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From: Paula Goodfellow <>
Subject: My recent trip to Cornwall
Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 15:51:08 -0700


I returned from my trip to Cornwall last Sunday. We had a wonderful
time, and I thought I'd report that I can recommend a wonderful B&B
in Sennen (easy walk to Land's End, with unbroken views of fields
down to the sea, reasonably priced, great food, and a very friendly
cat) if anyone wants to know, and can also mention a place to avoid
near Looe. (Email me privately if you want the details, but I'll
avoid the commercial recommendations here.) I appreciate all the
suggestions that everyone made back in April when we thought we were
going then. We did a lot, but couldn't do everything that we had
hoped to. I was traveling with my husband and two teenage boys--
which meant it was hard to get them up in the morning, and we had to
stop for food a lot more frequently than I would have liked.
Highlights for us were Tintagel-- what a spectacular location! Also,
hiking around the coast near our B&B in Sennen. My boys, from
southern California, were very amazed to find beaches with no one
else around, along with enjoying the hikes through the cow pastures
and down the cliffs. They also liked St. Michael's Mount, and the
trip we took out to the island just off the coast in Looe.

Warning for overseas visitors-- out in the far west end of Cornwall
we ran into a couple of ATMs (cash machines) that wouldn't take
foreign cards. The shops at Land's End were closed, and we were
really scraping to come up with enough money for our supper, since
one restaurant near us didn't take credit cards at all, and the other
only took "chip and PIN" cards. That's my other warning for folks
from overseas. Apparently the British are converting to VISA cards
that have a microchip and require you to input your PIN-- two places
in Cornwall couldn't take our old-style cards. I don't know if we can
even get the new cards here. I had never had trouble in England
before with either my VISA card or my ATM card. (And I've spent four
weeks in other parts of the country.)

We didn't have much trouble driving on the narrow lanes, but we did
have a frustrating time trying to find some o the Stone Age ruins
which were not at all well-marked. One funny thing that happened was
when we were looking for a quoit (stone burial chamber) near
Liskeard, we asked several people where it was. Most didn't know, but
a delivery truck driver who had stopped for a smoke told us to
follow him, and then he'd flash his lights and point as we got near.
We had been staying near Looe, and had driven up to Liskeard on our
way to Tintagel, just to see the quoit. We followed him and realized
that we were heading back almost to our hotel, but didn't want to go
driving off when he was being so nice. Finally he flashed his lights
and pointed-- and sure enough we were at a stone age ruin-- just the
wrong one! We were at the stone circle in Duloe, probably only a
couple of miles from where we started that morning.

Another day we went to Carn Euny, one of the prehistoric villages,
with an underground passageway, called a fogou, to a fairly large
room. (Here's a site which shows some photos of it: http://
www.henge.org.uk/cornwall/carneuny.html ) There didn't seem to be
anyone else around, so my boys were quite taken aback when they went
down the tunnel and found a woman meditating in the room at the end.
Later after we were all back outside, we could hear her chanting down
there.

If I were doing this again, I'd spend some time with google looking
at sites about the stone ruins and write down the directions. I had
tourist maps and even a Landranger map for the ones near Liskeard,
but it's still hard to be sure you're on the right road. I notice
that some of the sites have coordinates for GPS, and others have
directions with landmarks to follow, which are better than my books.
I've been to Orkney and the ruins there, and expected that these
would be well-marked like those.

I didn't make it to all the churches I had wanted. I knew that travel
would be slower than I expected, and it was, and my family got kind
of tired and cranky with more churches to look at. However, the St.
Germans church was amazing for the architecture. And sadly, when we
got to St. Martins by Looe, we found that a big blue tarp covers part
of the roof now. The woman in the office there told me that someone
had stolen the old slate off the roof one night!

Oh, and one other funny thing-- my husband went from being
underconfident driving to overconfident. The last day with the car,
he accidentally drove into the restricted part of the city center in
St. Ives, and we drove through flocks of tourists for a kilometer or
so till we got out.

Paula

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