Days 3-6: Dartmoor, Cornwall
Day 3- Dartmoor and Cornwall! Started with a good old fashioned trudge, as we do. Drove into the heart of Dartmoor to hike to Wistman's Wood. One of my favorite authors, Maggie Stiefvater, posted a blog post about walking to Wistman's Wood a few years ago, and it captured my imagination and became a must-see. As Maggie described it, it's "but a brief jaunt" from a cozy hotel/pub, the Two Bridges Hotel. The drive through Dartmoor was among my favorite drives in the UK. It was alarming and terrifying at certain points in the windy, twisty, wet roads, but the views were moody and gorgeous and very Hound of the Baskervilles. There were wild ponies and sheep all over, sometimes in the middle of the road. Atmospheric fog blanketed the moors when we were high up in the loneliest parts. We parked at Two Bridges, paid our 3 quid to park, and got to trudging down a picturesque path through the moor. The vistas were amazing, the kids had fun, and we really enjoyed the walk. The wood itself was beautiful and mysterious, and exactly what I'd imagined it to be. So happy that were able to experience that as a group, it was wonderful.
After the trudge we got back in the car and drove on into Cornwall. I've wanted to go to Cornwall for almost my entire life. Reading The Dark is Rising series in childhood, of which two books are set in Cornwall, in a fictional town based on Mevagissey, it has been firmly lodged in my imagination as a wildly romantic place, and it lived up to all my hopes. We went to Mevegissey itself, because if you're going to be in Cornwall driven by childhood dreams, might as well really go for it. We had skipped lunch (thanks, English breakfasts, for fueling us through many a lunch deprived trudge!), so we stopped into a friendly little tea shop for a snack. Got a cream tea with a scone that was truly one of the most delicious treats I had during the entire vacation. The kids got some lunch, they weren't as fueled by English breakfasts as we were. Walked around the quayside and harbor, took the kids to a teeny tiny aquarium, and that was that for our exploration of Mevagissey. It's a tiny little town, but very pretty and very quintessentially Cornwall.
Continued on in the car down to Falmouth, our home base for a couple of nights. We stayed at the Lyonesse Guest House, which was pretty much perfect for our needs. West got his own loft bed, which delighted him, and we got a comfier bed than at our previous hotels. Went to Beerwolf Books, a pub with a second-hand bookshop, and it was just as fantastic as we'd hoped. Drew made friends with one of the bartenders who liked his Mothman shirt. After Beerwolf, we met up with Family M for our entire traveling party to be complete, and had a delightful group dinner sitting on the patio of The Shed (delightful even in the face of it raining on us... which is a very Cornwall thing, I guess, it just rains fitfully and often).
Day 4- Guided tour day! I had arranged a guided tour for us, so we could all be together in a minibus and have an expert drive us through the terrifying Cornish roads so we could enjoy the sights. Drew & I dropped off some laundry early in the AM at a local laundromat, which would turn out to be the only convenient time/place for getting laundry done well during the whole trip. Our driver was engaging and brought us around to a bunch of Poldark filming locations, it was a terrific day. The kids all got along great and had a super fun time clamboring over rocks and into caves at all our stops.
We went to the Geevor Tin Mine as our first stop, and it was the only quasi-bummer of the day. We got there just before lunch time, so we were advised to wait until after lunch to do their underground tour. Lunch in the cafe turned out to take way longer than forever, and we ended up running out of time and had to skip the underground tour. We bribed the kids into complacency with a trip to the gift shop, but our driver was outraged on our behalf that the cafe took up most of our visit, so he went in and got us some of our admission price refunded. Angry Cornish tour guide for the win! We traveled on past Lands End (didn't stop but saw it from down the road) and stopped at Porthgwarra Beach and Penberth Cove. Both were extremely beautiful and made me feel very Poldark-ian. The roads to get to both places were hair raising. I am being generous calling them roads because they were twisty narrow lanes allowing for two way traffic when the lanes could only fit one car at a time. So glad I wasn't driving! It also took much longer to get from place to place than I expected in that wild southern end of Cornwall.
We got back into Falmouth fairly exhausted, but rallied for dinner at the Chain Locker, which started out with us trying to sit outside on the patio, but it immediately started pouring buckets of rain. One of the employees (presumably a manager?) was the very model of efficiency and got us sorted into a small private room just for us inside the restaurant, which was fantastic and even better than sitting outside. The restaurant filled up fast due to the rain, and one couple wandered into our room, where the boys were all sitting together being loud. The lady of the couple asked if "these children belong to anyone," and I told her they were ours, and the couple was welcome to sit next to them, but they were going to be loud. I mean, I'm not going to police our kids after a long day of being in a minibus when we have a private dining room that did an especially good job of quarantining our loud-ness from the rest of the restaurant. The couple beat it out of there pretty fast. Dinner was amazing, we had a fantastic time, and that was it for Falmouth. Would absolutely love to go back to Falmouth some day, it has a very Portland-Maine feel to it, lots of shops and restaurants, lovely harbor, I feel like I could easily spend a week there as a home base for Cornwall.
