Plymouth Harbour and Cornwall

Wednesday 12th October

Started the wet, rainy, foggy day with a boat trip around the massive harbour. This isn’t a very big commercial harbour, as it is the main naval defence harbour normally full of warships, but there was an exercise just off the coast with Spain which meant there were less warships in the harbour. The perimeter of the harbour is full of defensive forts, the main one built by Charles II in 1640. It was from this harbour that the Mayflower left for America and many immigrants left for Australia. Just around the bend from where we started on the Ho (high ground), Sir Francis Drake played bowls and we could see the view he had of the Spanish Armada gathering, getting ready to attack. The Spanish had very big ships set high in the water. Drake had small warships, set low in the water. When the Spanish had gathered into a tight group to sail into the harbour and set amongst them, the Spanish cannons fired over them while Drake fired into them and in a short time decimated them. So presumably there are a number of Spanish warships sitting beneath the waves in the mouth of the Plymouth harbour. We also saw some navy warships in for maintenance and about eight de-commissioned submarines. There were three functioning subs that are capable of sailing under water around the world at a speed of 30 knots without surfacing. When we boarded our boat, we were in Devon, but we landed at Saltash which is in Cornwall.

The River Tamar is the river that separates Cornwall, which was once regarded as a separate country and they had their own language. Even now, when they cross the Tamar, locals say they are visiting England. We travelled down to Penzance in the coach, through a mixture of fog, rain and sunshine. We didn’t see any pirates, but we saw St Michaels Mount, an abbey built on an island several hundred metres offshore. Very impressive, sitting on top of a hill. The sun shone briefly for us while we were there!

From here we crossed from the south shore to the north shore and on to St Ives. In doing so we travelled on very narrow country roads, where two large vehicles upon meeting, had to negotiate who would reverse back to a passing point. Whilst reversing once, we hit something and blew a back tyre, so we had to limp into St Ives, phoning ahead for a mechanic. This gave us more time to explore St Ives, which is a normal Cornwall seaside village. Those of you who watch Doc Martin on TV would recognise what this village was like. We had a dinkum Cornish Pasty and it was delicious and then we walked all around the village, up and down the narrow streets and alleyways each with all sorts of little shops. The terrain is very hilly and if you weren’t walking up a hill, it was because you were walking down a hill! It was a very picturesque village with the tide well out and the fishing boats sitting on the sand in the harbour.

With the tyre replaced we moved on, travelling over the Bodmin moors. We then came to the Jamaica Inn, which was covered in a heavy fog and was built of a grey stone giving off a very eerie atmosphere. You could just see the many smugglers that plied their trade in this area. Daphne Du Maurier wrote a book based on the inn and this is on our reading list on our return now we have seen the area she based the book on. A feature of Cornwall is that the hedgerows, especially on the roadways, are left to grow tall and are up to twelve feet tall, so when driving you have the image of driving continuously through a tunnel. We were to meander over some more country roads, but heavy fog closed in and this seemed worthless, so we headed back to Plymouth on the main road, ready for our goodbye dinner tonight.

Devon and Cornwall are quite correctly described as very pretty. Sunshine or fog this is very true. I am very glad we got down to this part of England. Jill visited this area some forty years ago, but also really enjoyed this visit.

Tonight we had a farewell dinner at our hotel. It’s hard to believe that this trip is almost over. We are all exhausted, but would probably turn around and do it all again as it was packed full of such interesting places.