Day #11
After the disturbed nights sleep we wake up at about 9am reasonably refreshed. Because we had to self-cater for breakfast (holiday speak for "made it ourselves" ;) we just had some toast and then hit the road looking for castles. This was our last full day in Cornwall and we hadn't seen any yet :(
Mount Michael Castle
After about an hour of travelling, we arrived at a little town called Mazouin(?). We parked in a carpark to go down to the beach to get a boat to Mount Michael Castle. From the distance it looked quite impressive. A guy in an army duck was pulling up anchor and getting ready to cross when we asked (or were about to ask) if we could get a ride across. He told us that the castle was closed until 1st April for renovations and that there were no tours until then. If we wanted to look around the castle ourselves we would have to wait until 5pm until low tide (when you can walk across to the island). Amy was not a happy chappy. We decide to give this place the flick and head further north. We tried to find some "famous" mining pit but the road signs to it vanished just as we were getting close, so we then pushed on to the main attraction: the Seal Sanctuary.
Seal Sanctuary
We drove to the small town of Gween where the Seal Sanctuary was located. I had to drive up very narrow lanes with high hedges on each side. It is very harrowing to think that on each corner you may collide with some oncoming car if either of you are reckless drivers (I am not, I am safe as houses [you know those houses on mud slides that are starting to collapse over the edge?] ;). At one stage, I confronted a large truck on one of these lanes and had to reverse several hundred metres back to a driveway that I could hide in while he passed. Cornwall might only be a 100 miles or so across but it takes forever to get around because of these sort of things.
Eventually we arrived at Gween, and the Seal Sanctuary. This impressive place is basically all the effort of one person. Some guy from north of england came down this way (to St Augustine) to set up a café (he knew nothing about seals) in the 60s. One day, a baby seal washed up at his café, (it refused to go back into the water cause it was sick) and so he nursed it back to health. He even built a special pool for it while it recovered. Anyway one became 2, 2 became 4 and so on. Pretty soon he ran out of space so he sold his café and bought land at Gween. He built a large sanctuary (has a kiosk, shop, café, 3 large pool areas, an otter display, underwater observatories into the pools, and nature track walks. He is now in his 90s and has retired but the place runs itself now. We saw about 20 seals there, and they did the usual things seals do (they did not do tricks though - these people are about releasing them back into the wild). There was even a seal hospital there. The seals seem pretty happy (I am not sure what an unhappy seal looks like - although I am sure that all the anthromorphists [my special made up word ;] can tell me).
Amy walked out of the gift shop with an arm-full of junk (oh no … more stuff to carry and stuff our luggage with :( ). Her new favourite toy being a stuffed seal (not real seal fur though ;) ).
Pendennis Castle
After the Seal Sanctuary we headed further north to Falmouth, the home to Pendennis(sp?) Castle, and another castle (the name which escapes me right now). Falmouth sits in a harbour which is flanked by these 2 castles so any invading ships copped it badly from a crossfire of cannons. They call them castles because they were originally built by Henry VIII(?) in the 16th century as part of the English southern coastal defence against the catholics, It was also used to help repel spaniards, was rearmed again in WWI, and had troops stationed there in WWII as well. Even though it was called a castle, it looked more like a fortress to me, as it had barracks, and the keep was a very small building that only had about 6 or 7 rooms. It did have cool circular stairs, and the toilets were effectively tiny stone rooms (you could not stand in them) with a hole in the ground that dropped an indeterminate distance (they were covered with glass for safety reasons [no - this was not some medieval joke on toilet goers - the glass was a modern fitting ;]. I pity any poor fool who slipped and fell down one). Apart from the governors room that had a bed (and one of these unsavoury toilets), the rest of the building was pretty uncomfortable with only 1 toilet to service about 20 people (it said the place typically had 12 people but could house up to 100 - I would hate to see 100 fit in that place - maybe they meant the barracks nearby which looked a lot more hospitable - it was a later addition). From the top of the keep you could see 360 around the whole area so you would easily be able to spot enemy fleets.
Panzance
After Pendennis Castle we drove back to Penzance to get dinner materials and an alarm clock to get us up at 5:30 am. (Penzance is central to all these places so it is an easy place to stop at)
Sleep
We had no luck getting the alarm clock, but when we got back the owner gave us a cheap one to use. I didn’t trust it so I wrote a program on the laptop to play some music at that time. Hopefully both together will get us up at 5:30am. Anyway time for bed, tomorrow is the day to return the car, and train to Bath.
