Cornwall

May 14

Here in Cornwall, they say they are not English but Cornish, the Celtic folk. Well they have much to be tied to in “this neck of the woods”. The sea surrounds this place and can often be seen from the higher places and of course when driving on the edge of the coast. There are foot paths to follow to the top of the tors or to the bottom of the cliffs to the beach or to the ancient stone places. Good art abounds from the locals. Very good art. And Cornish pasties!

From beautiful Devon we drove through the moors to Bodmin, in beautiful Cornwall. A visit to the TI (Tourist Information) left us loaded with lots of ideas. First to a cozy fun pub to get on free wifi. All that warm wood interior. Everyone was there. Families, long time pals, couples...all starting their weekend. We had dinner and a couple of beers while we both worked on the computer. Later, the place to be was the back room of another pub to hear some great folk singing. Shanties from sea stories. Lost loves...usually due to death. Professions of love. Some stories taking many many verses. So true that it mesmerized us all. And some drinking songs of course. And each song had plenty of refrains for us all to join in. A really good evening that filled one's veins with memories of yesterday and stories of today ... and the sweet vulnerability of the performers, just folks who love to sing or play an instrument and share it with a community of the same. A late night but our van and sleeping quarters were just a block away. Saturday, we made our way to the Eden Project which many of you have probably heard of. The project is a futuristic look at what we might do to supply good food to the people of the earth. There are huge bubble structures made of metal frames and non-fuel plastic that contain plantings of a rainforest as in Africa and the Mediterranean. It was hot and steamy in Africa! So like Africa. And exotic Mediterranean foliage. Outside were plantings as experiments in the best way to plant for the healthiest abundant results. It is all built into a huge old clay mining pit. Very interesting. Lots to think about...maybe make a few different choices in our daily lives. This project is very connected to others doing the same kind of work and demonstrations, California being leaders.

We were coming back to Bodmin that evening, to be ready for another steam train ride the next day and still had lots of daylight left so we punched in small towns in the GPS. It is so fun to wander this way. We began to talk about church the next morning. Our choice here is Methodist. We came to a crossroads in the middle of nowhere and there was a parking space across from a Methodist church. This was the town of Gunwen, just the church. Two things solved; where to spend the night and where to go to church. Surely they would not mind us parking there if we intended to attend church! And of course they didn't. We happened on a day of a “Fellowship Service”. No minister, everyone takes a part. Lots of poetry and readings, scripture and stories mixed with old hymns we mostly knew. At the end of the service we chatted with the facilitator and his wife, the organist. Keith and Clarinda. Pretty soon we knew where the key to the church was kept outside, and how to get into the wc. “Please, help yourself!” We had picked up a flyer about a mens choir singing that night in another town so decided to do that after our train ride. Again, David is a crazy man, or boy, when that steam starts chugging. “Listen to that sound! Nothing like it!” It's fun to observe his excitement. Of course all the uniformed train folks are volunteers...ticket lady, flag lady, semi-fore man, engineer, coal shoveler...and others behind the scenes. So David gets into conversation with all of them. On to the mens chorus where we meet up with Keith and Clarinda. The choir sang a good variety of songs and a smile was on my face the whole time. The fellows had red shirts and black bow ties and black sport coats....looking pretty good! And they all loved to sing and some loved to be showmen, too! We said goodbye to our new friends, hoping to meet up again the following Tuesday to hear Keith sing in his mens chorus.

There are many gardens here and that was our plan for the next two days. We had compiled a good list but we woke to hard rain that was not letting up so we switched plans and headed for St. Ives. This is a place I have heard of since childhood. It is an artists town and a fishing town. There is a branch of London's Tate gallery, the Barbara Hepworth sculpture museum and studio and lots of smaller galleries. We parked at the top of the town and took a shuttle to the bottom by the sea, where everything is happening. We hit the Tate as they were changing exhibits so that was a sad state of affairs. We hiked uphill to the sculpture studio and it was good. She was a very feminine woman working in stone. Large pieces. Very talented. You wanted to run your hands over them. Some of the pieces in the garden, we could. This had been her home and studio and garden and was still pretty much the same as when she was alive. She had an interesting life, friend of well established artists, wife of a sculptor and then wife of a painter...4 children...a son with the first and triplets with the second. Stuff for a good biography. Then we enjoyed the town, walking the streets with a pastie in our hands, or Cornish ice cream...then along the seawall and quay. Sand beaches, brightly colored fishing boats. Surfers. A bit further along the south coast we find our place to sleep the night. In the midst of a small scattering of buildings with the church at it's center and a restaurant and hostel. The sea was just over the hill. Two other campers were parked with us.

