Cornwall and Devon: from Lizard to Torquay

This entry covers my exit from Cornwall and Devon, from Lands End to Torquay.

25.04.2014 - 01.05.2014

After starting early I had had my fill of Lands End and Sennan Cove by about 11am. I decided to backtrack a little and visit the Geevor Tin Mine in the afternoon.

The Geevor mine begun producing in 1911, and was shut down in 1990 - by which time shafts stretched well below the sea floor and two kilometres out to sea (or something). During such a long time as an operational mine, many new technologies came into vogue (and other aspects stayed much the same). It's a real hodge-podge of developing technologies from the last 100 years - I found it absolutely fascinating, a real piece of modern (and not so) history. The mine stands now as it stood in 1990 when the last shift left. It has a real aura to it, and it isn't a happy one. Bit of real life Billy Elliot and The Full Monty stories there. But despite the economic ruin and community turmoil the silent mine signifies, my eyes were on stalks! It was just so neat being able to look around, pretty much everywhere, on what could effectively be an operational mine site.

The Victoria shaft at Geevor

Being a huge Team Fortress fan, when I found the air compressor turbines, I couldn't help myself. Those folks at Valve really did their homework on mines!

Yippee ki yaa

There's also the mill there which extracted the tin from the raw ore. You are able to follow the mill through the entire process. The mill is a huge timber structure that snakes down the hill (so as to make the most of gravity during the extraction process). The woodwork involved, an engineer could spend all day in there just following where the belts go, where the water piping goes, where all the wooden drainage ditches go etc - just so FASCINATING!

No photo of the mill can do any justice to that huge and involved process. Just wow!

And to round it off, the mine was built on top of older mines from the 1800s - and you get a guided tour of a bit of the 'Wheal Mexico' mine, from 1870. They were short-arses back then, but of course being a kid helped with that. Walking along such old seams of ore I'd just learnt the name of but have forgotten now, it was neat.

Down the seam. There's a proper name for that but I've forgotten what it is.

BUT I DO GO ON.

The next day I headed to the Lizard, the most southerly point of the mainland. I've been so fortunate with my Cornwall weather - mostly lovely when I've wanted it lovely, and shit when shit would add to the ambience! Which it certainly did at Lizard.

Heading to the disused Coastguard station, the winds were howling and the waves were just exploding all around. It was raw and pure and really impressive, and then the sun came out again too!

BOOM!

There's the two-towered Lizard lighthouse above the huge surf. Magic.

I was feeling a bit worn out by this point, the weather was poo and I had reached the end of Cornwall. The only thing was to head back to London, and I have realised I don't much care for living in London ever again. So I thought I'd take a day and just sit around, and booked into a local camp site. What a cock-up that was!

First, I listened to Google Maps because I am lazy - and that took me down some local access driveway, potholed and horrendous, it was a real mission to turn around. Then when I arrived, I paid £7.50 instead of the £5.00 I expected, for no power or anything and ended up on a muddy, angled pitch miles from the toilet, and you had to pay additional for the showers. A layby offers so much more than most campsites, so much nicer - and they're free, it's silly.

I was not a happy camper that evening, and slept like crap being worried about being stuck in the mud again in the morning! But luck was on my side come my departure at dawn, though the van was kinda taking two steps forward and one step down the slope as I carved through the mud! Was pretty fun really, tearing up their stupid grass. Get my £7.50's worth.

I drove over (around) an Adder on my way out too! So I got out and took a photo. And people tent there! Fuck that!

On my way out I passed a bunch of nice free car parks tucked away which I could have stayed at instead - sigh. One was at Dry Hill, a former Radar Station during WW2. I had a walk around the area, the foliage was reminiscent of the Desert Road - tundra. There was also an old stone marker, stone-henge kind of time. During WW1 some soldiers cut the top off while making a road, before somebody realised it was something to look after and they put it back. History all over the place!

This rocks!

I journeyed on to Falmouth - the draw: to learn more of Cornwalls Maritime history. I headed to the National Maritime Museum there, and it was really good - spent a good three hours. There were familiar stories - Shackleton's survival stories, an Optimist and a Laser hanging from the roof. But they also had a great exhibition on Search and Rescue, and there's been a lot of rescuing along the Cornish coast!

