England in Spring May 9-19, 2006

Pat and I enjoyed a business/pleasure trip to London and South-West England in mid-May. We started off staying a few days in Weybridge, Surrey, close to the office where Pat was working. From there it was an easy 30-minute train ride into Waterloo Station, London where we spent an afternoon walking around old haunts such as Trafalgar Square, St. Martin's-in-the-Field, then down The Strand to St. Paul's where we listened to a lovely choral evensong, thus avoiding the 9 pound per person entry fee! Another very pleasant walk proved to be through tiny St. Christopher's Place on Oxford Street (near Selfridge's) and through Marylebone up to Regent's Park. We are ever so grateful to an old Texas school friend of Jen's for this tidbit of information! It was a rare warm and sunny spring evening so the park was buzzing with activity: groups playing soccer or frisbee, couples lounging on blankets with picnic baskets of gourmet fare and such pretty spring flowers or shrubs all in full bloom. While Pat worked during one day with an evening dinner engagement, I made plans to head east by train and tube to Chelmsford, Essex to see some old family friends for the day.

Beautiful wisteria blooming profusely on the front of a law office in downtown Weybridge, Surrey.











Our tour of S.W. England (Devon and Cornwall) began with a night in Exeter. We rented a car from Heathrow Airport and headed west, stopping for a walk around Stonehenge, which I first saw at the age of 15! I didn't notice that it had changed much, except that you can no longer walk right up to the stones but rather are kept to a pathway around the site.

The Cathedral Church of St. Mary and St. Peter, Exeter in the Norman style, built between 1112 and 1133. During our Saturday morning tour, we were treated to the men and boys' choir at practise, dressed in full choir robes!









From Exeter, we headed south along the coast, stopping at Dartmouth Castle for a proper Devon cream tea (who's counting calories?!?). We learned that the locals can tell if you are from Devon or Cornwall, depending on whether you spread cream on the scone first or jam, then top it with the other! (I can't remember now which county does it how!) The drive to Plymouth was lovely through rolling hills, narrow twisting roads with high hedgerows...you do take your life in your hands at times! We stayed at The Bowling Green Hotel overlooking The Hoe, the famous promenade and green space which looks out to Plymouth Sound. Apparently Sir Francis Drake bowled on the green! Plymouth is also famous as the setting off point of the Mayflower in 1620 for the New World and Captain James Cook left from there as well in 1768 searching for a southern continent.


The Hoe in Plymouth overlooking the Sound. Note the naval ships in the distance.











On Mother's Day, we spent some time walking along the coastal boardwalk in Looe, Cornwall then exploring the quaint fishing village of Polperro. There were no vehicles allowed in the village, so you had to park your car and walk about 3/4 km. to the harbour.


Low tide in Polperro, Cornwall. Best fish and chips pub lunch at The Buccaneer!











I had read about and been advised to visit The Eden Project near St. Austell, begun five years ago in a disused china-clay pit by Tim Smit, the man also responsible for The Gardens at Heligan, which we unfortunately did not see. The project comprises a vast geodesic dome structure approximately 1 km long and 60m high! The tropical section is heated to 35C and filled with 10,000 species of plants from around the world. (The climate inside made us feel right at home!) Another section was Mediterranean and filled with plants more from the northern hemisphere, with which we were more familiar.






A section of The Eden Project in Cornwall.








From The Eden Project, we drove to Falmouth for the night, where a steady drizzle set in and hampered our views of the sea! However, the skies lifted a little after we killed some time using the internet at the city library and picking up things for a picnic lunch, which we enjoyed in gale-force winds atop St. Michael's Mount. The Mount was granted in 1070 to the same monks who built Mont St. Michel in Normandy, which is why the picture below may look somewhat familiar! It was an important place of medieval pilgrimage. Descendants of the St. Aubyn family have lived in the ex-priory buildings since 1659.

You walk across a stone boardwalk in low tide from the village of Marazion, then up the steep cliff to the house itself for magnificent views of the coastline and the town of Penzance further south.









