(this narrative began from when I first landed in London on September 3, 2016)
Friday
September 9, 2016:
Today, a full day of travel and sightseeing was
planned. It was not an excursion, but
people had a chance to stay back if they wanted since we were still going to be
at the same hotel for another night. However,
everyone on our tour came today.
The first thing we did was to drive from our hotel
in Plymouth westbound to Cornwall. After
a couple of hours, we stopped for a free Cornish “pastie” (pastry), a big doughy
sandwich containing potato, onion, meat, and veggies. I was told it would be like eating stew located
inside a pie crust. I couldn’t eat mine
yet though so I just took it with me to eat later. We’d stopped at a place called Land’s End,
which is a high rocky coast facing the Atlantic Ocean at the very western end
of England. It was quite cool and windy up there, very raw and beautiful. The ocean crashes against dangerous cliffs
relentlessly. You have to be careful
that you don’t get too close to the edge.
After we left Land’s End, we drove another hour and
a half to a popular seaside resort called St. Ives. This place looks like it was built on the
sides of very steep hills. The town has
a harbour and lovely beaches and faces the ocean, but not directly. The ocean’s waves are quieter and smaller as
they hit the shore. While being very
scenic, the town was a difficult place to enter. First, we were told we would have to descend by
foot into the town on our own – charter coaches are just too big to negotiate
the streets. It takes maybe fifteen
minutes to walk down steep paths and stairways to get to the town proper – very
hard on the knees, I must say.
Fortunately, there were smaller buses in town that were used for taking
people back up to the coaches. They cost
two pounds per adult and one pound per child.
At this point, I decided to eat my Cornish pastie
since we had to buy our own lunches today anyway. While I was eating it, I saw an ice cream
stand close by and went over afterward to buy an ice cream cone – honeycomb
flavour with caramel swirl in a waffle cone.
I swear I have never enjoyed an ice cream cone so much! I sat at the harbour for a while eating my
cone, then went to look for a washroom, which I found finally, But then, I started walking in a direction I
thought would lead back to where there were those elusive buses that would take
us back up to the coach. About ten
minutes into this walk, I decided that I was actually headed in the opposite
direction from what I needed to take.
So, I turned around and headed back to town, away from the
shoreline. Suddenly, I saw a couple of
landmarks in town that I recognized – the Queen’s Pub, and the St. Ives
Holidays office. That’s when I knew I
was where I’d originally landed when I first walked into the town. Just a little further on, I caught up with
one of the buses our tour director, John Hood, had told us about and I paid my
two pounds to get on and it took us back up the hill. I was really thankful for that bus because
there is no way I ever would have made it back up there on my own.
The final thing we did today is to drive back to
Plymouth and went down to the waterfront where we boarded a boat that would
take us on a cruise around Plymouth Sound.
It was a forty minute round trip.
I’d say it was bearable, temperature-wise, for the first leg of the
trip, but it turned really cold once we turned around and headed into the wind. That’s because I was only wearing a light sweater,
but you really needed a jacket to keep warm.
That was okay though. I’d met
Midge on the upper deck of the boat. She
was a nice American and later I also met Maxine and Russ, a Canadian couple,
when I went down to the lower deck to take shelter from the cold.
When we got back to the hotel, it was just past 6:00
pm. It had been a long day of
sightseeing and we were all tired. We
were to have dinner in the penthouse of the hotel at 7:00 pm, including one
drink. I’ve got to admit, the food was
good. Dinner was part of our package and
so was the drink. I ended up sitting
with two other American women, Tania and Allene. We talked mostly about cruising and the
different trips we’d been on and how we felt about this trip. Tania didn’t seem impressed with the quality
of this trip, but Allene seemed to be enjoying it. These two women like to travel together
regularly, but I’m not sure if there is any other relationship between them –
not that it matters to me anyway.
copyright 2016 - Anne Shier
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