Ancient lands and Castle - Tuesday

We started the day with another really nice breakfast at last night's B&B. 

After breakfast we headed out a bit after 9:30 for Tintagel Castle on the Cornish coast (a 2 1/2 hour drive).

The castle was built in the 12-1300's and is mainly in ruins but it's in the most spectacular clifftop setting. 

There was lots of tramping up hill and down dale to get to and from the castle, which on top of all the stairs we've been dealing with, put a strain on Leanne's knee. I might have to bring out the screens and the shotty soon and put her out of her misery. But she did bravely cross the very high footbridge over a very deep chasm.

There is not much left to see of the castle, but it must have been fairly impressive when it was in its heyday. However, the peninsula it sits on and the surrounding coastline is really fantastic.

On top of that, at the end of the headland is a really interesting (modern) statue of King Arthur, although I don’t know how good the likeness is 😄😄.

After a Cornish pastie at Tintagel for lunch, we headed off for Padstow. Padstow is a fairly famous Cornish fishing village with a pretty little harbour and some beautiful buildings. 

Being a pleasant, fairly sunny afternoon there were heaps of people out and about. One of the things we’ve noticed about England is that they take their dogs with them everywhere and we probably saw 80 to 100 dogs while we were walking around - every pub and cafe had them, lots were walking up and down the street and they were also hopping on the ferry. Dogs were everywhere - all shapes and sizes from tiny foxie’s to gigantic Saint Bernards.

Padstow's the home of Rick Stein’s (celebrity chef) restaurant, but we might just give that a miss - first of all you can’t get a reasonable booking and secondly it’s pretty expensive -  mains are $50-90.

From Padstowe we headed on to Newquay where we have an apartment for three days while we tour Cornwall.