Chris had to return to Crowthorne for work for a few days and so we decided to have an explore with Jean.
We headed south to Cornwall, through more beautiful rolling hills and hedgerows filled with purple foxgloves and other lovely wildflowers. Not much traffic (apart from caravans).
Our first stop was Boscastle, which suffered so much in the 2004 floods. It has been restored magnificently and we enjoyed looking around at all the renovations.
Our next stop was Tintagel, legendary home of King Arthur and his Queen, Guinevere. There are ruins of what was supposed to have been his castle on the headland, near to Merlin's cave.
We drove through and near to some more wonderfully named towns such as Woolfadiswery (pronounced Woolsery in that quaint English way), Stibb, Bush, Week St Marys, Pityme, Fairy Cross and Wivilscombe. We were on the rather grandiosely named Atlantic Highway (a two lane road actually)and eventually reached Port Isaac, where Doc Martin is filmed. We had a bit of a "moment" when driving down an extremely narrow two way lane. We reached a corner and met a four-wheel drive vehicle coming the other way. A bit of a stand off ensued and then he decided to reverse (much easier for him than for us); however, a car behind us decided to overtake us and that caused a bit of a problem. We eventually managed to get down to the quay but, as there was no parking available we drove around to the outskirts of the town and parked just outside, then walked in. We saw the house where Louisa "lives", and also the building where the surgery is - also the school and other places seen in the series. We bought Cornish Pasties (of course) for lunch and then had a walk along the sea wall back to the car. On the way, we saw some baby seagulls with their parents, in a grassy part of the cliffs - none of us had ever seen baby seagulls before, so it was a real treat.
After leaving Port Isaac, we went to Hartland where our nieces Jenny and Laura had been baptised in St Nectan's Church (he was a hermit). Hartland is right on the coast and we walked down to the cliffs (which are an amazing formation).
We then headed for Bideford after a long, busy but very interesting day.
