To start: hit no rocks; broke no tyres; only had K screaming multiple times! :)
We start with the hero of the day: we went to Tintagel, which is best known in Arthurian legend as the place where Arthur was conceived. There was one depiction, coming from someone (Tennyson?) that had Arthur born from the waves here, but…phooey is phooey.
It was another bright, sunny day in Cornwall, which they expect this time of year, and, generally, all of the time. K came to Cornwall so there had to be good weather. :)
After a couple stops, we went to Tintagel (about 25 miles from where we are staying in Newquay) and promptly missed a turn. This turned out to be problematic, as was much of the afternoon with Google maps, as we ended up on another one-lane road. Between the “move overs” and the “stop! let them throughs!” I thought K might lose it.
But we made it without incident.
We had breakfast, which I will picture later so it’s not the thumbnail, at the King Arthur’s Inn, which it turns out is where M and I stayed on our sojourn there in ‘06. She and I came into London, drove to Tintagel, stayed the night, then went to Plymouth (I had a work appointment).
I remembered, and we scheduled based on my memory, that this is like a killing walk, up and down and up and down. They stopped you as you went into the site and told you that you had to walk back up the slope that you were looking down bc the shuttle couldn’t come up the access road (there was no such thing in’06). We discussed later why some people thought this was a good idea. I mean, the one woman needed TWO canes.
But the place is spectacular. I’ll try a couple of examples.
For those of you at home, this is the picture of the bridge across from the mainland to the island that is now Tintagel (there was a cliff fall in the 15th century). This was NOT the bridge in ‘06 (think instead of the one in Monty Python and the Holy Grail with the wizard guarding it) — K overheard people say they had people in their group refust to cross over it. The above photo is from the bridge. It’d be a fall. I went over it, trying not to look over the sides. :)
K was, of course, enthusiastic, and decided she was going up to the top. I sat and rubbed my knee for half an hour. This is her pic at today’s photo op, the famed statue of Darth Vader…errrr, King Arthur, that is the current English Heritage logo for the place.
Okay. To talk about the walk up…I wish we had taken photos. If it wasn’t a 20’ grade, it was nothing.
But we made it. Yes, my knee hurt. Yes, K’s face was redder than a cardinal.
did I mention it was a hot, sunny day? The car at one point claimed it was 20. I’ll let you do the math (if you know how).
So. Home. “We’re not going back the way we came.” Read that as an order. :). Okay. Well, google maps ran us out of town a little ways and then there was this right turn off the road I thought was going in a good direction (if you don’t know, the Brits number their roads sort of like we number ours — the lower the number, and smaller the digits, the better the road). We turn off a 4-digit (3xxx) road onto an unnumbered road, which then we turned off onto another named road (no number) and then just “turn right in 500 feet” (FYI it is NEVER good if Google maps doesn’t know the name of the road). We came to a spot between two signs (I think the round white signs with diagonal black crosses are no passing signs, ironically) and she would not let me go on. It was one-lane. I agreed and there was a disagreement about the best way to turn around (if I didn’t “win”, I did it my way anyway 😂) and we went back to the place we turned and continued on down the 3xxx and that turned out well. “why the heck did Google send us the other way?” we’ve asked that question quite a bit the last two days.
Full English at King Arthur’s Inn. Note the black pudding, which you don’t always get. Fortunately.
For dinner, we had a treat. I was first up this morning, by quite a bit, which will surprise everyone who knows us. While waiting “patiently,” I looked for Michelin star restaurants in Cornwall. There are actually 4. One is the original seafood restaurant of the guy (Rick Stein) whose place we ate in last night. Didn’t want seafood. His protegee (they might not agree with that) also had a Michelin star place in Padstow (who knew it was culinary capital?), but I couldn’t get in there. But the Michelin guide had his second place in Padstow (about 12 miles away) as an “almost star” place and they had an opening. It’s name is Caffe Rojano.
I convinced K to take the scenic route up the coast, on a 4-digit road, and it was fine (there was some good scenery) till we got to town and it got us into a part of town, like in St. Ives yesterday, that you felt like you weren’t supposed to drive. We eventually found a car park and walked two-tenths of a mile to the restaurant. Again, why was google weaving us through places we couldn’t get and couldn’t park?
Caffe Rojano has some seafood (I saw no one with it), but does pasta and meat. Here goes the food porn —
We started with this Caesar, which had its own idiosyncracies. You can see it was heavy on the dressing, which was a bit sardine-y, and cheese, and had some crispy kale thrown in (to make up for the decadent dressing and cheese). It was good.
I had the ox cheek ragu. I don’t know what the lasagna like pasta was, but it was different. The ragu was lighter than normal and the ox cheek was…yes, cheeky. It was my best meal so far (not the highest bar).
K had the pork sobrasada, which you can tell has red chilis in it. She was rapturous about it. :)
And, to finish, tiramisu. I thought it was heavy on the coffee, but K didn’t think so. :).
Highly recommend it if you are ever in Padstow. 😂
In the “what’s going on here” category: the guy next to me at the restaurant asks if I’m American. K said yes (I was trying to divert, in case) and he did a bit of chatting back and forth. He is two years retired. Said it is amazing that he no longer knows what day of the week it is, except, he said, “of course, Sundays.” I politely said “of course.” 🤷. There was chatter about (what else?) our President, and somehow got onto golf and found out that there was a Top 100 golf club less than a mile away, according to him. Turns out, yes, as the crow flies. Am I a crow? ): [looking on the flawed Google maps, it’s 30 minutes away by car bc you have to go strong the intervening River] Acc to our table companion, the poet John Betjemin is buried in the cemetary that the golf course surrounds (it is true as per Wikipedia).
And, that, my friends was our day. Except, coming home, having come the “easy way” down 3 and 2 digit roads, Google maps tried to take us into a one-lane road about a mile from our caravan. I was told I was NOT taking that road. :). I didn’t and we looped widely around and came in from what I suspect was the other side. :). Safely.
And there was no sunset tonight. It was cloudy.
We’re not sure about our plans or the weather tomorrow. Stay tuned.
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