They have a sea king rescue helicopter you can climb all over. This particular Sea King was actually involved in air-lifting the people from Boscastle when it was washed away in 2004, as I mentioned in my previous post! It was quite trippy, seeing this wonderful coastal town I'd just visited in such a state, the witchcraft museum inundated, people being winched into helicopters - rescue vehicles all over the hairpin corner I'd navigated days before.

They also had a wee memorial exhibition for the 1985 Penlee Lifeboat Disaster, where the lifeboat crew perished with the survivors they'd just rescued - it was emotional. Those awesome heroes, sucks.

On a brighter note, there was a wee section about Cornish emigrants and their journeys to the new colonies, and I realised that Grandma's family were some of them! So that was cool.

See, I'm King of the Sea King. 

I headed back toward the van, which I had cunningly parked at Pendennis Point, routing me right through Pendennis Castle. This was originally another of Henry VIII's string of coastal defences (like Portland Castle I wrote about earlier), but it is much larger! It was the penultimate holdout Royalist Castle during the Civil War. 1000 men and their families were under siege for five months. Like Dartmouth Castle it had many Victorian and WW1 and WW2 additions, interesting spot!

Pendennis Castle 

From the roof of the castle, the artillery barracks and some of the WW2 stuff on the right.

On my way there I walked passed the Falmouth Dockyard. Big whoop! But what got me was that, IT WAS ACTUALLY IN USE. I'm so used to seeing dead docks that to see one actually employed doing something in a western country surprised and interested me. I didn't think western countries actually did anything any more.

Later in the day I headed to the Stithians Dam, a man-made reservoir which supplies much of western Cornwall's water. It was dam fascinating. I had intended to park there overnight, and it was a lovely spot to do so, but they'd put a parking meter up. I'm not made of money!

I had missed the Eden Project on my way out, so I was determined to get there on my way back.

The Eden Project is a bit of a fantastic eco-dreamers venture, and it's pretty wonderful to behold. Using a relic of Cornwall's horribly non-environmentally friendly past, namely an old open-cast clay mine, the Eden Project set about creating a place of hope and dreams for our future. One can't help describe it in hippy terms, for it is a massive hippy project. But it's awe inspiring, it really is. They've turned what could be described as some of mankinds worst crimes against the natural landscape into a beautiful charming paradise. An eden, if you will.

We're all domed!

The rainforest biome

The Mediterranean biome

It was lovely to see some plants from home and Australia, and see and experience a bit of rainforest action. The learning centre was actually quite a surprise highlight for me too. Very punchy displays focus on the key points they want to get across, which are hippy-like, like me. I quite liked the 'be the change you want in the world' message - an oldy and a goody, but in that context of what this lot've done, it resonates! They sure do!

There was also this neat machine in there. Built of cogs, wheels, belts, cannonballs, engine blocks, there're cranks and people were expending so much energy to get these cannonballs up and rolling down an elaborate apparatus. Not entirely sure what happened, they'd do it a few times, then read the display and see they were just moving a nut around. The engineer who built it was into that, using this old crap to do something that satisfied the engineer in him but without creating additional waste - a machine solely for being a machines sake, it was cool.

There's the machine on the left. 

In the afternoon I pootled over to Lanhydrock House, outside Bodmin. Built with 'new money', this manor was put together with the proceeds of all Cornwall's mining exploits. It was quiet there and I wondered why until I found out that the house was closed. Fortunately the gardens were stunning and I enjoyed wandering around.

There was this lady with her elderly mother there, and the mum had been given a mobility scooter. She wasn't that keen on it and the daughter had to do reccys on these slopes first. 'I didn't know I'd be driving a car' said the elderly lady. Real cute. I crossed paths with them a lot! A storm was passing by, and though the sun was shining on the gardens, a peal of thunder would occasionally roar across the landscape - it was surreal.

I also like what National Trust were doing with the rest of the estate. Further out they'd put up a big visitors centre and you could rent mountain bikes and hoon the tracks all over the place - great they're making it accessible and interesting for the young too, not just old fart-arses like me.

I have this recurring thought every time I see fun things like that when I'm considering doing them. 'You can ride a bike in NZ and it won't be better here'. So I don't, I go find something we don't do instead. Which is why most of this is dry-balls history viewing and not actually doing stuff!

