Day #8
Breakfast
We had breakfast at a place 2 doors down from us called the "Pilchard Press". Shops here (and in London too) are in buildings that look the same as the residences. So if you took the signs off them, you wouldn’t even know they were shops. This is different to Australia where the shops look very different to houses (in most cases). The guy who ran the breakfast house was a nice enough guy. He had children living in Australia and he went and visited them a couple of years ago. He toured from Adelaide to Melbourne to see those rocky things (the 12 apostles? Or the 7 sisters I cant remember which - they are just rocks for christ sake!) but he said that it rained the whole time and he saw nothing. He thought it was typical that a Brit could bring rain with him, and we joked he should holiday all over Queensland.
Penzance
After breakfast, we headed down to Penzance (2-3 miles from Mousehole - it also the "big smoke") to do some shopping and to upload this diary. I was hoping to see Pirates everywhere but alas there were none. Need I say that Penzance is nestled alongside a giant bay and has boats eveywhere. Looking at the town, you can sort of understand why it had its reputation of being a Pirate cove. The place looks rough (a later visit suggested it was not as rough as I originally thought). It also looks a bit poor as well. It was a similar architectural feel to boroughs of London (narrow streets, terraced housing), although it didn’t have the corporate types about and had a lot of fishing areas too. What I did notice was the number of tourists here too, It seems if the whole of Britain is making a grab for the tourist dollar and is undergoing a renovation. Even Penzance (which did seem a long way behind) was starting to show signs of restoration.
After Amy asked copious directions from locals (I am a typical man and I hate asking for them) we came across a library with internet facilities. After checking mail and uploading journal entries, we headed back to town. Amy was bored with this place (I wasn’t that impressed either) and so we decided to find somewhere to look before the day ran out (It was about 2pm - it is amazing how time gets away from you on holidays)
Lands End
We drove to Land's End (which was the place we were originally going to stay out), and when we got there we discovered the place was a dump (my apologies to anyone offended by this). There is a small town nearby and a shopping precinct on the waters edge. The shopping precinct looks designed for tourists has none of the local culture (I don’t think of children play gyms to be local culture), and is starting to look run down. Most of the place was closed (it was 4pm) with only the Restaurant open. It was a typical restaurant with nothing to recommend it to anyone (apart from being the only place within 2 miles to serve hot meals). Everybody that was here had driven here - so it was very much a "drive in, look around, drive out" population. However the views were very nice, with the rough grassy hills (with lots of rocks jutting out of the ground at random points), eventually transforming to rocky cliffs as they approached the waterline. There was a lighthouse off shore (on a rocky island), but I could only see that from a distance (one of those coin operated telescope things helped improve the detail).
Sleep
We drove back to Mousehole after this, and went to the local store and grabbed some bread. It was about 6pm and I was feeling too sick to go to dinner so I had some bread and butter for dinner instead. I then crashed (yes, 6-7pm!!!) while Amy stayed up and read (there is a library full of books and videos in our house).
