Cornwall Land and Stonehenge

Here is my report of this past week/end:

I left Swansea around 7am and after a couple changes, arrived in Penzance around 1:30. It still seems strange to me that in six hours I got from Swansea to Penzance--from Wales to the very south-westerly point of England. I checked into my hostel, Penzance Backpackers, dropped my backpack off, and hopped on a bus to St Ives. I wandered around there for a couple hours, and then came back to Penzance and wandered around there, and then went back to the hostel and did a little reading for my classes. I shared the room with a woman from New Zealand who was really nice. there is a very distinct feel to Cornwall (which is basically the southwestern peninsula of England, starting around Bristol and extending to the very end, and which I call Cornwall Land). the Cornish flag is flown a lot more often than the British flag, and there are many, many references to "real Cornish" pasties, foods, souvenirs, and things like that.

St Ives

on Thursday I took a bus in the morning to Lands End and wandered around there for a while. Lands End is the closest I'll be to home in Britain until July. it was very pretty, too, but a little stormy. after Lands End I took a bus over to Marazion and took a few pictures of St Michael's Mount, which has a couple giant legends to go along with it. by that time most of the stores and such were closed, so I headed back over to Penzance and had dinner, then spent the night in the hostel by myself.

the First and Last Refreshment House in Britain, and the Longships Lighthouse

the Armed Knight

the infamous sign

British flag, Cornish flag.

St Michael's Mount

Friday morning I left Penzance at 8:45 and headed over to Salisbury to meet Gabrielle, a friend I made here. while we were checking into the Salisbury hostel, a guy was asking about how to get to Stonhenge early because he had signed up for a "circle access tour" which let him walk around inside Stonehenge from 8-9 in the morning, before it opened to the public. intrigued, Gabrielle and I called Stonehenge and signed up for the access tour, and decided that we could all carpool (or cab-pool) in the morning. for the rest of the day we wandered around Salisbury, over to the Cathedral and down to the Mill and across some very nice meadows. everything here is so green and countryside-esque. I love it.

Sunrise over Penzance

Salisbury Cathedral

early Saturday morning we all got up and took a cab out to Stonehenge to walk around up close and personal. it was amazing. there were several rules: don't touch the stones, don't sit on the stones, basically don't do anything that may cause harm to come to the stones. There was actually a rather large group of us--twenty or so, and we got to wander around for the whole hour before they kicked us out. we waited around for Stonehenge to officially open, then grabbed some audio tours and walked around the outside and took even more pictures. since we had come in a taxi, there wasn't really a way for us to get back to Salisbury--the tour buses are expensive, and so was calling a taxi back out for us. instead we decided to walk the couple miles to Amesbury and catch a bus from there to Salisbury. the walk was a little more difficult than we expected. it was right on the highway (motorway) so we walked through some fields, and then got partially trapped in some trees. but we finally made it to Amesbury and got back to Salisbury okay. We had lunch at a nice Italian restaurant, and then hopped on the train back to Swansea, because I had a concert to go to that night--the St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra played a Saint-Saens cello concerto and a Tchaikovsky symphony in Brangwyn Hall.









Yesterday was full of catching up on sleep and work, and so was today. I think this weekend I have a paper to start working on but I may take a day trip somewhere, and next weekend I'm heading off to Amsterdam. I suppose that will be my next report.


a final note: today is my grandmother Ruth's birthday, even though she's not here anymore.
Happy Birthday, Ruth. I miss you.