A Cornish Adventure Part Two.

 Welcome to part two of our Cornish adventure.

 

I shall pick up where I left off. 

The next day was Tuesday and again the weather was meant to be rainy, though the forecast hadn't explained quite HOW rainy! Like Monday it quickly went from drizzle to torrential as the morning passed. 

The plan had been to mooch the shops in St Ives before Himself settled on the beach with a book and I went to a book signing. Here again, it seemed the holiday gods were smiling on us because prior to setting off on holiday I had spotted a tweet about a talk and book signing taking place in St Ives for a book I was planning to buy anyway. It turned out to be not only on a day when we were in St Ives, but also when we didn’t have other plans, so I bought myself a ticket. Sadly the weather gods were most definitely not smiling on us this day!

We looked in a few shops but the rain just kept getting heavier and heavier, again even with waterproofs and umbrellas we were soaked, particularly my poor boots that had not quite dried out from the day before. So, we tried to find a pub or café to shelter in but everywhere was packed, clearly everyone had the same idea.

We finally decamped to a pub and stood until we managed to snag a table. I left Himself there and battled the elements once again to head to the St Ives Arts Club where the talk was due to be. It was a very cosy affair with only about 40 people, and thankfully warm and dry.

The book The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes by Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and lecturer from Falmouth University. 

The talk was absolutely fascinating and took the form of a Q&A session, it was based around Kate being gifted a notebook by an elderly friend who had worked in costume design in London in the 60’s. The book was purchased at a flea market there by one of her apprentices who thought it might make good source material. It was a Victorian era diary filled with squares of fabrics each with an annotation in teeny tiny handwriting stating the name of the person the fabric had belonged to and the garment or piece of furnishing it was from. This started her off on a research journey with no way of knowing who had written it until one tiny entry “Mrs Anne Sykes – The dress I wore when we arrived in Singapore.” This was the one and only time Anne spoke in the first person, and it unlocked the whole book!  I share the publisher’s blurb below; 

In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of her life and times. Her name was Mrs Anne Sykes.

Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Strasdin spent the next six years unravelling the secrets contained within the album's pages.

Piece by piece, she charts Anne's journey from the mills of Lancashire to the port of Singapore before tracing her return to England in later years. Fragments of cloth become windows into Victorian life: pirates in Borneo, the complicated etiquette of mourning, poisonous dyes, the British Empire in full swing, rioting over working conditions and the terrible human cost of Britain's cotton industry.

This is life writing that celebrates ordinary people: the hidden figures, the participants in everyday life. Through the evidence of waistcoats, ball gowns and mourning outfits, Strasdin lays bare the whole of human experience in the most intimate of mediums: the clothes we choose to wear.

 Once the talk finished I texted Himself to arrange to meet before joining the queue to get my book signed. I met Himself outside and thankfully the rain had finally started to ease up, as we were deciding whether to go to the pub for something to eat or not when we got caught by another seaside occupational hazard. Yup a passing seagull did a massive dump right over us. Luckily for me I only got slightly caught, but Himself took a direct hit! Anyone who has been in that situation will know not only is it plentiful, it also absolutely stinks!! 

I dived into Boots and bought some tissues and anti-bacterial wipes to clean off the most urgent mess before we hotfooted it back to the apartment which thankfully has a washing machine. We took it in turns to have a hot shower before I rinsed the clothes then loaded the machine. That was definitely something we could have done without and to make matters worse I did crack up laughing which I don’t think went down very well. 

Anyway we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening lounging around in our pjs.

 The next day was Himself’s birthday so I made him breakfast in bed and gave him his card. Our plan had been to finally walk the St Michael’s way but yet again it was not to be. The torrential rain over the last two days had made parts of the walk waterlogged and we neither fancied a repeat of the mudfest hike we had last year in Swanage. 

                                         The heavy rain created a mini waterfall on the beach

Instead we decided to just wander around the edge of St Ives so to speak, we started on Porthmeor beach before going up and around island and across all the beaches and headlands. The weather sunny but very windy which made for some impressive waves. 

We headed back to the apartment for lunch as we really needed to get through the food we had bought. After lunch Himself showed me the alternative way to get to and fro the station he had figured out on google maps. 

It was definitely less hilly, though there were a couple of bits with no pavement so it might not be ideal pulling cases along as it was fairy busy with cars.  

That night we had a table booked in the best Italian restaurant in town. We went out for a drink first before a delicious and leisurely dinner. We walked back to the sun setting over the sea but sadly it was too cloudy to see the moon.

Thursday, Fisherman’s Friends day, dawned a lovely sunny day, thank goodness. 

We had breakfast, made sandwiches then headed out to catch the bus to Porthcurno. It turned out to be one of those open topped tourist buses so we sat upstairs at the front to enjoy the view. Quite frankly it was a white knuckle ride, I take my hat off to the bus drivers who do that route every day.  Parts of the route were single traffic only so if anything came the other way it meant screeching to a halt and one or other backing up. Some parts were a combination of narrow and steep, not always helped by crazy tourist parking! We arrived in one piece if slightly shaken. The buses were quite limited with the last bus back just before 7pm, so it was a good job we did get tickets for the matinee. 

We walked straight down to the beach at Porthcurno and it was clear why it has such a reputation for being beautiful. I gather it gets incredibly busy in the tourist season and I must admit it was busier than I expected for a Thursday in early May. 

We found a spot to have our lunch before mooching slowly back up to the road to walk up the hill to The Minack. We had thought about climbing the steps carved out of the rocks but we weren’t sure you could get in that way so didn’t want to go all the way up only to find we had to go back down and round.

 The road was in chaos as traffic was starting to build up for the show but there was a huge lorry trying to come down the hill so the road was blocked. One poor man was trying to get everyone to back up to the car park at Porthcurno so the lorry could get through but it was clear not everyone was prepared to do so. For once we were very grateful to be on foot, we squeezed between cars and had a bit of banter with the lorry driver as we passed him, he seemed to be finding it all very amusing anyway. 

We joined a surprisingly large queue and were soon filing down to find seats. You can’t book specific seats you just book into an area and then it’s first come first served. We were further back from the stage than I would have liked, but kind of in the middle and with a fab view.

 

 We got out our cushions, slathered on sunblock and  I whisked out the chilled bottle of prosecco I had popped into my bag before we left. We cracked that open and get comfortable.

The show was absolutely incredible. The band were so good, but add the open air venue and views, well,  it just made it magical. Apparently there had been a pod of dolphins in the area that as you can imagine had detracted completely from the shows by swimming past and drawing all attention. They didn’t make an appearance for us though. I glanced sideways and saw Himself beaming, so I count that as a birthday treat win.

Once the show was over we filed out only to realise we had missed a bus and the next one wasn’t for the best part of 2 hours.  

We walked a bit of the cliff top path before heading back down to Porthcurno beach. 

The glorious sun had been covered by clouds which got thicker and darker and sure enough it started to rain. We ambled slowly back to the bus stop and just had to pray the last bus was actually running. It felt better when a few other people joined us. Finally the bus did appear and we got to do that mad journey again only the other way round. 

When we got back to the apartment we ate as much of the food that was left in the fridge as we could, before starting to pack our cases and head to bed before the final part of our adventure.

My St Ives purchases, an elephant brooch to match the necklace I bought the last time we visited, which I wear constantly. I was thrilled to find the artist who made it was still there. I also couldn't resist the shark earrings so treated myself.

 A sea horse brooch from one of the little junk shops in an arcade.

More in part 3. We end our visit to Kernow with crows, crabs, castles and Eurovision.