UK road trip – Part II

Hello again,

Our first stop after St Ives was Tintagel Castle, the supposed site of the birth of King Arthur. English Heritage calls King Arthur ‘a legend which has endured throughout the years’…we’ll leave separating the facts from fiction to others and just say that the location was certainly dramatic. The coast here is the real star, as not much of the castle is left. What does remain shows how half of the castle once perched atop a sheer cliff on a tidal island just off the mainland. The views up the coast from the island are pretty awesome… 

After Tintagel we continued north, leaving Cornwall and eventually crossing the Bristol Channel into Wales. It has to be said that the crossing left us with no desire to return to Bristol! Driving around southern Wales in the sunshine reminded us of home. No surprises there – James Cook named the entire eastern coast of Australia New South Wales because the countryside bore a resemblance to parts of southern Wales.

Our first stop was Tintern abbey, which has been a ruin since the 16th century. It’s a lovely spot in a very green and leafy valley. When we were there it was mostly empty so we wandered around at leisure, stopping to watch the cows in the adjacent field mow the grass. It was relaxing.

We continued on to Brecon where we had two nights. Brecon is in the Brecon Beacons National Park, or in Welsh, Parc Cenedlaethol Bannau Brycheiniog. Welsh is an amazing language! To hear it spoken is like listening to a German with a speech impediment… we mean that with respect of course. Anyway, most of the National Park is bare grassy moorland. There are plenty of sheep and even wild mountain ponies.

The afternoon we arrived we wandered only a few hundred metres from our B&B and found a great pub (the Castle pub). We ate here both nights, because the food was good, but also because the view over the rooftops of Brecon was hard to beat. You can see the highest peak in Southern Wales, Pen Y Fan (PYF), in the distance.

On our full day in Brecon we wanted to do some walking in the National Park. We got the B&B to make us up a packed lunch, asked for some suggestions on where to go and set off to conquer PYF. After a short drive we arrived at the beginning of the trail, which was essentially a straight walk up to the peak…

Needless to say there were plenty of stops along the way. It’s probably best here to just rely on a few pictures to give you a sense of the walk and the country side…

Lesley making some good progress on the ascent..

The sheep were pretty much everywhere. You can see a trail continuing in the background…

Reaching the top, and our lunch break, with views back across rural (old) south Wales…

So we felt pretty good after that walk 🙂 You can see how there are definitely glimpses of Australia in the countryside…and we were just phenomenally lucky with the weather (have been all trip).

After Brecon we head further west. Tim did all the driving this trip… whilst we saw alot the distances were very manageable. We would have been completely lost without a GPS though (and Lesley’s expert skills in programming this).

Our next destination was St David’s in Pembrokeshire National Park, Britain’s smallest city and the resting place of Wales’ patron saint. On the way we stopped off at yet another castle in picturesque countryside (life’s tough eh?). Good to get some value out of our English National Heritage memberships.

St David’s itself is charming enough – we only had one night there. It would be the ideal base to do more exploring in the area. What we managed to see was great – the Welsh coast is very dramatic and in the glorious weather very picturesque. Lesley even got her feet wet. It’s very easy to imagine it being buffeted by rain with dark stormy clouds overhead.

We left St David’s and drove back east to Cardiff, capital of Wales. On the way we stopped off at the Gower Peninsula for lunch. Cue more dramatic coastline and picturesque countryside. Wales has really impressed in that regard!

It’s really been a bit of an eye-opener this trip. Living in London through the winter wasn’t a source of inspiration for further travels in the UK. But this trip has reminded us how much there is to see that is so (relatively) close by. Really it seems every time we travel our enthusiasm for travel is rekindled anew. But especially with Tim’s frustrations at the UK contract market, it was a timely reminder that the UK isn’t just London.

We’ll probably just chill out today and tomorrow in Cardiff… see the castle but otherwise relax before catching the train home. We’ve got a few more trips coming up and a few things happening in London so as always we’ll keep you posted.

