Tintagel

Friday 24 October, 2008

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The lanes used to do my head in. This is a two-way road we drove along to arrive here. Now, though, I’m used to passing vans and buses on roads like this. Ha!

Tintagel is beautiful: a village dangling off the edge of a cliff over the Atlantic Ocean. Yesterday Alex and I did a walk to St Nectan’s Glen. (See the photos of Tintagel.) Good St Nectan settled here in 500 AD and since the sixth century, pilgrims have been making the trek to his sanctuary on the Trevillitt River. It’s magic. People come from all over the world and leave offerings and keepsakes, photos, drawings, letters asking for prayers, and build stacks of flat stones. They tie rags and ribbons and bits of wool to the branches of the trees. They burn candles. And Alex and I were there all alone in the the wood, looking at the waterfall and the offerings, with only the sound of the water rushing down the cliff to break the silence.

It rained here in the afternoon and I thought we’d go for a trip to the south of Cornwall to see if the weather was any better. Well, of course, as you warned me Vik, it took longer than expected. And when we arrived in St Ives two hours later, there was a wall of rain, impossible to leave the car, even when we managed to find parking. Stayed just long enough to back into a low rock and break a small light on the bottom of the bumper bar. We’ll see how much this ill-advised trip to St Ives will cost me when I take the car back.

I wish I had booked an extra day in Tintagel, but I’ve already booked and paid for the next three days in Bath, so we’re off east this morning, after a side-trip south a bit to see Port Isaac (Doc Martin’s Port Wenn).