May 30

A day trip to Cornwall today. We drove thru beautiful countryside - mostly rural with lots of flowers blooming. The fields are divided with thick hedgrows made by piling up dirt then layering rocks on top of that, then letting hedges, flowers and vines grow over that. It makes a very effective fence but also helps break the winds since Cornwall has the ocean on both sides of this spit of land.

Our first stop was at Mount Bay, near Penzance, where Mount St. Michael rises out of the bay. At low tide, a causeway connects it to land but we were there at high tide and the causeway was hidden. The large building on top was a Benedictine monastery at first but then was bought by a noble family in the 1600s and they still maintain and use it.

Next we went to Lands End - the southwestern most point of England. John Wesley spent a lot of time in Cornwall preaching to the tin miners and was a big influence in this area. The largest building at Lands End is the Penwith Hotel, a temperance hotel built in the 1850s by and for Methodists.

Our last stop was in the very picturesque town of St. Ives, built on hills sloping down to the bay. We all got a Cornish pasty there - a thick pastry pie with meat and potatoes inside. Everyone seemed to agree that it was only okay - a lot of crust and not much filling. The miners used to take these down into the mines for their dinner.

Then back to the hotel in Plymouth for a nice dinner - for a nightcap we had Cornish Cream liqueurs that we bought in St. Ives.