Speaking of dry-balls history viewing, the next day I went to visit the Cotehele estate. A particularly old 14th century jobbie, this one had a medieval grand hall complete with mounted Rhino head and all the trimmings. Inside the place was adorned with heaps of tapestries and tonnes of historic funishings and things, it's a pretty good glimpse.

Cotehele house

The view.

The grand hall

En-route there I had to tackle tiny wee English lanes again. I'm pretty used to it now, I know how big the van is, no worries. In-fact my only road rage now I'm so slow is reserved for people who pull over to let me pass when I can tell there are ample centimetres between us to pass at 30mph. Pretty mild rage.

So I rumble over an ancient bridge, and am confronted with another horse and rider.

They're cantering up the middle of the road, sideways. 'What are you doing?' I think, 'that's a stupid place to practice dressage'. So I pull hard up on the shoulder and turn my lights off so as to not disturb the horse as they pass. But they keep clowning about. Time is money so I start creeping forward at about 5mph, then see the rider with her hand up, indicating for me to stop. It was only then that I realised the horse was totally freaking out about how awesome my van is. They slowly spazzed by the van, then dressage-sidewaysed away behind me, eyes popping out.

I share this because this rider, unlike my other rider encounter, had a forgiving smile on her face as she instructed me. She knew I was trying to be considerate, but just don't know anything about horses! The other one was a horses arse. I think the DVLA should release another pamphlet with their 'new UK driver' manual, entitled 'What to do when you meet another bloody horse'. 

Cotehele is more a complex than just the house, and encompasses the dock by the Tamar river and the mill up a neighbouring stream. The dock held the Shamrock, a 100 year old clipper that's plied the river for a century and continues to do so.

The wee mill complex featured a Victorian waterwheel that apparently was running, but it was total bollocks when I was there - not doing shit. I was sucked in, thought it was running when I was in the mill, then I went out and there was no water. Must be electric, SUCKERED ME GOOD. They have carpentry, pottery, baking, craftsmen doing it how they used to in these old working sheds so that was cool (albeit boring to me).

For some excitement I had a chat with one of the gardeners about the state of their lawns, because they were absolutely stunning. I learnt about 'dethatching', something I will never do but at least I understand why my lawn sucks now. The dude had been to NZ for the Rugby World Cup, and said it was 'like Cornwall but with less people' - maybe that's why I like Cornwall so much.

For the night I parked in a nice wee layby at 'Wacker Lake', just west of Torpoint. Nothing related to my evenings activities. A lovely peaceful spot, aside from the dusk jetskier.

In the morning I headed further past Torpoint, to Maker Church carpark - the plan was to explore the Mt Edgecumbe Country Park until a reasonable hour, then get the wee Cremyll passenger ferry to Plymouth and explore the city by foot. The views of Plymouth from the park were remarkable!

The ruin is a 'folly' from the 1880s. 

Edgecumbe Manor. Was gutted during WW2 but they've rebuilt it.

The wee ferry was more exciting than my trip to Plymouth if I am honest. There wasn't a lot to do, and the wonderful maritime achievement memorials I expected didn't seem to take centre stage and instead were just 'there'. I did enjoy seeing the Marine barracks and the various marines and seafaring government types running around the landscape - the place still doing what it's done for centuries. I was totally enamoured on my way in, but on my way back I took a non-sea-side route and it was back to scummy old city with dreggy bums and idle kids and all the standard city fare. I went from 'wonder if there's work here' to 'where's that ferry' in about an hour.

I think it's a shame really - Plymouth! The Mayflower sailed from there, the pilgrims who settled America! The Tory sailed from here, the first settlers to New Zealand! And that's nothing for Plymouth, there's tonnes of huge British milestones too. But it's all relegated to a copse of memorial pillars on Plymouth Hoe, and a few plaques squirrelled away by the Marina. Go to Portsmouth if you want some cool maritime stuff, Plymouth for all it's modern functional and historical links appears to have nothing for the idle tourist.

My favourite bit of Plymouth was the placement of this comma. I'd been thinking stupid hoe jokes the entire time during my journey to Plymouth Hoe and this just tickled me. So childish, it had me chuckling my whole journey back. It still gets me, haha.