Day 5- Started out bright and early driving down to St. Michael's Mount, another place that has captured my imagination for a while. It was raining when we got there, and the tide was in, so we took a short boat ride over to the island from Marazion. Trudged up the steep hill to get up to the castle at the top, and toured through the castle. When we were in the chapel we were chatting with the guard a bit, he was telling us about the priest hole they had discovered during a renovation years ago (and the skeleton they found in the hole!), and he looked around and said "it's not very busy, do you want to go in?" So Drew, West, and Q went into the priest hole, which was an extremely cool experience for them (I didn't go in because I figured it would be crowded enough down there with the three of them, and I didn't want it to take too long since it was such a nice gesture from the guard). When we finished walking around the castle the boys ran around outside for a while, and the rain had cleared, so we got some amazing vista views. I loved everything about St. Michael's Mount and would love to go back some day! It was gorgeous. We made our way back down the hill, the boys sat down to listen to a children's storyteller telling the story of the giant that used to live on the mount, and then we boarded a boat to get back over to the mainland.
Things kind of fell apart on the Meger family end at lunch time (it was hard to find a place that could accommodate our huge group and Drew didn't want to wait forever to get food), so we branched out on our own (sorry everyone!) for take-away lunch eaten on the side of the beach, and then a trip back over to Falmouth for one last attraction. Dropped T off at a beach so she could get a break from us Megers, and we went over to Pendennis Castle for a joust event. West got to do some kids' activities, the weather was sunny and gorgeous, we watched a joust (which was hilariously not well organized), and we explored a bit of the castle before it was time to wrap up the day.
Picked up T and got back in the car to drive up to Bodmin Moor for our night at the famous, haunted Jamaica Inn. I am obsessed with the book and the new-ish miniseries adaptation of the book, and had been looking forward to that stay since we planned the trip. It did not disappoint! (except that we did not once experience any ghostly goings-on in any of the haunted places were were in on this trip! so many haunted places! Not one singe ghost to be seen/heard/felt!) The kids had a great time amongst themselves, and we adults had a convivial dinner and drinks session that was just what we needed after an action-packed day.
Day 6- Last day of Cornwall! Had a leisurely breakfast at Jamaica Inn (discovered a bit too late that there was a pirate ship in the back garden, the kids had a great time playing on it, but wished we had discovered it the night before).
Hit the road toward the Tintagel area. First stop, just a mile and a half down the road from the inn- Dozmary Pool, of Lady of the Lake Arthurian legend fame. We got there just before it started to rain, enjoyed a lovely few minutes gazing at the lake, and then got back on the road. Our next stop was St. Nectan's Glen, a little jewel of forest area with some lovely waterfalls. We Megered It Up and ended up ditching the glen before we got to any waterfalls, because we were running later than anticipated on our itinerary, and I had promised Drew I'd drop him at a museum in Boscastle by noon. So we abandoned the glen after a brief jaunt into it, and went to Boscastle to experience the Museum of Witchcraft & Magic.
West and I did a fast walk through the place and left Drew to meander through it at his own pace. He got the afternoon in Boscastle to do as he wished, and I whisked West away ten minutes down the road to Tintagel. Caught up with Family M for lunch at the King Arthur's Arms pub. Then we trudged up the cliff opposite Tintagel Castle (Tintagel Castle is not really a castle, nor is it even a structure.... it's the idea of a castle that may once have existed on a cliff, with basically just a statute of King Arthur on the cliff's edge.... and it was closed for a bridge renovation until several days after we left). We couldn't go up to the official Tintagel Castle cliff, but honestly, the cliff we were on was majestic enough and gave us spectacular views. Such vistas! There was a woman in medieval garb standing on a tiny little bit of cliff, and that was puzzling for a while, until the guys dressed up as Arthur and Merlin showed up and we realized the woman was dressed as Guinivere, and they were providing some historical reenactment to keep people happy with the site even thought the castle had been closed all summer. It was, admittedly, pretty neat. We then trudged down the cliff all the way down to the beach at the base of the cliff. West was bananas excited for Merlin's cave, which is accessible from the beach when the tide is right (which it was), he and I romped into the cave for a bit. Family R and T met up with us on the beach, the boys had a great time throwing rocks into the beautiful ocean, we enjoyed the sunshine and scenery. The cliff was incredibly high and steep, luckily there was Land Rover service we could pay a few pounds for to get back up to the town without having to scale the cliff again.
We moved along down the road back to Boscastle, our stop for the night. I LOVED Boscastle and definitely want to go back. It's a tiny town with a small harbor and just a few restaurants and hotels (and the aforementioned witchcraft museum), but it is so picturesque, I just want to read a book on the harborside all afternoon some day. We checked into the Wellington Hotel, which was one of my favorite places we stayed on the whole trip. Our room was huge, with old oak beams and a cathedral ceiling. Our bed was big and super comfy, West had his own little cot. We got some drinks in the snug down at the bar, and eventually met up with T and Family R for dinner in the hotel restaurant. We were all exhausted, but dinner was very tasty, and it was a nice relaxing evening. Before turning in, Drew took West, T, and me out to the harbor to look out beyond the harbor cliffs at the sunset, and it was yet another amazing vista.