2011 May 19 Life gets easier Land's End

[David and Susan Bratt]

What a difference a couple of easier days make. We drove out of the Lostwithiel campground on a narrow road and got ourselves safely on a “B” road that brought us to the nearby 600-acre Lanhydrock Estate, now in the capable hands of the National Trust. This is another “Gosford Park” setting and has been used as such: Fifty rooms to walk through, each one looking lived in and fabulous, from the servants’ quarters to the grand drawing room.

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We really felt we should have been in Edwardian dress. The kitchens alone were worth the admission price: a series of half a dozen rooms, each with its own purpose. Then it was a simple short drive west to Truro and a visit to a little grocery. We had been concerned about parking in small villages, trying to buy groceries from three or four different places. But it turns out there are “superstores” here as well as on the Continent, where we can almost always park fairly easily. And then there are the “7-11” kind of places that will serve if necessary . . . like the little place near the campground today.

The next day we took our lives in our hands, walked a few hundred yards up a narrow sidewalk to a bus stop with cars going 40 mph a few feet away . . . and easily bussed into Truro. The cathedral hosted an eight-man German choral group singing a “Forest Mass” in the afternoon: everything in 3/4 time, accompanied by violin and “zither” (it sounded like a dobro, but if you want to call it a zither, OK). It’s always good to hear music performed in these great stone spaces. We were also impressed with the Royal Cornwall museum, so after the concert and a Cornish pasty lunch we returned to see the rest of it. We camped two nights here in a well-kept campground that had a proper dump for American motorhomes. We also actually had water at our site for the first time but used it only to add a little to our tank. And we found some Mobil 1 synthetic oil that we like to keep on hand for Rover (at only $29/liter at Halfords!).

Today we drove to Sennon Cove and Land’s End. We will not drive further west--if you want to know why we won’t, locate Land’s End on a map.

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We are in a campground 200 yards off the main road (now why would we choose that? if you don’t know the answer, you haven’t been paying attention). It is basically a big field, although we are on a gravel and leveled spot. And we have a view of the ocean. We are here for four days because we are planning to avoid driving in Cornwall (!), opting instead to take buses to Penzance and Land’s End.

Unfortunately, we are finding the buses aren’t on helpful schedules. We did go into Land’s End today, glad to be on a bus and not driving ourselves. We were expecting a little fishing village or something quaint, but instead found only cliffs and jutting rock, a souvenir shop or three, a parking lot, and an iconic road sign like “The End of US 1” that you couldn’t get next to without paying a fee. The view of the ocean and the surf crashing on the rocks was impressive, but unless you were willing to hike over rocks and down cliffs it was a bit of a letdown. Tonight, though, huddled warm in Rover, we watched the sun set over the ocean.