Trip 2011

Still a day behind in adding posts, but that’s about how it goes when you can barely keep your eyes open.

Wednesday morning we were greeted by another gloriously sunny if chilly day when we awoke in St Ives, Cornwall.

St Ives harbor on a clear, crisp Cornwall day.

After breakfast at the hotel (included in the tariff), we set out for Tintagel Castle, northeast up the coast from St Ives.

The trip to Tintagel was a bit interesting – off the “A” roads, down a “B” road, then eventually on to a road that wasn’t even given an “A” or “B” designator – truly a local road!  There was a warning sign at one point that the road was a single lane track, which meant if we met someone coming from the other direction, one of us would have to back up to a “lay by” to allow the other to go by.  Fortunately, we didn’t meet anyone on this stretch of road.  We finally made it to the village of Tintagel, but it became obvious that we were not going to walk all the way down to the castle remains.  We drove to a point at the Camelot Hotel, parked, and viewed the ruins from the hill there.

View of the headland at Tintagel from the Camelot Hotel just to the north. Just to the left of this were more ruins - I just couldn't fit the entire thing into a single frame.

After a few minutes here, we headed out on the road again, this time headed to Glastonbury.  Since we had already gotten a fairly bad start trying to get to Tintagel (coming from the south, the roads were just not well marked), we ended up only driving by the Glastonbury Tor.  We did have to stop for fuel for the rental car, finally, after three full days of driving.  It ended up costing about $140 after the conversion from pounds.  Ouch.

From Glastonbury, we ended up ditching the plan to go through the Cheddar Gorge and headed directly to Bath.  Since I had used Google Street View to find the bed and breakfast previously, we were able to go directly to the B&B without having to drive around Bath.  Another late night, but we would be staying at the Apsley House for two nights.