The Road Goes Ever On

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Marine Spelunking at Tintagel

There are some huge and fantastic sea caves on the Cornish

coast and particularly at Tintagel

For reasons still unclear to me--except that my life insurance

policy was renewed and paid up recently--Vicki wanted me
to climb down to the "beach" and snap a few pix of the giant

caves

So here I am on the beach, huge waves coming ever nearer;

I happen to know, having read Victor Hugo's Toilers of the

Sea many years ago (I am forever watching out for giant

clams), that the tide can come in very quickly in these parts

(i.e., Brittany, English coast)

Snapping pix, minding my own business, and then I notice

sea foam is blowing back out of the cave opening; lots of it

So I beat a hasty retreat; here is the beach 30 minutes later!

Monday, November 9, 2009

Tintagel

Tom took us the back roads to Tintagel

13th century castle ruins; Earl Richard, Henry III's brother,

who built the castle, had a fine sense of location and view,

but little of defense. Most people regard it as a vanity castle,

an attempt to associate with the Arthur legends. Of course,

there is no real connection between this castle or location

with Arthur. There's nothing much substantive about

Arthur at all, but we won't let that get in the way of a good

story.

Coast looking east

West

Summit, end, of the island

More castle ruins

More violent coast

Vicki at Tintagel

St. Ives

Beach road at St. Ives

Tide's out; it's a beautiful beach but a wild surf

Very wild; actually, we didn't think all that much of the

town, but the Cornish coast is wonderful

Oops! Eden Sculpture

I should have followed the Eden post with this, on the variety

of sculpture at Eden Project, one of its major and most

impressive features; above, Woman, in the Cornwall biome

Giant bee, pollinator, on the terraces

Bacchinalia, the Mediterranean biome

Depiction of all the electronic waste each

person creates

The Seed--a 70 ton Cornish granite monolith,
in the Core

World's largest refrigerator magnet board

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Archeology 101

Half a mile down the road, once you found the marker on

the unnamed road

Intrepid megalith-hunter, hot on the trail...

Of course, most of the megaliths are now in fences, barns,

houses, etc.

Or scratching posts

Tin Age structure

At last! The very famous and very enigmatic Men-am-Tol,

or "101" site

Me, pondering whether to engage in one of the silly rituals

associated with this site

Of course, I did; but Vicki declined being passed through,

naked, nine times, etc.; at least on camera

This is someone else's photo off the web; I really don't think

there's much of an enigma here; sort of a group site, so to

speak...

Cornwall has scores of megalithic sites; we visited just a major few. Many have been destroyed or re-cycled into fences, fence-posts, houses, barns, scratching posts, etc. Lanyon Quoit is the largest of Cornwall's dolmens, but it is really out there, on an unnamed road between two hamlets, in or very near Bodmin Moor. We finished up so late we wound up "camping" at the intersection (the wide part of a "Y") of two unnamed roads. Fortunately, there is not much traffic in these places, and the morning view of St. Michael's was great.

Lanyon Quoit (dolmen's are called "quoits" here); tall

enough (for me) to walk under

Another view; originally buried, of course

The National Trust is everywhere; but where was the gift

shop and the membership station? and the cafe and the
garden store? and who gifted Lanyon Quoit to the Trust?
and where's the folly?

Land's End

We were not the only people there; there were perhaps a dozen others. Land's End is much larger than John O' Groats, but much more cheesy-touristy. Fortunately, almost all the attractions and shops were closed for the season. Unfortunately, and much to our surprise and disappointment, there was no Land's End outlet store. Perhaps we can finally catch the London Fog outlet in London.