The memorials at Plymouth Hoe - the RAF Bomber Crews at front, the defeat of the Spanish Armada in the middle and in the rear, I think that's for all lost sailors - it was being maintained so I couldn't find out. 

One for us kiwis.

Wandering through old marine barracks (I'm assuming) - now shops and apartments. Swanky but empty!

The old town by the Barbican marina

Enjoying my crossing on the Cremyll ferry. 

Disappointed with my wee city forray, the next day I was a bit worried about my next one being a bust - that of Brixham and the rest of Tor Bay - Paignton and Torquay. I tried to do my Dartmouth scheme again - park at a Coast Walk park and walk in. This wasn't to be though, with a costly car park down the skinniest roads I've ever been on to date. I had to bend the wing mirrors in and I was still scraping plants either side - 'not for wide vehicles' is quite subjective, dicks! I thought they meant the likes of trucks hauling wind turbine parts, not a van.

With insufficient coins to give me walking time, I had a quick look at Berry Head and then jumped back in the van to see what I could while navigating ancient streets in an apparently wide vehicle. I drove by a surprisingly small full-size replica of the Golden Hinde (Drake's wee ship he circumnavigated the globe and pirated the Spanish with).

Brixham - looking back south from Berry Head, with the fortifications on right.

I continued on to Torquay around lunch time and was expecting a horrible experience finding a car park. What I found was a ghost town.

A beautiful wide esplanade, well-tended gardens, a massive ferris wheel, all the chip shops - but no people. If you want to shoot a post-apocalyptic movie, go to a main seaside resort out of season! No fishing industry any more, they've been driven off, but no people of leisure either. Was weird. Wandering around and finding nothing of interest, I went to the local museum. They had an amount of stuffed local birds and creatures which was interesting - I knew the names of a bunch of new birds for a short period! And also a nice bit on Agatha Christie.

Torquay

This sweet Jellyfish in the Torquay marina. It was massive!

Reading about books I began jonesing for an opportunity to just stop, put my feet up and read a book - maybe even a murder mystery. Feels like forever since I just stopped. Wildcamping is free, yes, but everything comes at a price - and in a blatantly obvious glasshouse windowed van like mine, that cost is private leisure. I just haven't been able to stop caring that people are aware of me sitting in the van doing nothing, even in perfectly legal locations. So all wild-camping days are full-on touring, dawn to dusk - and it takes it out of me.

So I booked in to a camp site next to the Grand Western Canal for two nights, and here I am just chilling out. The canal was to cut across Devon to link the Bristol Channel with the English Channel, but they never finished it due to rail taking off. The council has dredged most of it and they have a horse-drawn canalboat and all this. Nice place to just put my feet up.

The Grand Western Canal

Once I'm done here it's back to London to see friends and get mail, then off to Scotland via Wales.

I think one needs to learn from travel, else you're just fritting about. So what have I learnt from this wee Devon and Cornwall leg?

• England is actually a stunning and beautiful country. London's an amazing city to visit, but to live in, it's not for me. I am so glad I have been able to explore, with such an abundance of time, more of England - I look forward to settling elsewhere.
  
• I think us Kiwi's get fed a lot of marketing shit about 'Godzone', and we suck it up. We're the luckiest people in the world. But to me it seems the UK has just as remarkable landscapes within the same tiny area. The same adventurous pursuits are on offer, but they've got all that history too, and the wonders of Europe on their doorstep. I guess I'm just not that convinced NZ is as unique and special as we're led to believe. A caveat to this is that I am doing these things during weekdays before peak season and it's still pretty busy at times so I can see how the whole 'too many people' thing may come into it!
  
• I've been hanging out by myself for about six weeks now and I've come to acknowledge I can do this by myself. Self-reliance and self-confidence. You've got to do what's right for you, and having the balls to do it alone means you'll actually get it done. So I'm liking that, liking who I am being at the moment.

Not huge lessons there but that's something. Stay tuned for the Wales and Scottish adventures - I'll be keeping an eye out for places I may like to live next too!

So yes, Devon and Cornwall, thanks for the trip! It's been a good 'un. An amazing and beautiful place. Much love!