TL

UK road trip – Part I

Hello again,

Well Saturday finally rolled around and that meant it was the start of our road trip through Cornwall and southern Wales. The spirit of adventure was upon us! Winter had finally broken and we had a decent chunk of time to explore the UK. After some initial hiccups (couldn’t find the car rental place, GPS didn’t want to work) we were cruising down a motorway toward St Ives, Cornwall.

It didn’t take long to pass Stonehenge…it brought back memories of the trip we did with Ryan when we went to Bath. We continued on until we reached Stourhead, a huge estate with picturesque gardens. These were spectacular in the sun…Lesley commented that it was one of the most beautiful places she had ever been. Many photos were taken…

Being a Saturday, it seemed that a bunch of the locals had also come to Stourhead to claim their own spot in the garden. It had a great atmosphere.

After Stourhead we spent less time on the motorways and drove on some of the country roads, eventually crossing into Cornwall which is right at the end of England’s south-western peninsula. Cornwall is one of the sunniest (and sometimes warmest) parts of England, known for its beaches and rugged coastline. It was beautiful country – very green, with rolling meadows and country homes. Some of the roads were bordered by hedges  which would obscure all views – it was a bit dodgy when the road narrowed but awesome at the same time.

St Ives was a great base to explore Cornwall. The town itself is quite charming, with narrow cobbled streets, great restaurants and buildings with real character. And the beaches, well, they were great to look at. The water was pretty cold (12 degrees) and there was really no surf to speak of (really miss the surf), but at least it was clear and there was ample sunshine and real sand. 

We spent the rest of our first day wandering around and taking it all in, before fish and chips on the beach for dinner. We stayed in a great B&B (Seaforth St Ives Guesthouse) with views over the ocean and town – we had plenty of time to take in the sunset (which was still going at 10pm).

The next day we enjoyed a hearty English breakfast before jumping in the car again to take in some sights around St Ives. First up was St Michael’s Mount, a very small town located on a tidal island which is only accessible by foot when the tide is low enough. We had coffee and scones on the island looking back toward the mainland…yes we were definitely roughing it.

We drove on to the Minack Theatre, which is an amazing open-air theatre carved into the side of a cliff. The theatre was the project of the late Rowena Cade, an incredibly tough sounding lady. She worked on the theatre throughout the winter months so performances could run in the summer – this included hauling materials around the steep site and up from the beach below. Unfortunately we didn’t time it right to catch a performance there, maybe another time.

We were only 4 miles from Land’s End, the most westerly point of England, so we decided to drive there just so we could say we’d done it. Unfortunately Land’s End has been over developed into the realm of scary-bad taste. It’s a one way road into town – you pass through a ‘famous gate’ and then you are forced to pay 5 pounds for all day parking (this is far beyond ample). If the 1000 leagues under the sea experience (in 4D no less) wasn’t a compelling enough reason to stay, they also have a giftshop selling miniatures of itself (because it is the Land’s End gift shop…). We could go on. We left Land’s End ten minutes later and 5 pounds poorer.

We relaxed that afternoon before heading out to a restaurant serving great seafood. In general the seafood in Cornwall was great and bigger / better than we have been able to get in London – it definitely hit the spot.

On our last full day in St Ives we decided to do a walk along the coast, with the intention of swimming somewhere along the way. We were getting supremely lucky with the weather… here’s a shot of the walk we did, looking back to St Ives – you can see what we mean.

Walking along the coast was pretty unbelievable. Some of the houses were seriously nice, kind of like a Cornish Mosman on the fringes of St Ives (and all with crazy sea views). It’s a good thing the commute to London isn’t practical on a regular basis – it should keep prices in the area down and development in check.

Lesley got the soles of her feet wet and decided that was plenty. It was hilarious to see the surf life savers putting flags up – there was zero swell and only the hardiest of soles ventured in beyond their navel. Speaking of the hardiest of soles…after Lake Como it seemed positively warm!

We bid farewell to St Ives after three great nights and started to head north to Wales. We’ll update you in the next post.

TL