Thursday - St Mawes, then onwards to Falmouth
Oh, I rather like going to Falmouth. You see, it's not really that fantastic a place in the grand scheme of things. I mean, don't get me wrong, because it's a nice enough town, lovely beaches and plenty to look at, but it's not the town itself that gets me going; it's all in the journey darling.
Clearly, the easy way would be to drive through Truro and onto Falmouth, then park up and wander around. That's easy. It's not fun though.
The way to travel is, of course, on a boat. Much more fun. My years of experience have pulled this one down to a fine art though, so the ideal way to travel to Falmouth, if you're not in a rush, is to drive on the coast road to St Mawes, have breakfast on the harbour, then take the boat across to Falmouth. Simples.
St Mawes itself is a small place; mostly lovely houses and a handful of shops really. There's a big car park on the hill that's largely shaded, so the car tends not to be doing a passable impression of an oven when you get back to it later in the day. The single-track road sweeps along the front of the harbour, on which all the shops are located, and just as the harbour wall kicks off into the sea, there's a tiny deli that does double duty as a coffee shop; it's the old chandlers and is called, by some fluke of coincidence, Chandlers. They don't do much in the way of food, but what they do, erm, do is rather lovely and rather straightforward, but at that early time of the day, or nine o'clock as I call it, it's a toasted teacake, a pain au chocolate and a cup of tea all the way. Much people watching can be had as food is munched and washed down with tea. Yum.
When you've tired of watching the boats come in and the myriad of people wander past, or more likely, have run out of food and the teapot is empty, then it's invariably time to head out onto the harbour wall and get a day-return on the little boat to Falmouth, which takes about, ooh, ten or fifteen minutes to cross from one side of the river to the other. I say river here, but it's actually the passage where the river and sea meet, which is really, really rather wide and is big enough that supertankers can go up the river and anchor up in storage. It is genuinely massive.
Once in Falmouth, it's open season on the random wandering front. Random wanderings actually aren't really that random and, in truth, tend to involve a trip to one pasty shop, where eating in is an option, the big old sweet shop, where eating out is order of the day and sweets don't tend to last very long, and also Trago Mills, which is a weird place that seems to buy lots of surplus stock of everything you could imagine, then sell it off quite cheaply. There's always lots of nice bits for the house here, but the down side it that you have to carry stuff round with you all day, because the car's a fifteen minute boat ride away. Hmm. Still, some very nice, and very big, flip-top glass bottles were had this time for, if memory serves, £1.60 each. Muchos bargainos.
So anyway, in short, it was rather a nice day, all things considered. I bought the aforementioned bottles, rather a lot of rhubarb and custard bon-bons, a present and that was it really. I failed spectacularly to find any clothes I liked, although did find some nice shoes, albeit in the wrong size. Fail!
Lunch was, predictably, had in a pasty shop. What are the chances? Oh, quite good, yes. Never the biggest fan of shortcrust pasties though, I cheated and went for the sausage roll option, which was really rather nice, but probably quite bad for me. Fear not though, because it was washed down with a bottle of none other than chilli cola, which was actually really, really nice and not too, erm, chilli-ish.
It was rather a late return on the boat; last one of the day, I believe. Not being in any great hurry to get back to the 'van, it was a case of following the signposts to some of the places we'd not been to before, which is how we ended up at strange places such as Veryan and Portoholland, wandering around the beaches and into the hills for a little while, gradually filling in the blanks between some of the places I'm rather more familiar with round here. Fun!
Posted via LjBeetle
Clearly, the easy way would be to drive through Truro and onto Falmouth, then park up and wander around. That's easy. It's not fun though.
The way to travel is, of course, on a boat. Much more fun. My years of experience have pulled this one down to a fine art though, so the ideal way to travel to Falmouth, if you're not in a rush, is to drive on the coast road to St Mawes, have breakfast on the harbour, then take the boat across to Falmouth. Simples.
St Mawes itself is a small place; mostly lovely houses and a handful of shops really. There's a big car park on the hill that's largely shaded, so the car tends not to be doing a passable impression of an oven when you get back to it later in the day. The single-track road sweeps along the front of the harbour, on which all the shops are located, and just as the harbour wall kicks off into the sea, there's a tiny deli that does double duty as a coffee shop; it's the old chandlers and is called, by some fluke of coincidence, Chandlers. They don't do much in the way of food, but what they do, erm, do is rather lovely and rather straightforward, but at that early time of the day, or nine o'clock as I call it, it's a toasted teacake, a pain au chocolate and a cup of tea all the way. Much people watching can be had as food is munched and washed down with tea. Yum.
When you've tired of watching the boats come in and the myriad of people wander past, or more likely, have run out of food and the teapot is empty, then it's invariably time to head out onto the harbour wall and get a day-return on the little boat to Falmouth, which takes about, ooh, ten or fifteen minutes to cross from one side of the river to the other. I say river here, but it's actually the passage where the river and sea meet, which is really, really rather wide and is big enough that supertankers can go up the river and anchor up in storage. It is genuinely massive.
Once in Falmouth, it's open season on the random wandering front. Random wanderings actually aren't really that random and, in truth, tend to involve a trip to one pasty shop, where eating in is an option, the big old sweet shop, where eating out is order of the day and sweets don't tend to last very long, and also Trago Mills, which is a weird place that seems to buy lots of surplus stock of everything you could imagine, then sell it off quite cheaply. There's always lots of nice bits for the house here, but the down side it that you have to carry stuff round with you all day, because the car's a fifteen minute boat ride away. Hmm. Still, some very nice, and very big, flip-top glass bottles were had this time for, if memory serves, £1.60 each. Muchos bargainos.
So anyway, in short, it was rather a nice day, all things considered. I bought the aforementioned bottles, rather a lot of rhubarb and custard bon-bons, a present and that was it really. I failed spectacularly to find any clothes I liked, although did find some nice shoes, albeit in the wrong size. Fail!
Lunch was, predictably, had in a pasty shop. What are the chances? Oh, quite good, yes. Never the biggest fan of shortcrust pasties though, I cheated and went for the sausage roll option, which was really rather nice, but probably quite bad for me. Fear not though, because it was washed down with a bottle of none other than chilli cola, which was actually really, really nice and not too, erm, chilli-ish.
It was rather a late return on the boat; last one of the day, I believe. Not being in any great hurry to get back to the 'van, it was a case of following the signposts to some of the places we'd not been to before, which is how we ended up at strange places such as Veryan and Portoholland, wandering around the beaches and into the hills for a little while, gradually filling in the blanks between some of the places I'm rather more familiar with round here. Fun!
Posted via LjBeetle