list to return to, hopefully with family and/or friends (it's about an hours drive but definitely worth it).

And how often do you go for a paddle, look up and see a two hundred year old tin mine? This is Wheal Coates. The countryside round here is littered with derelict engine houses just like this one. I think they're beautiful but sad too.

And that, my friends, is the end of my adventures for now. The weather forecast was correct and the weather has been blooming awful for the last couple of days. I'm heading back up country tomorrow for a couple of weeks and then, all being well, will be back at the end of June.

Love from The Lizard Girl

On Tuesday I stayed South

And actually proved to be a bit of a disappointment. I have only visited Gunwalloe Church Cove Beach in winter and as it's another Poldark location felt it was my duty to revisit in summer. I love the church of St Winwaloe (or Church of the Storms) but I just don't like the beaches at Church Cove. Can't articulate why, just don't.

Anyway, I braved it out, spending the afternoon not on the sandy beach at Church Cove but the shingle one next to it, as I spotted a nice rock to sit behind and eat my picnic lunch (what would be a packed lunch in an office becomes a picnic when eaten alfresco). I closed my eyes for a few moments and could almost imagine Ross Poldark, sleeves rolled up, ready for a shipwreck...

Here's another Cornish oddity: I have already blogged about St Wynwallow Church at Church Cove which is different from this St Wynwaloe church at a different Church Cove. One is walking distance from the Lighthouse but this St Winwaloe church at Church Cove is a fifteen minute drive away. So confusing.

Love from The Lizard Girl

On Monday I went East

I had wanted to visit The Hidden Hut for ages so decided to strike out east and head for Porthcurnick Beach. First of all I had to work out where exactly it was as it doesn't appear on my A-Z. Having established it was next to Porthscatho I set off. No picnic lunch today as I really wanted to sample the wares of The Hidden Hut having seemingly read about it everywhere. I knew it was going to be a fairly long journey as it's on the Roseland Peninsula but I hadn't read my map quite carefully enough and completely missed the little picture of a car crossing a passage of water. What I thought was a nice country road to the Peninsula was a nice country road with a car ferry at the end of it. Bloody obvious when you look at the map properly:

It ended up adding to the enjoyment of the day as I had no-one else to worry about and it meant I was even hungrier for my much anticipated lunch and low tide wasn't for hours yet.

Fifteen minutes or so later I ended up at Porthcurnick beach.

But lunch first:

Ok, so actually neither the beach nor the Hut were deserted, I just got lucky with my photos.

I bagged a seat at one of the communal tables and enjoyed a delicious lunch of beetroot, tomato and coconut soup. All of which is prepared to the right-hand side of the Hut on big open stoves. Then it was off to stake my claim on the beach... and realise my Kindle was low on battery. See, always something. It was tough but I just had to lay there and sunbathe for an hour or two.

Then I wandered across to Porthscatho which is a small village across from Porthcurnick and actually does have a harbour unlike many of the other misnomers and then back to the car to catch the King Henry ferry home.

It's about an hour and a half from the Lighthouse to this beach. I would come again because I love the journey however it's a dog friendly beach which means it has a disproportionate amount of dogs because so many beaches have a dog ban from Easter through to the end of September. Even on a quiet day there were dogs yapping and barking. So maybe another trip to the Roseland Peninsula but visit St Mawes next time.

Love from The Lizard Girl.

On Sunday I went West

After one week's absence the foghorn is back so I looking back on a glorious few days of discovering some of Cornwall's beautiful beaches.

On Sunday, 7th June I headed west to Porthcurno. I had seen the beaches strung out along the coastline from The Minack Theatre a few years back but, wow, what a beautiful beach I found myself on.

I always seem to leave something behind. Today it was my bottle of water. Getting lovely and warm in the car rather than lovely and warm in my beach bag.

Before leaving I walked up to the top of the road leading to The Minack and took this, one of my favourite beach shots (so far). I was sunbathing on the left hand side of the first bay.

And because this is Cornwall and they do things their way, you have to pay 20p to use the toilets. They're nothing special and I have never been charged anywhere else. This is, of course, on top of the car-parking charges which you have to pay everywhere. So not only do you need pound coins but twenty pence pieces as well.

I finished off the afternoon with a quick trip into Sennen Cove. Cath and I had driven down and round and out during our tour of the west coast last week but I had a little look around this time, as well as an ice-cream, which I had to guard with my life to protect from marauding seagulls, and a look at the menu at Ben Tunniscliffe's new restaurant, which I rather fancy for breakfast one day, although an hour's drive for breakfast may be pushing it.

And a last look at Sennen Cove as I drove away.

