Lands End and Aurthurian Legend

We awoke in morning (remember we're staying at the Atlantic Hotel) and headed down to the restaurant on the 1st floor for our breakfast. They offered a Full English Breakfast with tea and coffee and OJ so we all ate well. For those of you who are wondering, yes I had tea . .I've found that I like the English Breakfast Teas with a little bit of milk or cream and some sugar.

Anyway, breakfast finished, we checked out and headed down the road towards Lands End (we had already crossed into Cornwall yesterday)

From Lands End

We travelled the "scenic route", according to the map, which took us along the coastline for much of our journey the rest of the way to Lands End. The roads were a lot of one-lane roads but the view of the countryside was awesome!

From Lands End

And then we arrived - Lands End!!

From Lands End

David and I took the opportunity to go through the Dr. Who Exhibition just to see . . and YEP, they're different!

From Lands End

We enjoyed looking at the Lighthouse and the water crashing on the rocks below

From Lands End

From Lands End

Although you have to hire a photographer now to take your picture near the Lands End sign, we took a picture of the sign itself and then had someone take a picture of us

From Lands End

From Lands End

And before we headed out we all had Cornish Ice Cream - YUMMY!!!! But the day was escaping us and we still wanted to see Tintagel today on our way back towards home so we needed to get going. As we headed back up the opposite coastline to our next destination, we took some advantageous photos of St. Michaels Island and then David pulled into the parking lot just to see if we could get better photos. The tide was in and we would have had to wait too long to get out to the island or back so we didn't have time for that, but Linda and I hopped out of the truck in the parking lot and quick took photos before we got back in and on our way.

From Lands End

As we navigated the rest of the way out of the Lands End area, we saw a sign for Chysauster Medieval Village. It was another one of those things on the Aerial England book (although we didn't confirm that until after we had returned home). The site itself seems to have been constructed during the Roman period and occupied for a short amount of time, although there was also discovered evidence of earlier Iron Age activity in the form of Pottery and such. The photos you'll see in the slideshow below will show you basically what consisted of the walls of the houses which are about knee height and then the roofs would have been peaked with timber and straw to form the roof of the house. You will also see in the photo slideshow a rock with a divot in it, there was one of these in each house, and it is believed to be the rock that held up the center pole which supported the peak of the roof.


Back on the Motorway and A roads we headed toward Tintagel. Arriving in Tintagel we decided to stop into the National Heritage museum to the post office to experience some of the age of the Tintagel area before going toward the castle.

From Tintagel

Portions of Tintagel Castle have been there since the 5th or 6th Century and there are housing foundations still to be seen there. The castle is believed to have ties to King Arthur and Merlin of legend. The castle was redone some in 1233 by Earl Richard of Cornwall which are most of the remains that are left here today. The castle offers one of the most BEAUTIFUL and PICTURESQUE sites I've seen in a VERY long time. However, the castle itself is split in two parts with portions of the sea in between so the only access are some REALLY steep stairs to both locations. If I thought we had to be billy goats to navigate White Horse Hill, I had no idea what that meant. This climb was exhausting, but well worth it. Unfortunately we only had time to see half of the site so that leaves the need for a return trip to see the other half - any takers?


Linda and Dave opted to not make the trek with David and I to the castle (smart people) and instead spent some time enjoying the town of Tintagel itself. When we hooked back up with them, most of the shops were closing and all of us were getting a little hungry. We ducked into a little pub in Tintagel but found they weren't going to be serving dinner for another hour or so and so we opted to get on the road and then find someplace along the way.

The way took us to Launceston and they seemed to have a pretty concentrated downtown area so we were sure we could find someplace to eat. We parked in the public parking lot and did some walking. Huh, they have a castle! But of course it is closed and so we'll have to return another day . .


But I digress, we walked for a ways before finding a pub that offered some food - The White Hart. We enjoyed the pub atmosphere and most of us found our meals tasty, although Dave said he wouldn't recommend the bangers and mash. Tummies full, we headed off to home.