We headed north from Dunsford and onto the A30. It was great to be on an expressway after a few days of country roads. Have I mentioned the roads!!! Most of the secondary roads are very narrow – one lane, with hedges up each side. There are passing spots occasionally but there are quite a few times when you meet someone coming the other way that someone has to back up. That’s the way it is and everyone appears to take it in their stride. Anyhow as I said it was great to be able to travel on an expressway for a change. We were on the expressway for about an hour forty-five (travelled from Devon into Cornwall) before pulling off at Redruth an old tin mining town to check in to our accommodation for the night. We had had an impossible task of trying to find accommodation (school holidays) and had ended up booking the Crossroads Inn. Reports had said it was a bit 60ish and ‘rough around the edges but was ‘friendly’ and had a good breakfast. We weren’t too optimistic when we first saw it – the outside certainly looked as if it needed some TLC but fortunately, it turned out to be a case of not ‘judging a book by its cover’ – as we discovered later in the day, the room was clean, and cooked breakfast the next morning was fine. Was speaking to the owner (lady) and she had been there since the 60s and had just sold the building to be used as a centre for dementia sufferers.
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| St Michael's Mount |
For now, we have a 2pm appointment, so after coffee in Redruth (amazingly the coffee shop was selling Byron Bay cookies - small world!!) we drove on to Porthcurno via Penzance arriving in plenty of time for our show at the Minack. Just before Penzance, we could see St Michael’s Mount in the distance but as it was still raining our chances of getting out there today were not good. Fortunately, the weather cleared as we arrived at the theatre and remained so until the end of the show except for a short light shower at interval. The Minack is amazing. It is an open-air theatre, constructed above a gully with a rocky granite outcrop jutting into the sea (minack from Cornish meynek means a stony or rocky place). The theatre was the brainchild of Rowena Cade, who lived at Minack House overlooking Porthcurno Bay and developed from her offering her garden for a production of The Tempest in the early 1930s.
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| Minack Theatre |
Nowadays, the theatre is used from June to September for a full summer season of plays, produced by companies from all over the UK and visiting companies from the USA. We watched a performance of Thieves’ Carnival, a production performed by a visiting theatre group from Kent. It was very well done and very enjoyable. Sitting on the side of a cliff above the stage looking out to sea was quite amazing.
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| 'Thieves' Carnival' at Minack Theatre |
As we headed back towards Penzance the rain set in again. Stopped briefly at Penzance but decided to go on to St Ives for dinner. Was still raining so it was a matter of getting the rain gear out for a walk from the parking area to town.
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| St Ives |
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| St Ives |
We had a bit of a walk around St Ives and then it was further north to Redruth to the motel for the night. Free wifi was a bonus.
