2013-10-01

Cornwall, England



Cornwall is blessed with scenic hills and impossibly narrow and intimate country lanes.  These lanes remind me of a battle between man who, it seems, is barely capable of gouging out winding narrow swaths then hastily slapping asphalt on top, and nature who patiently, inexorably, encroaches back upon its rightful territory daily reclaiming inches  Two average passenger sedans could absolutely not fit side by side along the majority of these of non-primary roads.  And it's not just that the roads are narrow, rather that the also earth rises up on either side at 4, 5 and even 6+ feet high.  It's as though the road is the cavity produced from a giant round ice cream scoop in search of a chocolate and dark green dessert. 

We took a disproportionate amount of photos while driving over these roads simply because neither Erin nor I had ever seen anything like this.  Consider not just the roads and hedgerows but also the trees.  They were as in a Timothy Burton fairy tale, reaching up, over and connecting with the other side forming a lattice that covered maybe 50 car lengths.  We were so taken by it all that we recorded a video in which we listened to cheerful classical music on the radio while passing under the tree tunnel.  The light from above coruscated between the trellis of branches in a hypnotic way that would, if you're not careful, lull you right to sleep.  Meanwhile, the poor kids in the back are car sick something fierce.
Here's a link of some other natural tree tunnels of note.

Looe Bay town (pronounced "loo"), what a pleasant surprise!  All that's lacking in this quaint town is a sense of the exotic brought about by a foreign language or signage that you cannot read.  Short of that, it's a very quaint town.  It seems that a number of the towns on this part of the coast are very similar:  formed either by river outlets or ocean inlets, each is isolated from the next almost like folds in a cupcake wrapper.  Looe is jammed into a space that was never meant for so many people, for delivery trucks, for families with blocky minivans (oops! That's us) yet with roads cordoned off to encourage foot traffic.  I recall towns like this in the Amalfi Coast in Italy. (Granted those towns do have more panache given their flamboyant painted buildings and rocky perched outcroppings overlooking cliffs but hey Cornwall, I'm gonna upgrade you with your ISDA today.

For this trip we officially instituted the "Family Vacation, One Ice Cream Per Person Per Day" policy.  Strictly enforced!  It wasn't rich gelato a la Amalfi, but it sure was tasty ice cream offering a good number of flavor choices (10+ at most places) all made from "Cornwall and Devon Dairy".  Apparently Cornwall and Devon claim boasting rights about the quality of their dairy.  Well of course!:  picture these bucolic, verdant hillsides, home to sublimely happy cows who are downright giddy to give up their rich milk for fame.  The weather was, by and large, pretty darn warm in May, so the ice creams were a hit.

The beaches in Cornwall were sandy and smooth.  No rocks.  Quite nice.  The water could have been a little warmer, but all would agree that we were very happy at the beaches and could splash around in the sea (well, all except for Charlie... he and the big scary sea are definitely not friends yet).

About our lodging.  We stayed in a single-wide in a trailer park for the week.  They call it a Holiday Camper Park--  row after row of single and sometimes double-wides occupy what surely was once one of those verdant hillsides for happy cows (sidebar:  how it the world did they truck these things into the park en masse?  I mean seriously!!!  The roads, I just don't see how it could be done without shutting off entire swaths of county through-fares or taking out countless trees along the way).  There is the distinct possibility that the holiday park could slip into a decidedly white trash feel.  Sorry, I have no better, no more politically correct term for this -- you know, people walking around midday in a bath robe and flip flops carrying charcoal briquettes and cigarette and smoking a poodle.  No, wait.  Make that, carrying charcoal briquettes, a poodle and smoking a cigarette.  Ahem.  There were a few trailer highlights, but by and large the place was respectable.  Maybe the Europeans/English aren't edjumacated on the finer art of deep, unrepentant, trailer park trash-ness.  For historical reasons they lack the necessary implements of Miller Lite, hot rods, guns and outdoor gym sets (it's too wet here for a bench press to sit out on the front lawn of course).  We can attest, however, that the entertainment / bingo hall is not a place in which you'd want to spend too much time.

Perhaps related to that last point:  what grandiose and pervasive tattoos on the men at the caravan camp!  I'm not talking the occasional snake or eagle on the bicep, I'm talking the Battle of Britain and Genghis Khan on your back, thighs, neck, buttock and abdomen.  There is some serious painting going on here.  Here's the funny part though:  it took me a while to realize that it was so common.  The penny dropped the second afternoon when we finally made it over to the indoor pool facility.  I realized that I was the only (this is no exaggeration) male above 18 years of age who wasn't painted to the teeth.  I thought to myself, "ah, we must be near a military base or something" or "maybe there's a motorcycle convoy in town."  Nothing of the sort.  Then you realize that, for a trailer/camper park, it sure has a lot of Mercedes and BMWs... Gosh, how does one make sense from all these conflicting signals!  I wish we had snapped a few photos to backup my hyperbolic claims.  Suffice to say, you'll see some great tats if you ever visit.

The relative isolation of Cornwall and Devon is my final topic to remark upon before telling you about Eden.  We decided to make the trip in a car because we didn't think that we could go everywhere we wanted on foot or by train.  It turns out that, for the most part, the trains even run to these small towns!  I'm really impressed how the English were able to build these rail lines.  Why didn't they just say "ah, this is too expensive, too hard to build here, not enough rail traffic, we'll just lay down a road"? (see aforementioned ice cream scoop analogy.)  But if you look at the map, you can see that they have woven rail lines all throughout Cornwall and Devon, the nooks and crannies too.  Perhaps it had something to do with the strong mining industry that used to define the region during the industrial revolution period and the boating/transport docks.

We visited something called the Eden Project.  We were very happy to have visited this place (read:  admission fees are worth it.  The kids looooved it).  The Eden Project is essentially a very large clay mining pit reclamation project.  They've brought in vegetation of many types to carpet what surely would have been a seriously ugly eyesore 10 years ago (though there are still plenty of such pits right around the corner that yet have to be reclaimed in any way; a few of which are even active). And at the base of this pit are giant "biomes" in which there are self-contained tropical environments.  We would recommend the Eden Project for any visitors of the area, most especially with children, but certifiably enjoyable without children too.  We had the good fortune to be there on a day in which the BBC was filming a children's science show.  The show organizers thought that it would be a good idea to try for a Guinness World Record - "most people dressed up as fruit in one place".  Evie, Lucy and I were pineapples and Erin, Ellie and Charlie were strawberries.  Our smiling mugs were indeed filmed but it doesn't look like we made it onto the show (called Blue Peter).  If you look reeeeal hard on YouTube during the show's intro, you can see us for all of 3 seconds.

So we have a Guinness World Record to show for the day.  How 'bout them apples!