Sunday, June 20, 2010

June 19 Polperro, on the Cornish coast

June 19 Polperro, on the Cornish coast
The visit to the Cornish coast involved a complex series of trains - express to Euston Station, walk a quarter mile to Euston Square underground station, underground to Paddington station, catch the southbound train there. It was jammed with people, mostly holiday-makers, including one guy in the seat next to me who tried to sleep the whole way and sprawled every which way. The train goes through some lovely rolling countryside, then along the coastline for a ways, with wind-carved red sandstone cliffs along the north side of the tracks. It passes through Plymouth, then stops at Liskeard, which is not actually on the coast. There I transferred to another train - just one long car, really. It is the oddest station I've ever seen - "Platform C" is at right angles to the other two platforms, and on the north side of the tracks (Polperro is to the south). Only a handful of others got on with me. The railcar headed off in the wrong direction for a mile or so, circled around under the main line, stopped while a switch was thrown, then went back south again, in effect a switchback that eventually carried it under the other track. It passed through a long, pretty canyon that reminded me of the pasturelands around Tillamook, stopped several times at little sidings, finally stopped at the end of the line, Looe, where I got off and started walking.
The coast trail goes for the first mile and a half through West Looe ("e" is silent - pronounce it like the Australian term for toilet) and along a drive next to the rocky beach before passing through a stile and heading gradually uphill through a pasture. Along the way I stopped at an ice cream stand and bought a black current ice cream cone - quite good. This section of coast really is quite spectacular; very like some sections of the Oregon coast except it is different rock, slate I think - tilted jagged-edged slabs making sharp angles against the horizon; none of the cliffs are very high but they are quite rugged, with pretty tide-pools at their feet and rolling pastureland above. The trail passes through the pastures and along the cliff edges; unfortunately it is often between six to ten foot hedges that totally block any possible view; but the rest of the time it affords quite lovely perspectives. Parts are dirt and might require hiking boots in winter, but I was glad I had just worn my lighter, more comfortable walking shoes. The steep parts all have either steps carved in the stone or made out of wood log segments with gravelled mud behind them - even the steep sections quite easy walking. I didn't really need my trekking poles, although they do make it somewhat easier on the really steep steps.
Polperro is a fairly old fishing village, with a still active fishing fleet but the fishermen's cottages are now very much outnumbered by tourist cottages and B&Bs. (Many "fishermen's cottages" are for seasonal rent; I wouldn't be surprised if many of the fishermen have moved into more modern houses up the hill.) The streets of the old town are extremely narrow and rather quaint; the whole is very picturesque. The tide range is quite wide - when I arrived all the boats that had not gone out were high and dry, on their sides on the mud bottom. After dinner I walked back down and they were all floating quite nicely in what looked like ten feet of water. My B&B is comfortable, but a full half mile up the road away from the harbor, which isn't very convenient. Not much view, but as I write this I am listening to some very pretty birdsong. Lots of seafood restaurants here - hard to choose. Last night I had a decent bouillabaise of local seafood; tempted by the local scallops but also considering the whole lobster for tonight. I'm not sure whether it is local or not - I think probably not. They had black current sorbet as well as some other good-sounding dishes but I wanted to taste the sorbet and I'm glad I did. Very intense flavor; it needed a scoop of vanilla ice cream to tame it I think. They served it with four or five raspberries and one sliced strawberries - the other berries were totally overwhelmed by the pungent black currents. I wish we could get them - I think LaJean could work out some very interesting things to do with them.
The waitresses told me about fireworks at "half ten" - Guy Fawkes' Day got rained out, and again on New Years', so they decided to use them to kick off their summer music festival. So I went back to the coast walk and climbed up to the cliff above the harbor - also above and across a spit of rock from the rocky promontory where they were to set them off. I misheard and thought the fireworks would start at ten, so I was quite early and, as the breeze sharpened, had to put up the hood on my windbreaker - but it was worth the wait.
When10:30 came a fishing boat entered the channel and hung there, right below the fireworks zone. The fireworks guys yelled at him and the spectators booed and finally after about 10 minutes he gave up and went back partway out to sea. Some of the fireworks were a bit ho-hum, but some was really pretty spectacular, especially going off right overhead. The most spectacular I think was not on purpose - a very big one, or maybe more than one, misfired and dropped in the water (right where that stupid boat skipper had wanted to be) and blew up under water. By being up on the cliff instead of down on the breakwater with most of the (smallish) crowd, I missed seeing the fireworks reflected in the water but got to see them erupting out of the water - a fair tradeoff. After a while the guy the festival had sent up to watch over the dozen or so of us on the cliff got nervous and shoed us back from the edge but it was still spectacular. Another neat effect - they had set up fireworks launch emplacements all over the broken craggy promontory, some behind the rocky peak so that when they went off it was like a volcano erupting. Way cool. A big difference from Portland - no amateur bottle rockets.
The trip started off with the oddest experience - I had ordered my ticket to London for next Monday and wanted to pick it up, since I will have a lot of luggage. There was a huge line at the ticket window and a much shorter one at the machine so I used the machine (which hasn't always worked with my chipless card). I stuck my card in the machine and, without asking for a ticket code, PIN, or anything, it read my card then spit out a ticket - a day return to London for that same day only, not the ticket I had ordered. The information guy swore I must have entered it wrong, and I did not have a printout of the confirmation e-mail, so I had to stand in the ticket window line after all (good thing I had allowed extra time for the walk to the train station). Sure enough, my confirmation code was indeed for June 28 and the many refunded the money from the one I didn't want. All I can think is that the previous customer must have begun the June 18 transaction but not completed it and not cleared it, so when I stuck the card in the machine completed his transaction. The web / ticket machine system is good when it works, but like all computerized systems maddening when it doesn't.

June 19.
Had a lovely day today. I had originally planned to take a vigorous walk, maybe 8 miles up the coast and back, but I decided to poke along instead, and just went maybe 4 miles and back, a total of maybe 8 miles, stopping at 3 or 4 places to sit on rocks or a grassy ledge and just listen to the ocean, the wind in the grass, seabirds, etc. Took quite a few pictures - very warm day, little wind, so there wasn't much surf but some of the views are quite spectacular anyway. After returning to the hotel for a bath I went back to the rocky promontory where they had fired off fireworks, clambered around on the rocks for a while, then found a couple of different pleasant places to sit, on the one side watching the extremely small waves, then over on the harbor side watching the other tourists - and on both sides listening to the gentle surf.
Went to a different restaurant, had scallops in butter and garlic. Good, but they put way too much butter in - the scallops were in over an inch of butter, floating on top of the scallop juice. The salad was as mediocre as most of the salads I've had in England, ditto the soft crusted, partly stale bread. For nearly 20 pounds I expected a bit better. After dinner I walked back over to the rocky promontory by the harbor mouth, but the wind had risen enough to make it too cool to sit there long so I returned to the hotel room, picking up a pint of local dark ale along the way.

Sunday evening
The walk back along the coast was lovely - already warm at 9:00, sea almost like glass. What a day to be riding the train all day!

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