Introduction
R and I went on holiday to St Ives in Cornwall for a week. This is the first half of the photos from that holiday.
Saturday
After a rather long train journey we arrived in St Ives and found our accommodation, which was in the upper floor of an old building in a courtyard off one of the main streets. This had originally been used as a ‘pilchard press’ although, slightly disappointingly, it did not smell of fish.
We went out for a short walk around the harbour.
We continued some way toward the ‘Island’, a peninsula just north of the harbour, but returned to our flat when it began to get dark.
Sunday
In the morning we repeated the walk from the harbour to the Island, properly this time.
For the afternoon we followed a route from a book of local walks bought from the tourist information centre, managing not to get very lost despite the absolutely terrible instructions. The walk took us up the hill behind St Ives to see a local monument.
Knill’s Monument commemorates a guy who made it big in the City in the 18th century. There is an amusing ceremony every five years in which ten young girls dance around it for some reason. When this isn’t happening, you do still get very nice views over the surrounding countryside.
After walking back to town, we found a Barbara Hepworth sculpture near the railway station (more of these to come in the second set of photos).
Monday
In the morning we went for a boat trip to Seal Island, which isn’t really called that, but is an island and does feature seals.
It was easy to get onto the boat (obvious foreshadowing here). The trip to see the seals was rather bouncy but pleasant, for me at least.
Once it returned to St Ives, getting off the boat was substantially more difficult because the tide was out; they made us jump into thigh-deep water and wade to the beach. Apart from getting very wet and covered in sand, this did work okay.
For the afternoon we walked part of the Southwest Coast Path by taking a train to the local park-and-ride station (Lelant Saltings) and walking back.
The coast path mostly followed the railway along the edge of the clifftop.
Tuesday
Tuesday’s walk was also along the Southwest Coast Path. The weather forecast had predicted a clear day, and we took a bus along the coast to Zennor.
Zennor church has a pew with a mermaid carving, because of reasons, but otherwise is a normal small church. It does have the advantage (on days where the weather forecast predicts it to be clear) of a roof to keep the rain off.
After a short walk from the village we reached the coast path proper, which runs along the edge of the cliffs all the way back to St Ives. This section of the path was described in our book as ‘short but testing’, and it claimed ‘half a day allows you plenty of time’. The first of these statements was true.
At some points the path stopped being a path and turned into a pile of rocks. It wasn’t always clear exactly which direction was correct, but we didn’t actually manage to get lost.
We could see a derelict mine building in the distance, but unfortunately didn’t have the opportunity to get closer (it’s probably part of somebody’s farm anyway).
The next segment of walk crossed rather marshy ground, and we were swarmed by flying ants.
We made it back to St Ives in reasonable time, but it had taken us most of a day to cover just six miles. Respect to the guy who passed us in the opposite direction… wearing flip-flops.
That’s it for now. The remaining photos will be posted in a second set.