Love from The Lizard Girl

Notes from a hedgerow

Wherever you look on The Lizard there is colour. The cliffs are covered in wild flowers as are the verges and hedgerows. Sometimes it makes navigating the narrow lanes of Cornwall even harder as my attention is diverted by the profusion of flowers to either side of me. Mother Nature manages to attract the eye even further by interspersing opposite colours of the colour wheel spectrum. Pink and yellow don't clash in this environment; they complement each other.

Last Saturday morning I took a walk up to Lizard village in the sunshine having decided to take clippings of all the wild flowers I didn't know the names of or, with a couple of sparser populated ones, take photographs. As you can see in the photo my wild flower knowledge was sorely lacking as I didn't even recognise honesty without its distinctive seedheads.

So, for all you budding botanists, this is what I found on my half-mile walk to Lizard:

• sea campion
• red campion
• common vetch
• horseshoe vetch
• sea holly
• cow pasley
• wild carrot
• thrift (sea pink)
• red valerian
• tree mallow
• violet (not sure which one)
• sheep’s sorrel
• marsh gladiolus
• three cornered leek
• broom
• navelwort
• hottentot fig (both yellow and pink)
• foxglove
• ribwort plantain
• charlock
• clover
• ground ivy
• honesty
• daisy
• buttercup
• hedge bindweed
• nettle
• dandelion

This one doesn't look like it belongs in a Cornish verge, in fact looking in my wild flower book, it shouldn't be here, but Marsh Gladiolus is flourishing on The Lizard.

Apart from wild flowers, another thing I have found on my walks is that you can't tell what the weather is by the way people are dressed. On this particular day I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts carrying a sweatshirt just in cases and coming towards me on the path were a couple in full winter clothes and the woman was actually holding a woolly scarf around her face. I used to find this at Kynance Cove Cafe. You'd get people coming up from the beach in t-shirt and shorts and people coming down from the cliffs in waterproofs and trousers.

Having accomplished my mission in Lizard to buy a newspaper and a pasty, oh and stop for a chat with Louise at The Cowshed, I wandered home to learn a little more about wild flowers from my newly purchased Wild Flowers book before they became an unidentifiable mush in the bottom of my basket.

Love from The Lizard Girl

Cath and Em's great adventure

I drove back down to Cornwall on Tuesday, 2nd June and convinced Cath to join me for a few days. The weather was pretty dreadful on the drive down with weather reports of unseasonably high winds. Not again. We were at the lighthouse by early afternoon so made the most of the day by going down to Lizard Point for an early seal spot and a cheeky cream tea at Polpeor Cafe. Then a quick ten minute drive over to Cadgwith Cove, by which time it had become a lovely afternoon. The weather forecast was improving by the minute so we made plans to head for Kynance Cove the next day to coincide with low tide at lunchtime. I have already learnt that if the weather is forecast to be even half-decent you make the most of it with your most favoured activity not being saved 'til last.

As you can see, the weather was glorious; the warmest day since moving to Cornwall in mid-March. Such a sexy look; t-shirt and shorts, white legs and walking boots.

We bought lunch and smoothies for the beach and found, after a couple of false starts, a lovely sheltered rock to set up camp against. I was engrossed in my Kindle when Cath suddenly announced it had gone very quiet. We soon realised why. The tide was coming in and about to cut our part of Kynance Cove off. Oh how we laughed. What with me being the local expert in tides and all. There were still a couple of people around who confidently told us we had a good five minutes yet. We were out of there in seconds, splashing across the meeting waves. Gosh, up and over our ankles it was!

This is where we had been sitting..

... so we retreated to the safety of the cliff above and carried on reading.

And then strolled home in the late afternoon sun.

Day two wasn't quite so sunny but it was still lovely for walking to Church Cove. We took a detour to the beach at Housel Bay where we had the beach to ourselves.

Then it was onwards to the lifeboat station at Kilcobben Cove. Bizarrely along the way our mobiles pinged into life. I had a conversation with a man from the insurance company about the water damage at Lowen while Cath had a nice chat with Paul!

We had a look round the newly-built lifeboat station and then blagged a ride back up in the lift with one of the lifeboat men. We'd spent so long meandering along the cliff path that we were in serious need of lunch so cut our walk slightly short. But disaster struck; Ann's Pasties had run out of pasties! We couldn't wait a whole hour before the next batch were ready so had to console ourselves with a cone of chips each from Smugglers. Then home for a cup of tea before dragging Cath out again and all the way down to Botallack to go Poldark hunting. 

In true Cornish style there were no signs whatsoever indicating where we should go, despite Botallack being a National Trust site. We found the NT car-park and the remains of old mine workings but the print-out we were clutching in our hands seemed to bear no resemblance to what we could see. Luckily we found a very nice man. A local who sort of reminded me of the neighbour from Friday Night Dinner but I forced myself away from that thought as he told us exactly which properties belonged to which Poldark and his minor impact on the set (it involved a handrail and hessian) which obviously brought him a small but triumphant satisfaction.

