First stop was Newlyn which is on the ocean, and somewhat of an artist colony. The issue for me in these small towns is driving. Every ounce of concentration is devoted to simply staying on the opposite side of the road that I'm normally on, plus very narrow streets with cars parked on either side. I'm not yet able to drive through AND look for parking area's. But did finally find a spot. On the walk back to Newlyn we found a couple who had purchased a 1960's Viking travel trailer (they call them caravans over here) and made it into a mobile tea, coffee, milkshake shop. We talked with them for several minutes about their trailer, our trailer, and camping. Walked further into town and while Betsy browsed some galleries I found an antique store and wandered around the town a little bit. The cottages all had beautiful flowers around them.
Our next stop was going to be Mousehole which is pronounced mow (rhymes with cow)--zel. Mousehold is one of the oldest fishing villages in Cornwall and very tiny. While I was waiting for Betsy I ask a man if the road we were standing by was the one to Mousehold and he said it was but he also cautioned that the road to and the streets in the village were very narrow and suggested we take the bus for the 2 miles. Off we go to the bus stop and ask a man who was sitting there if this was the place to get the bus to Mousehole. He said it was and wondered where we were from. He had visited the Phoenix/Scottsdale area several years ago. He'd worked in London for 40 years, retired, and moved to Newlyn 6 years ago. He seemed to know everyone in town. We rode with him to Mousehole and after seeing the tiny streets I'm sure the 6 1/2 pounds we'd paid for the bus ride to and back were well spent. We wandered through the town, talked to a man painting his boat (didn't know that each coastal village had their own boat colors), went through more galleries, had lunch (crabmeat sandwiches, did some tourist shopping but the find of the day was something called a Plague
Stone which is a stone about 2x2 and maybe 6 inches thick with a round 6 or 8 inch wide shallow hole carved into it. When a plague would break out in a village no one could leave for fear of infecting others, so the residents would pour vinegar into the stones hole (they thought vinegar would disinfect the coins) and then put coins in the vinegar so that people from the un-infected village down the road would take the money and buy the villagers of the infected village food. This particular stone was found when they were remodeling a house there and Mousehole did have a plague outbreak back in the mid 1500's.
We followed the coast path back to our parking space but realized that Penzance was within walking distance so rather than find a new parking spot we walked into Penzance. After wandering about a bit we found the "old" part of the town and decided we'd better eat something. We opted for a pub (our first visit to one) called The Turks Head which is the oldest pub in town. This pub is thought to date back to 1233 (that's right 1233!!!!), when during the crusades, the Turks invaded Penzance from Jerusalem.
Also, today we met a lady walking a Cairn Terrier named Fudge. We're pretty sure Fudge is Tippers English cousin. We also ran across a lawn bowling center and that was interesting. Betsy was talking to an artist in her gallery and the artist said that she's been inspired by Jane Davies, an American artist. Betsy has taken classes by Jane so they had a lot to talk about.
A very nice day.
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