West Country

[kmusser]

I'm currently planning for my next trip across the pond, I'll be headed to Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall sometime, probably in August. Any of you that have been there have any favorite spots to recommend?

Comments

[andrewducker]

The obvious places in Cornwall are Tintagel and The Eden Project.

Devon has two nice coasts and the moors for walking (it's worth visiting a Tor or two, to see what they're like), some amazing caverns - Kent Caverns has some of the oldest human remains in the UK, Beer Quarry Caverns is apparently also well worth visiting (they're enormous and have been quarried since Roman times).

Dartmouth was nice to visit, in a picturesque seaside kinda way.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I saw your plea on andrewducker's LJ, and thought I'd offer help since I live in Cornwall and work in Devon.

First of all, Cornwall + Devon + Somerset = quite a big area, and I don't know how much driving you want to do. Nevertheless, I'll try to cover the obvious places and then some of my favourite sights that might be a little more obscure.

Obvious touristy type stuff:

Bath. Roman city with working Roman baths. Later popular in Georgian times, and the city has a very distinctive and very grand architectural style dating to the mid-18th century.

Tintagel is fun. Nice mediaeval castle (or ruins thereof) and in legend, the place where King Arthur was conceived. Lots of Arthurian-themed tea shops and gift shops. King Arthur's Hall is a 1920s building set up as a meeting place for a new christian chivalric order, and is quite interesting in its own right.

The Eden Project. Giant geodesic greenhouses with a sort of indoor rain forest.

The Barbican, Plymouth. Medieval harbour. Where the Mayflower set sail from. Lots of old narrow streets and cafes. Oh, and Cap'n Jasper's a famous (arguably infamous) local seafood shack right on the harbour. Also the site of the National Marine Aquarium which to be honest isn't that exciting. Also home to Plymouth Gin Distillery, the oldest gin distillery in the world. Strictly speaking, a 'Dry Martini' is only a proper Dry Martini if it contains _Plymouth_ Gin.

St Ives. Artists' town. There is a brance of the Tate Gallery there, but I think the best way to spend time in St Ives is just to wander around the galleries selling paintings (at surprisingly low prices if you're used to big city art galleries).

Mousehole. Quaint fishing village. Impress the locals by pronouncing it correctly as 'Mouzull'.

Dartmoor. There are three major areas of moorland in the southwest - Bodmin Moor in Cornwall and Exmoor and Dartmoor in Devon. Dartmoor is the biggest and best. There's a road that goes across the middle close to Dartmoor Prison. This is where 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' was set.

Glastonbury. Another Arthurian site - it's supposedly the Isle of Avalon. There is a ruined abbey there which is associated with the legend of Joseph of Arimathea bringing the young Jesus to England and later the Holy Grail. I see you're a pagan - Glastonbury must be one of the largest pagan centres in Britain.

The Minack Theatre (this is somewhere I've never actually been to myself, but keep meaning to). It's a working theatre with something of a difference. Words won't do justice to that difference, so do a Google Image search instead and you'll see what I mean.

Newquay. Europe's major resort for surfing. Expect to see lots of VW Camper Vans.


The 'Land's End Resort' at the end of Cornwall is very touristy, but is really naff and tacky. Avoid. However, the Cornish coast in the far southwest is very beautiful. Go to Cape Cornwall or the Lizard Peninsula instead of Land's End.



More obscure things to see that I think are worth seeing:

Chysauster Ancient Village. What remains of a late Iron Age Cornish village.

Minions and the Hurlers. Minions is a village on Bodmin Moor. The Hurlers is a series of three stone circles nearby. Not as famous as Stonehenge or Avebury but probably more atmospheric because of the moorland location.

The Cornwall and West Devon mining areas. There hasn't been much serious mining in Devon and Cornwall in over 100 years, but before then mining (mostly for metals like tin, copper and arsenic) dates back to the Bronze Age. Ruined stone towers and associated mining buildings litter large parts of the landscape. I know this doesn't sound like a typical tourist attraction, but I think they are very evocative, especially where nature has reclaimed the landscape.

The Tamar Valley. This is where I live. The Tamar is the river that separates Cornwall from Devon (or arguably Cornwall from England - lots of locals would consider Cornwall to not be part of England). It's one of those places that used to be an industrial mining area, but is now completely rural. It's very beautiful but not very touristy.

Dartmoor Zoo. Actually quite a small zoo, but it's quite a nice one. It is also the zoo that the Matt Damon / Scarlett Johannson film 'We Bought a Zoo' is based on.

[cosmolinguist]

We're currently in Carbis Bay, which is beautiful and quiet, despite being two minutes on the train from St Ives which is bustling and touristy. The bay and its beach are gorgeous and welcoming; it's close to Penzance, St Michaels Mount, Mousehole and other things worth seeing; I can recommend it.

Also I didn't get to go to the Eden Project, the one thing I wanted to do, so you should :)

I was super-unimpressed with Land's End, but I may just have been having a bad day. Seems expensive, overhyped and pointless to me though.

The Minnack Theatre, a natural amphitheatre that looks out over the ocean, might be worth a try. Helps if you're seeing a good play/production I think, and bring a picnic and/or booze!

I envy you; this is a lovely part of the world and I'd love to have my own holiday here (I've just been following my parents and in-laws around this week).

[kmusser]

Awesome, thanks, lots of good stuff to add to our list. We should have about 10 days to play with. I've been to Somerset before but my partner has not - will probably just be hitting the obvious touristy things there, and then spend most of our time in Cornwall.

[kmusser]

Thanks, your pictures were timely :-) Looking forward to the trip.

[kmusser]

Thanks, definitely looking forward to it.