These are the Crown mine/engine houses which, in Poldark, belong to Francis and are called Wheal Grambler. Maybe you're thinking they look a bit derelict and different from the ones in the series; they are the same buildings but roofs were computer graphically added.

The lovely man explained that there is a very, very narrow path, literally inches wide where you can climb down to the lower building. He told us that only foolhardy men attempt it as you are nine inches from a horrible death if you slip. As we followed his pointed finger we saw that, indeed, there was a foolhardy male on the grassy lower level.

The path is right here ^ and leads around and down...

Allegedly there are handholds.

 Now we realise why the National Trust don't include the path down to the mines in its guided walk. We mused a while on why they don't just bar the access path or at least put a whacking great danger sign up and then walked back up the way and went Captain Ross hunting.

Here I am outside his place of work; Wheal Leisure, but he was nowhere to be seen. Not even a whiff of a horseman riding by. Oh, that's another book entirely.

Our slightly surreal walk put me in mind of walking around the Forum in Rome. Not a sign nor explanation of anything anywhere. At least you can refer to your guidebook when in Rome. Even having looked on t'internet there is practically no information about a site so obviously full of history.

Seeing as we were in the right part of Cornwall we decided to take a look at Lands End. Quite frankly it looked ghastly. What on earth Shaun The Sheep and a myriad of other horrid looking 'attractions' has got to do with Lands End is anyone's guess. We took the scenic route home and dropped into Porthleven for dinner. After a stroll around we enjoyed a delicious meal at The Square; Cath had corn-fed chicken with risotto and I had baked cod with crab rarebit. Unfortunately once our meal was served no-one came near us again so we had no opportunity to tell them how good it was but we both agreed it wouldn't stop us returning nor recommending.

Worn out after two days of being on the go in the sea air we headed for home and didn't even have a glass of wine, just hit our respective sacks. Next morning it was time for Cath to fly home just in the nick of time as the foghorn sounded and the weather worsened (but only briefly).

Love from The Lizard Girl

Mum and dad popped round

In my haste to get to Libby's bedside in Cambodia I drove to Newquay airport and flew up to Gatwick early on Sunday, 12th April. I knew I wasn't in a fit state to drive the 6+ hours home. However, once we were back in Lingfield I was aware that my car was sitting in the car-park at Newquay and really needed to be collected. Mum and dad had been due to visit me at the beginning of May so I decided to fly down, retrieve the car and spend a few days with them back at the lighthouse.

It was good to be back and I enjoyed making sweetcorn chowder for mum and dad ready for their tea after their little jaunt around Devon. They arrived bang on schedule at 5pm and once I'd shown them round the cottage we headed down to Lizard Point.

Mum and dad were keen to go to Trebah Gardens. Handily it was also on my "to do" list so we decided to go the next day. We drove cross-country via Gweek and mum navigated brilliantly. It was such a pretty, albeit somewhat narrow at times, route with lovely views of the Helford river. We spent a lovely few hours wandering around the beautiful gardens and walking down the valley to the little beach before having lunch and the obligatory poke around the gift shop. 

Then we headed down the coast to Marazion where we enjoyed cream teas looking at St Michael's Mount in the sunshine whilst in the warmth of The Godolphin Arms.

We woke up on Tuesday to the wind howling around the lighthouse which didn't auger well for our walk along to Housel Bay. Undaunted we wrapped up well and set off. It soon became clear that it was going to be impossible to walk along the cliff path without real danger to life so we returned to base with the intention of going to Kynance Cove for lunch. Then Victoria rang from the Cafe and said it was blowing a hoolie down there; which is very unusual as the Cove is very sheltered. So two decisions were made: (One) that we would drive across to St Ives for lunch and (two) that I would depart for home a day earlier as I was really struggling with my decision to leave Libby, even though I knew she was fine in the care of others.

We drove across to the north coast where it was a lovely Spring day with blue skies. It was a little breezy but nothing compared to what we'd just come from. I'm a creature of habit so we had lunch at the Porthmeor Cafe overlooking the beach; delicious as ever. 

There is a seascape painting hanging in a shop window on Tregenna Hill in St Ives that always catch my eye but it costs over £450. So I knocked up my own version. I took some shots of the sea from the balcony outside the Cafe (the landscape photograph) and then created a Photoshop canvas. It's definitely better viewed from a distance but I'm very happy with it for £16.99!

The next day we packed up. Mum and dad headed off to Dartmouth and I headed for home to be with Libby until she had recovered well enough to be independent.

Love from The Lizard Girl.