So today is Tuesday. (We were too far away to drive back to hear our friend Keith sing.) The day has been long and varied. Our first stop was St. Just where we hoped to get online at the library, go to a post office and call some folks in a nearby town to let them know we were close. The library was closed, the post office was open and the phone call got made so we continued our journey, pulling over at an old tin mine and smoke stack and took a trail to the cliffs above a beach. Then a stop at Sunnen Cove where we took a beach walk and watched a surf class...first stages. Go out into a few waves, turn your board and try to get up on your feet! By the time we had walked the beach and back they were all “getting” it. Down the road a bit we saw a sign to Carn Eune. We were not sure what it was but we took the long winding road into the trail head. Up the trail, over a sty and pretty soon we were lost on a dirt road! With the help of a friendly local farmer's directions soon we were on a pleasant grassy path that turned into a very muddy horse trail...but it led the way and we came upon an ancient settlement first begun by early iron age men - 500 BC....then later it was changed and added to by English/Roman people and finally when it was abandoned, someone built a cottage , the ruined remains of which were still there. It was all grass covered and round circle-like thick stone wall shapes. An underground passage of stone was in the middle with two large rooms attached. One had a pit in the center. Meeting place? There was an opening above. For smoke? The other maybe for food storage? A young woman was there ahead of us. David talked to her and she said she had been hitchhiking all over the UK for three years. She was beautiful, tall and shy. She would be staying there overnight...no tent, just something to cover her. She offered David some crackers and peanut butter.

Tonight we are in Mousehole overlooking Mount Bay close to Penzance. St. Micheal’s Mount is across the water. An island that at low tide has a causeway...otherwise you hire a boat. (Very similar to Mount St. Michel in Brittany) It was first a Benedictine monastery but came into the hands of a wealthy family (St. Aubyn) and they built the castle that stands on it today. The descendents still own it and allow visitors.

May 17

Yesterday we had a date with our friend Coleen's friends in New Mill, close to Penzance. Coffee at 10:00. What a treat we had in store. Phil Budden and Melissa Hardie. Phil is a retired dentist and Melissa, a former specialized nurse, turned writer (University PHD)/editor/visionary. They are both supporters of the arts. Their home reminds me of the famous Charleston home of Bloomsbury fame. Art everywhere...not knickknacks but good work. All the paintings were really of such good caliber. Little pieces of art placed on tables, mosaic tables, painted tiles here and there on the wall. Fabric of different patterns scattered about on sofas, chairs...a tapestry making it's way along a rounded wall. Mostly local artists are represented and some pieces from travels. Their home, THE OLD POST OFFICE, has been a labour of love, added to...adding to a stone rectangle making an L-shape which forms an outer glass-walled sitting room looking out onto the garden and the small stone library and the little summer house. The library is called the Jamieson Library and houses many books on shelves made by Phil. Melissa has pulled some of these books together...the latest a thick art-filled history on Cornish artists...which she gifted us with. They both kept gifting us...coffee and freshly made brownies...and then dinner of tamale pie, salad, old good wine, and home-made apple pie!...and then breakfast of poached eggs on toast and thick slices of back bacon along with a few cups of really good coffee. Ah, but it doesn't end there, they entertained us with stories of which they had plenty as they are both such interesting people. Oh yes, another gift of hot showers! Others in their family are five fluffy cats and a resident red fox who comes for his nightly meal (if the hedgehog doesn't get it first!). We left there

with two books in hand, a jar of marmalade and 3 CDs that had been copied for us. How generous, to two strangers who had come to say hello for a few hours. Two more friends to add to our growing list! Everone should spend a year or two meeting new people.

Sometime between breakfast and dinner David and I went into Penzance because we had heard there was a good art museum. It is an art and history museum and of course Melissa is closely associated with it. The Penlee House. Lovely memorial gardens, children's playground and outdoor cafe attached. It was a very good experience. The current exhibit was about Brittany...about the Bretons. Of course they are closely connected to this pennisula which points south to the

Brittany coast, fishing being a common occupation. The upper floor exhibit was a collection of permanent Cornish painters. All inspiring to me. I bought a small illustrated book about the footpaths, sacred places, animals, dwelling clusters, ruins of tin/iron mines and scenes of Cornwall. Handwritten comments and quick watercolor sketches. It will be such a good reminder of our time here.

This morning, after our time with Phil and Melissa, we drove to Falmouth, a larger city. Its buildings and gardens reminded me of Vancouver, BC. I can see how much of what I grew up with was brought by the immigrants from Great Britain. We went specifically to see the National Maritime Museum. Quite a new building really fitting the nautical focus. I was particularily drawn to a project being carried through from April through September. A talented shipright is leading up the building of an early traditional wooden boat using only early tools that have been found in Cornwall. They were chipping away at a log, much like we see our native people building canoes with an adz. Bronze, then iron tools like ax heads attached to wood handles. Quite a complicated process of getting metal out of ore to melt and put into a carved wood mold. The earliest of people were inventive. The other boats I was drawn to were the curaghs used to travel the rivers. Round boats with one paddle. All people on the rivers owned one to get supplies and take goods out to markets for trade. I remember reading once that these boat types were found near rivers on the American continent...and many of the people using them had red hair....Indian? Scots? The human race has been working hard to improve things and get somewhere....I wonder where that will be?!

THOUGHTS and OBSERVATIONS:

> A sign for “DUMPY BAGS” to collect garbage in.

> There are cows in the fields that are black, then white, then black, equally distributed black nose and shoulders/legs...white mid-section … black tail-end. Quite striking.

> Two more town names... Gweek and Stickelpath