It's been a long time since we had a proper holiday where we've been gone more than a night. While we still don't have much freedom to travel internationally, we are continuing with our local trips. Most of the places we have travelled to aren't more than an hour or so away from London, not including time getting to the train station in London, but Cornwall is far enough away that it's prudent to plan a few days there to make the trip worthwhile, and not just because there is so much to see.
The final destination we wanted to see that is connected to my husband's grandfather was Fowey (rhymes with boy). My husband visited it as a child while his grandfather had a summer flat there that overlooked the Fowey river. According to the city's welcome sign, it's an ancient port city. Even though I read some information about it in the Lonely Planet Guide we got for the UK, I had no idea how ancient the town really is. We saw ruins dating as far back as the 8th Century! These things shouldn't surprise me anymore since it seems like pretty much any town in the UK is pretty old, but the novelty of ancient sites doesn't seem to wear off on me because most of Canada's ancient sites, which would likely be Indigenous places, are not marked as points of interest. That's a political discussion to have in another venue. For now, it's best that I focus on my experience in Fowey.
One thing I learned about Cornwall in general, through observation and just being there, was that Cornwall is very much into "local." By that, I mean you won't find many chains operating there, outside of basics like drug stores, not just when it comes to restaurants, but also when it comes to hotels. Consequently, we stayed at guest houses when we were in the region. They're kind of like Bed & Breakfasts but are called guest houses. The place we stayed at in Fowey had a very friendly proprietor, who ran the place with his son. We partook of the full English breakfast both mornings we were there and enjoyed fruit and yogurt topped with locally produced honey that was some of the best I've tasted since moving to London. We were grateful to have that much protein because we ended up doing a lot of walking and going up and downhill. Knowing that the places we would be visiting are on the coast of the English Channel, I envisioned them being on flat land because, aside from the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, the main seasides I've been to have been flat, so I didn't know how craggy and rocky the terrain would be right next to the water. I should have realised it, given my work trip where I got to see Juno's terrain in Alaska with mountains next to the sea, but my thoughts just didn't go there. We walked around 10km that day, including stopping in town for a coffee, but our breakfast actually kept us going all day such that we didn't feel hungry for lunch.
In terms of what we did, despite the rain, which we thought might prevent us from accomplishing much, we enjoyed an excellent time. We took a misty walk down a public footpath to get to town. I took a lot of photos of the plants because there is such a diversity of pink and purple flowers and moisture-loving plants, like ferns. We went from town for a walk up to St. Catherine's Castle. My husband remembered his grandfather taking him there so long ago. I can't say the path is really well marked, but we made our way there and enjoyed excellent views of the town of Polruan, across the estuary, from the castle. Luckily, when we got there, we discovered there is a covered rest spot, which was a welcome sight so that we could not only rest but also get out of the rain for a bit and have the safety to use our good cameras for some photos without fear of them getting damaged. We also ended up sharing our spot with a curious young robin who, while appearing fully fledged, still had some of his extra yellow beak opening from when he used to have to open wide for his parents to feed him. After heading back to town for a coffee and to determine what to do next, we decided to take the ferry across the estuary to Polruan. On the way to catch the ferry, we came across a large sculpture of a rook, which turned out to have been made in honour of Daphne de Maurier, author of The Birds, which is what Alfred Hitchcock's movie is based on. Apparently du Maurier loved Fowey and lived there for quite a while, finding much inspiration for her writing. It was a neat find for me because I've now been to the place where the book was written and also to the place on the coast in Northern California where the movie was filmed. It was a complete fluke!
We didn't think there was much to do in Polruan, but we went to the Blockhouse, which was built during the time of Henry VIII and was attached by chain to another blockhouse on the other side of the estuary to prevent unwanted ships from coming into the area. Both St. Catherine's and the blockhouses are ruins with no cost to view, and they make for great little hikes to see and enjoy the coastal scenery. We noticed at Blockhouse that there was another public footpath, so we decided to follow it and discovered we were on a coastal footpath. The total path was 6 miles, which we definitely did not do, but the part we did do led us to some gorgeous views of the coast and multitudes of native flowers blooming everywhere, as well as to another ruin, which happened to be St Saviour's Ruin (scroll down to the section on the ruin), which seems like the highest point in Polruan. It isn't that remarkable to look at, so I haven't included a photo, but the experience of exploring was the most fun part about it, to me.
We ended the day at a pub and inn called The King of Prussia. While they ran out of everything I wanted to have, I was still happy with what I ate, a mushroom tagliatelle and a strawberry panna cotta for dessert. My husband enjoyed his duck meatball tagliatelle as well. It was definitely the best meal we had in Fowey, aside from our breakfast, as the dinner we had the night before was not worth writing about.
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