[citabria]

I spent a significant amount of time in Cornwall some years back (about 20, to be fair) -- about a week. At the end, I cried as I drove north and still wish that I could have spent at least another week there. (I said I'd be back in Portmerion, Wales to pick up some pottery around a certain date, and didn't want to do a marathon drive up there. Plus I felt strongly about visiting Glastonbury during my trip -- more about that later.)

Please keep in mind that, by the time I reached Cornwall, I'd spent about a week in Wales. One of the wonderful things about Wales -- and about Cornwall, for that matter -- is that there are very few foreign (e.g. not British) tourists there; by the time I reached Cornwall I was avoiding other Americans like the plague.

By the time I reached Cornwall I'd also been seduced by the countryside in Wales, but the very land itself. As I drove into Cornwall, the land of that country seemed to want to compete with Wales for my affections. To this day, as much as I enjoyed being in Wales and continue to love Welsh history and culture, if I were given a choice it is Cornwall that I would return to.

So, now for my impressions.

I'd set most of my itinerary based on plans to visit less well-known pre-Roman ruins. I acquired ordinance survey maps in advance of going, so I had a fairly good plan with regard to where to go and how to get there. What I didn't anticipate was the degree to which most pre-Roman ruins are awkwardly accessible, i.e. in the middle of some farmer's cow pastures. So, for example, I ultimately decided not to try to find the 9 Maidens because the day I planned for that excursion was incredibly foggy, and I didn't trust my orienteering skills enough (or my footing, for that matter -- muddy cow pastures are even worse than cow pastures in general) to feel confident that I wouldn't end up hopelessly lost in a world of grey (I could barely see about 10 yards ahead -- barely).

Now, given your career, you might not find yourself quite as frustrated by this as I did. Also, these days, I think you'd be able to better predict the weather and plan each day accordingly. Nonetheless, I would recommend planning for Cornish weather by assuming that any day could be filled with a blanket of fog; so, no matter what you planned, if today dawns sunny and clear (heck, forget sunny -- if today dawns clear!), spend today doing hiking etc. that you absolutely need non-foggy weather for.

I was able to find the Pipers; that was actually worth the trip (they're near The Hurlers, if you can't find them on their own). I also visited a quoit (I'm not positive which one) that was near a magnificent pub that had the best Cornish cider I had during my whole visit. Sadly, I can't recall how I drove there, so I'm not sure whether it was closer to Madron or Morvah.

(to be continued)

[citabria]

I also planned on visiting Tintagel; on the day I arrived (a lovely, clear warm day, actually) I found it to be a lifeless mass of stone architecture. I'd developed a cough that made walking a bit of a hassle, which played into my decision, but I felt absolutely no desire to hike up to that lifeless grey mass. It felt to me like it was teeming with clueless tourists, which didn't help matters.

Again, by that time I'd been seduced by the land; I far preferred spending time driving through farmlands, walking wherever I was allowed, walking on the seashore or flying.

As for flying: there's a small company at the Land's End Aerodrome that runs daily flying tours over Cornwall. I absolutely, positively recommend doing one of these if at all possible. I'd seen pictures of the Cornish coast, I'd seen maps, but nothing was as beautiful and magnificent as actually looking down at the ocean smashing against the craggy rocks that define the peninsula. This is another thing I'd recommend that you plan for a clear day.

While you're down there, I do recommend stopping in at the shops at Land's End. There were some magnificent studios with some wonderful artwork; I actually bought 2 lithographs because they were just so beautiful. Back then, there was also a wonderful, wonderful candy shop that sold chocolate-covered ginger fudge. Even though it's 20 years later, if I were in Cornwall again I'd go to the shops just to see whether the store was still there -- the fudge was *that* good. (I've also never seen its like since.) It was also pretty cool to look out over that much sea, frankly.

I did visit St. Ives, though I don't have any clear recollections of it; same with Penzance. I do recall the beach near St. Ives, however -- it was lovely to sit on a dune and watch the sunset.

As for Glastonbury, if you want to visit a town filled with tawdry witchy shops and a combination of clueless and arrogant tourists, save your money and drive up to Salem, MA one weekend. I was less than impressed with Glastonbury; what I wanted to do the most, while there, was leave.

Hmm. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that I'm now living in the Quiet Corner of Connecticut. The more I think about that trip, the more I recall trying to avoid people and spend more time in open land.

If you have any specific questions I'm more than willing to try to spur my recollections and answer them for you!

[kmusser]

Thanks for sharing. In recent years they have gotten better about marking the stones - they'll still be in the middle of a field, but at least there is usually a sign and a path to follow. We'll probably be looking for a few of them. Glastonbury I've been to before, we will probably do a brief stop there so that radiant_one can see the abbey and tor, but yes, we have Pagan shops here :-) Land's End is now a theme park, so I'm not sure it'll be high on the list, but we shall see.

[citabria]

Land's End is now a theme park? Good bloody gods! Well, I'd still recommend taking a flight about Cornwall if you can, assuming that the Land's End Aerodrome still exists. :/

[evcelt.livejournal.com]

I also recommend Bath. Aquae Sulis, the site of the Romano-British baths is quite good... and Sulis is still a powerful presence there. There is also an excellent museum of costume and the architecture is lovely.

[kmusser]

So we decided to spend the first half of our trip close to the Tamar Valley, staying near Liskeard. Do you have any interest in meeting up so I can buy you a drink? :-) We'll be there this Saturday through next Thursday.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

That's really close to us! We're in Chilsworthy, which is about ten miles along the A390 from Liskeard and then turn left before you get to Gunnislake. I would have been up for meeting up (hey - new people!). Unfortunately, we have plans this Saturday and then I'm in London from Sunday to Thursday (for reasons explained here: http://philmophlegm.livejournal.com/250846.html).

Anyway, I hope you enjoy Cornwall!

[kmusser]

Thanks, will do.