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I went AWOL in Cornwall this week. I did take my laptop, and did plan to blog of an evening - but all that fresh air, and all the up and down steps and hills took it’s toll, and it was a case of collapsing in front of the telly. 
We stayed in Fowey (pronounced Foy to rhyme with joy), in a lovely house with views out over the Fowey river estuary on the south coast. The photo above was taken from the Megavissey ferry and you can just see the house we rented.
But just to prove that the views from that balcony were wonderful, look at this … That mega boat is ‘The World’ – a humongous cruise liner, that some people actually live on; others have timeshares, and others just holiday on it. It was so big, and luckily the harbour is deep allowing it to visit annually on its tour around the world. Earlier in the week we had a Royal Navy frigate HMS Cornwall visiting along with the air-sea rescue chopper simulating rescues – it’s all go in that harbour.
We did lots of sight-seeing, and I won’t bore you with the details, but there were two real highlights – firstly was Poldark Mine. Yes, you read it right, one of the old tin mines was renamed Poldark after the books by Winston Graham, filmed for the BBC in the 1970s – I loved that series and loved all the books when I read them years ago. We went down the old tin mine, and the tin ore runs through granite, so you can imagine what hard work it was (sorry if this is boring you, but I did study some metallurgy at uni). This little mine with its mini museum and craft activities was privately owned, and not made into a big flashy experience which made it so much more charming.
The other highlight was lunch at The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow run by chef/entrepreneur Rick Stein. It was everything we expected, and the food and service were wonderful – here are OH and daughter posing outside. A couple of days later we went to Falmouth and had fish and chips from Stein’s chippy – this was also top class!
So finally, to my holiday reading… I took six books with me, and just about finished one (review soon), and it wasn’t a Daphne Du Maurier. Daphne lived and wrote all around the environs of Fowey, so you couldn’t get away from her. You can’t actually see Menabilly, where she lived and worked for years and was partly the model for Manderley, it’s set back off the little track of a road, but viewing all the little rocky coves from the ferryboat to Mevagissey from Fowey, you can imagine her writing Rebecca. Driving back across Bodmin Moor, we could also have detoured to the real Jamaica Inn, along with all the coach parties, but decided to speed on instead, so there endeth my Daphne experience. I am still going to read some Du Maurier soon though – promise!
I note the umbrella in one of the photos, not that the Cornish tourism people will thank me for drawing attention to that! Since you only finished one book it can’t have been raining too much.
The Padstow day was rather drizzly but we were blessed with glorious sunshine for our day in St Ives (that light!), and it was sunny enough for three trips to the local beach in Fowey for paddling, sandcastles and ice-cream, so can’t really complain about the weather.
Pleased to hear that. Getting a bit tired of the rain up here in north west England, where there is still a hosepipe ban in operation.
Oh, I wish I could’ve gone to Cornwall, or anywhere else in the UK for that matter, this summer. It looks like you had a wonderful time!
Hope you get a break sometime soon Iris.
Cornwall was lovely (daughter is a big fan of British seaside hols – eating lots of fish and ice-cream, playing on sand, and amusement arcades all score highly, we failed on the mini-golf this time though – too hilly perhaps?).
I’d love details of the house you stayed in and how to rent it. Is there a website?
Kerry
Kerry – it’s owned by a friend of mine and is newly available to rent – it’s gorgeous inside … the website is http://www.the-edges.co.uk/
Wonderful – such interesting photographs too. We go to Padstow in September so hopefully something equally approving on our return. Daphne du Maurier wrote some wonderful books but its some time since I read them
Tom – I hope Padstow in September is not as crowded as it was this week – we’re limited to school holidays these days. Stein has a chippy, deli, gift shop and patisserie in Padstow as well as the Seafood restaurant, and two other eateries – although some call it PadStein, he’s brought a lot to the town! BTW, the fish & chips are cooked in dripping not oil which is wonderful (if you like that kind of thing). I hope you enjoy it, and I look forward to hearing about your trip too.
Glad you all had a good time in sun and drizzle!
I have never been to Cornwall although having been addicted to the Poldark books and Daphne du Maurier, I’m sure it would feel familiar, but we did go to our favourite seaside places, Whitby and Robin Hood’s Bay, for a day last week.