Because of the dreary day, we skipped the Lizard Peninsula to the south as well as Land's End to the far west and cut across to St. Ives, where the sun shone once again! People were out in full force sitting outside in cafes and pubs, eating ice cream, walking dogs, etc.

In order to properly explore St. Ives, we parked just above this pretty graveyard overlooking a turquoise sea, just like here on the east coast of Malaysia!










We were now on the north coast of Cornwall, which we found just as pretty as the south coast, heading east past Newquay, Watergate Bay and on to Padstow, where we stayed in a lovely B&B overlooking the Camel Estuary. It cost a steep 80 pounds for a king-sized room, appropriately called "The Estuary Room"! Padstow is the home of Rick Stein, a famous British chef who has a collection of seafood restaurants in the village, the first one started around 1975 on the quay. We were fortunate to secure reservations in his cafe and enjoyed a delicious dinner.

Typical rolling hills with stone walls to separate fields along the coast of North Cornwall between St. Ives and Padstow.











Another quaint fishing village we enjoyed exploring was Port Isaac, for the simple reason that I fell in love with it on TV this winter while watching a British comedy/drama series called, "Doc Martin". The series was filmed here and the Doctor had his surgery in the little stone house you can see below, third from the right! Mind you, once we were there and actually walking around the village, it didn't look anything like in the TV show! We parked along the coast high up in a public lot, but were amused to find out that the locals park on the beach (only in low tide!) for about 2 pounds!






Port Isaac, North Cornwall










Another view of Port Isaac with a self-explanatory picture on someone's house! Note the cars parked on the beach (low tide).










Not too far from Port Isaac, through more pretty green rolling hills covered in sheep, is the extraordinary fishing village of Clovelly, Devon. Here you must park your car at the visitor centre and pay 4.75 pounds each for the privilege of walking down an incredibly steep cobblestone path or multitudes of stairs all the way to the beach! How they built the lovely stone houses here on this steep cliff, let alone furnished them later is a mystery!



The main street in Clovelly, Devon! Note the delivery man on the left with his supplies firmly inside a homemade wooden sled with wooden runners! Local residents "park" their sleds at the entrance to the steep village, ready to bring groceries or what-have-you to their homes!













After Clovelly we headed for Barnstaple for the night, surprised to find all the hotels nearly full...not with tourists but rather with businesspeople in the middle of the week! We stayed in the rather expensive but unexciting Imperial Hotel, eating dinner in their very elegant and formal dining room! In the morning we stumbled across the charming Old School Coffee Shop, dating from 1659, for breakfast. From Barnstaple we drove across Exmoor National Park, through Exmoor Forest (more rolling hills with green fields as opposed to a forest with lots of trees) and found the twin villages of Lynton and Lynmouth.







More beautiful wisteria blooming in Lynmouth, North Devon where we enjoyed lunch.








Rain hit again through the Exmoor Park...watch for sheep in the narrow road! Note there are no shoulders on either side...hold your breath as you pass another car!









A final night at the Bindon House Hotel west of Taunton in Devon, then we were back in London for our last day and a half. We didn't fly back to Malaysia until 10 p.m. so while Pat had meetings, I spent another day in London. After the obligatory Changing of the Guard, I visited the Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace to see a new exhibit of the Queen Mother's watercolour collection. There was also the 80th birthday portrait of Queen Elizabeth on display, painted by Rolf Harris, accompanied by video coverage of the Queen sitting for the painter.



Tourists from all over the world still crowd the gates of Buckingham Palace to watch the daily Changing of the Guard.










And so, another great trip comes to an end! Much as we loved this part of England, we really found the prices incredibly expensive and often wondered to ourselves, "How do the Brits afford to live here?" Perhaps someday, I will return as there is much in the "middle" of these two beautiful counties that we didn't see, as we kept to a clockwise circle hugging the coast as much as possible. Until next time, jumpa lagi...