Yes, it was time for our annual visit to the far south-west. This write-up will be split into two posts, the first one with be about our week at the Captain’s House in Marazion, with our four old friends from Birmingham. Then, the second one will cover our short trip further up into Cornwall, visiting new areas. As usual, we had a night with friend Karol in Lyme Regis to break the journey, before journeying on to Marazion.
The house has a beautiful location, right on the edge of the shore, overlooking St Michael’s Mount. See this post from last year for more. You couldn’t get a better view, and our first evening was wonderfully sunny and warm – we sat outside and admired the view with glasses of wine. Sadly, the house is no longer available for rental next year, so this stay would be our last.
Maybe this also meant that the house was not quite as well maintained as it was last year – a few things went wrong… Add to that, round our usual area, we encountered many signs of damage from the dreadful storm Cornwall suffered earlier in the year. Many trees were blown down, fortunately not right by our house.
But in the house, first, one of the heavy blinds in the biggest bedroom fell onto friend Sue’s head – she had a badly bruised and grazed nose…
On our first day, we did our usual trip to Lands End from Sennen Cove. Horrors – the pub at Lands End had a fire over the summer and was not open… but it was a fabulous sunny day for a walk. We think we might go back to Sennen Cove next year, to another big house with great views, Chy Ryn, where we have stayed before. We just have to wait for our dates to be confirmed.
That same evening, things in the house got worrying – the heating wouldn’t come on, and the next day we had no hot water… the boiler had broken down, and the electric immersion heather was also not working… I won’t bore you with details of endless stressy calls to housekeeper and agents, visits from people with electric heaters, abortive visits from plumbers… it was not a good scene. Suffice it to say that normal service was not resumed until Monday tea-time.
Meanwhile, we had our annual trip to Mousehole, then back to Penzance for huge Sunday lunch in the Longboat pub. Creatures of habit? Us?
As so often in Cornwall at this time of year, we suffered from a range of ailments – I was still feeling a bit weak and feeble, Graham had such a bad ankle that walking was very difficult for him, and Sue T had a bad arm/shoulder… and we are all getting older… But you can look back at these posts and it is a constant parade of things like post-operation recovery, flu, chest infections, bad hips, knees, achilles tendons… I guess it is a bad time of year.
Another day, more familiar things – down to Penberth Cove. However, this year only two of our party – Philosopher and Alex, braved the walk up the steep cliff to get to Logan Rock. Philosopher had always said he wanted to do it when he was so-and-so old. So he did, and lived to tell the tale… Here are the two intrepid walkers disappearing from view up the path.
The flowers are extraordinary this year – so early, and the lane down to Penberth Cove from Treen is full of both wild and garden flowers. Here is a patch of fritillaries… I love that chequered pattern.
We normally go to a National Trust garden called Trengwainton and pose for a group photo in front of a particular little gazebo – no luck this year, most of the garden was closed because of fallen trees.
Philosopher and I spent a morning mooching round Penzance and went to the Penlee Gallery, always one of our favourite places, with paintings that are always a joy to revisit. This year they had several by Leonard Fuller on display – readers may remember that we bought one which purported to be by him from a local auction house a few years ago. Here is the blog post about it. The signature on our painting is a bit different from those in the gallery, but on close examination I think it is the same… Here is a pretty painting by Fuller we saw n the gallery, of a young woman – not the same woman as in our painting.
Penzance is looking a bit run down – many empty shops and closed businesses.
Another day we went to St Ives. Caught the little train from St Erth to St Ives, and left the car in the Park and Ride at St Erth. So easy, I don’t know why we have never done it before. Have always had either an everlasting bus journey or incredibly arduous parking… As ever, the light in St Ives was very special. No wonder so many artists worked there…
We went to Cape Cornwall – Philosopher and I both spent time trying to photograph the waves. We have noticed before that just before the waves break, in certain weather conditions they show a bright turquoise flash of colour. Our efforts were largely futile because it is incredibly hard to capture the effect, which only lasts a second. Here is my best effort…
Back at home in Marazion, in the evenings we watched films using some strange device that Sue and Graham brought with them. We watched Hamnet – nah, couldn’t see what all the fuss was about, and I Swear, about Tourettes, which was very touching. One night we went out to the Savoy Cinema in Penzance for pizza (excellent) followed by a movie – it was Project Hail Mary, which I can honestly say was one of the worst things I have ever seen. It was far too long, incredibly noisy and flashy and sooo boring. I hate sci-fi and space stuff anyway…
For the first time, we scarcely cooked at all. Fish and chips, supermarket fresh soup, bread, cheese and pate, pizza – and on our last night we ate at the Godolphin in Marazion, which was excellent. The St Austell Brewery have really sharpened up their act – see the next post!
So, we said goodbye to the Captain’s House. Of course I will miss the view, but given that we are out most of the days, and the weather is usually too cold to sit out in the evenings or the early morning, we don’t really make the most of it. I had brought my laptop with the firm intention of doing some writing, but didn’t even turn it on.