Whitby’s fish restaurant The Magpie, is probably as famous on the Yorkshire coast as Stein’s is in Cornwall, and people start queueing up its steps an hour before it actually opens because it isn’t a particularly big place! We prefer to get fish and chips from its takeaway (where they also use dripping to fry) and eat them sitting on the pier although you do have to be prepared to fend off seagulls!
Things were slightly chaotic in Whitby as the bridge which links the two sides of the town had stuck on open and the only way to get across was either by paying £1 per person per journey on a small ferry (the journey took around 2 minutes!) or going back out of town and then driving back in on the other side of the harbour! Not surprisingly the locals (apart from the boat operators) were furious, especially those who had businesses in the old town and had seen a vast reduction in takings at what should be the busiest time of the year!
We ended up going to RH Bay which is just down the coast and probably very close in appearance to a Cornish fishing village (including a killer hill which proved once and for all that I really need to get fit again!) It is very beautiful but very busy – when we spent a week there a couple of years ago, I dubbed it Boden on Sea because with its huge number of houses for rent, it has become very popular with young families- and they were all out in force on Monday.
BTW you are right about that liner being truly enormous: we saw it at close quarters when it was docked in Venice and the vaporetto we were on had to pass it – rather like going past a sheer mountain and it dwarfed all the buildings including the Doge’s palace. A local resident we got chatting to, told us that all other boats have to be docked when it comes in and out of Venice because it has such a huge wake that it would be dangerous and a lot of Venetians are not all that happy about it.
I loved Whitby when I went some years ago. We were planning to go to the Magpie too having seen it on one of Rick Stein’s programmes. We were loitering down the road, when I saw more people starting to walk up that way – I said to OH, we need to get up there – he said surely not – and sure as eggs is eggs it was full by the time I could drag him up the road! GRR. We ate at one of the other local chippys.
I wasn’t keen on RHB. When we went Juliet was in her pushchair and that killer hill nearly killed me too. (I’d be at home in the Boden set though!). There were Joules shops everywhere in Cornwall.
I may change my mind when I’m older, but I see those cruise ships as posh prisons! I’d hate it. Also the inmates do very little for the local economy when they visit. (All the Fowey taxis were queuing up at the landing stage for those disembarking to whisk them away to Eden probably).
I’ve never been to Cornwall although I would love to one day. It looks so beautiful and inspirational. And I’m jealous that you got to eat at Rick Steins restaurant and chippy!
The whole of the West Country is lovely – I love it. We used to holiday in Cornwall, Devon or Somerset most years when I was a child or teenager – many happy memories. Rick Stein’s was well worth it for lunch (£35 for 3 courses), and a nice atmosphere too – I’d definitely go again.
Looks like a lovely place to stay. We went to Fowey on honeymoon and I think it’s time we went back!
Kerry
How romantic Kerry. Fowey is gorgeous, and positioned well for getting to places, and we had some good food in the town too.
I must be loosing my marbles I thought I commented on this and said how lovely your holiday looked already, yet not apparently. Your hols looked very lovely, hee hee. I need to take The Converted One to Cornwall and Devon!
Shame we could only afford 1 week! It would have been lovely to have 2, and also possibly to visit DGR.
The only disappointment (apart from all the people – but you don’t need to go during school hols) was that we went all the way down south to Goonhilly downs where you can visit BT’s Goonhilly experience and learn all about radar and satellites etc and most importantly travel around the site on a Segway – and it was shut!
We love Cornwall. We usually stay at a Complex called “Atlantic Reach” about 5 miles outside of Newquay, as we find this ideally suited for getting out and about. We definitely aren’t sitting on the beach kind of people, but like to walk and explore. As we are members of the National Trust, we do tend to visit lots of gardens. We go to Fowey whenever we visit Cornwall and I must say your place had some pretty spectacular views.
Hi Yvonne. We did Heligan last time and I loved it. Daughter & OH need more convincing about the benefits of visiting gardens though!
Heligan is pretty spectacular isn’t it. We have taken a few sceptics there, over the years, and most have come away impressed and eager to return again, with time to take it all in properly.