Big Day Out

Thursday morning saw the weather looking a little more English. Threatening grey skies but a relatively mild temperature greeted us outside and Murray had had a welcome shower overnight ridding himself of the bird poo that he had worn since Gatwick.

Land's End was our objective today but the first stop was the stunning St.Michael's Mount off the coast of Marazion. The tide was out when we arrived and we strolled over with a fair number of other tourists as the sky slowly cleared.

St. Michael's Mount

In 1954, the 3rd Baron St Levan gave most of St Michael's Mount to the National Trust together with a large endowment fund.The St Aubyn family retained a 999-year lease to inhabit the castle and a licence to manage the public viewing of its historic rooms. This is managed in conjunction with the National Trust. (More info available on Wikipedia!

The skies continued to clear as we drove on to Penzance where I had a particular shop in mind for some retail therapy ( it didn't disappoint) and Bonnie and Sam checked out the large number of antique shops whilst Russell failed to find any pirates 😉

Mousehole

Further along the coast the tiny village of Mousehole (pronounced mowsal) provided the perfect spot for a late lunch and a wander.

Mousehole

On the road again and headed for Land's End we were sidetracked by the sign for the Minack Theatre.
The Minack Theatre is the remarkable achievement of Miss Rowena Cade, described as a 'local eccentric' who in 1920 set about creating an outdoor theatre in the cliff side of her home. The result is spectacular and even more so given that all of the early establishment work was performed by just Rowena and her two gardeners. It is now used for outdoor performances from June to September each year and we arrived an hour before the scheduled performance was due to start so couldn't access the actual stage.

Minack Theatre

 

The theatre overlooks beautiful Porthcurno beach.

Porthcurno beach

At 6pm we finally arrived at Land's End. All that we had read indicated that Land's End itself was somewhat underwhelming and sadly this proved to be true. We passed the tacky amusement park (closed fortunately) and took the obligatory photos as rain started to fall.

Land's End

Back in the car and heading home there was great excitement when we heard that Portugal had done the right thing in its game against Ghana for the US to make the last 16 in the World Cup. At least one of us has a surviving team 🙂

 

 

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