I decided to take a complete rest including from writing this diary which I’d done on a daily basis for the last couple of years or so. It is a pleasure so to do but I just need a rest from the computer as well. This diary will not be a day by day diary because quite frankly I forget what I did when I did it but I will make sure that most of the essentials are included. I will spread pictures throughout there entries as I feel moved.
We started down from home with two cars, agreeing to maybe stop off at a roadside restaurant for a coffee. However, on the motorway, fate would say otherwise. My friend Graham drives a white car and when you’ve got 20 white cars over a short distance on a motorway it is difficult to tell one from the other. What happened was that we thought he was behind us and he thought the same so fortunately we had Plan B which was to give the other driver instructions how to get to the destination approximately 200 miles away. As it happened, we did in fact arrive within 10 minutes of each other. That’s why it is good thing to have a Plan B even if you think that nothing could possibly go wrong.
We arrived at little Traverna, a cottage facing the sea in Marizion, which sits right opposite St. Michaels Mount, the young sister of the equivalent in France. The literature warned me that the entrance to the car parking was narrow and sure enough it proved to be so. I have a Volvo V70 which with its wing mirrors out has a width of 2 m 7 cm. The width of the passage at its narrowest point is guess what 2 m 7 cm. It was quite nerve wracking driving in because we did not know this to be a fact and after a long journey, to manoeuvre a car with no margin for error is traumatising to say the least. If I’m to get a scratch on my car I would rather do it in different circumstances that these.
passage width 207 cm
After much shouting and gesticulating we reversed the car out again and got someone else to drive the car in. The problem is that when you are in the alleyway you cannot open the doors to get out except by climbing through the back which was packed full with provisions. I received a small insight of what people might feel when stuck in a cave, elevator, car in an accident, or some such thing. We finally parked the faithful Volvo and decided to leave it there for the whole week because a friend who came with us had another car which he decided to park in a nearby street (well, 10 minutes away up a hill) and also I wasn’t going to go through the trauma of that more times than absolutely necessary. It would be madness to do it at night.
Fortune was on our side. As it happened there was a very good bus service from outside the door to St Ives which is on the north coast and Penzance which is on the south coast 3 miles away. Because we are incredibly old, pensioners no less, all the local buses are accessed by our free pass. If I had really wanted to I could have taken a bus from where I live in Somerset right down to the tip of Cornwall but I suspect it would have taken us more than a day. If I have nothing to do one day I will figure out if it is possible to do it. I suspect it will have to be a Saturday because only then are the bus passes are available at any time.
We had bought a lot of food with us because it is self catering. I had not done self catering for many years. The big advantage is that you don’t have to leave food at home to go bad. You just take it with you and then on the return journey you do the same. Mercifully, there is a huge branch of Sainsbury’s nearby, about a mile away, so you’re not going to be short of anything. Graham, myself and Françoise are all keen readers so we made a very good trio. We went for a brief walk on the first evening. I can’t remember if we had a bottle of wine but I don’t think so.
So we achieved the first aim of visit which was to arrive safe and sound without any traffic jams to speak of. Our double room was comfortable enough. The kitchen and living room were upstairs and the bedrooms were downstairs. The door key was stored in a coded box which means that every time you leave you put the key in the box so with any luck no one can get locked out. The front windows of the living room looked out directly on the English channel via a patio and the sound of the waves could be clearly heard. After a time, the sound become soporific and I realised that I was actually starting to relax. Can my left brained personality accept this challenge? We shall see.
/to be continued…..
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