Not a Cheap Date
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 3 ~ Wednesday 4 September ~ Penzance to Tresco
First thing, Amanda goes for a run. I am still well asleep for the following couple of pictures.
Perhaps there is a reason for this. Perhaps not. Perhaps it is part of the eternal mystery of being and not for us to comprehend.
We do not feel sad that UGH is a fairly plain blue; this does not tempt us at all.
[Another random aside: when we bought UGH - (LJ65 UGH as he's more formally known), the choice of colours was quite limited. There was a red, but it wasn't a good red: not exactly the same but think of Chiwetel Ejiofor in Kinky Boots: you know you want to.
Most of the alternatives were even duller, with the possible exception of the colour 'Molten Orange'. Clearly some dull old folk at Ford had thought this would appeal to exciting young (ok, -ish) folk like me, and ended up doing burgundy in orange. Sad, really. "Spirit Blue" is actually a decent colour but I have noticed over the years that the really good colours tend to be restricted to really feeble models. If I were a sexist throwback to the era in which I was born and grew up, I'd say that only girls like pretty colours and they aren't interested in performance. I'd then get thumped soundly by Amanda who may not be a girl racer but is well aware of the value of having sufficient power to be able to pull out and turn right onto a busy road before you die of old age. So I don't know why it's so hard to get a good car in a good colour, but it is.]
Helston town. Amanda is running here, I have no idea what I'm missing. We aren't going to see the place at all as part of our overall trip.
The plaque on the canon explains how it was retrieved from HMS Anson, wrecked on Loe Bar in 1807. It doesn't say why it's now pointing down the High Street and whether perhaps its modern-day purpose is to maintain discipline at the traffic lights. This latter is probably not the case, but we have no way of knowing.
This is probably a clue...
I think you're getting warmer....
Yep, this is our helicopter.
Just to re-iterate, compared to the alternative forms of transport, this will be about fifteen minutes direct to Tresco, as against nearly three hours on a ferry or twenty minutes on a plane (with 5kg less baggage), both from Lands End (much further away) and to St Mary's not Tresco, meaning we need another boat ride on arrival. It's such a no-brainer from our POV that we're slightly surprised to find that our flight is not full and disappointing standby hopefuls. But there aren't any standby hopefuls. The helicopter can carry nine and there are six of us.
As is common in small airports, you just walk from the terminal building to to your flight. Something that has amused us in the past is arriving in the middle of nowhere, and as you wallk from the plane they ask you to enter the building via the door that says "International", not "Domestic".
Goodbye Penzance.
Hello Tresco.
And this is Dolphin Cottage, where we're staying. It's a bit bigger than we strictly need but we liked the idea of a place entirely to ourselves and it's very pretty.
[We will later learn that it's considered the most photogenic on the island!]
The living room.
And here's something we've not seen in a long time: a payphone! It's not quite redundant, because it also includes direct lines to some of the island facilities, but it's a monster!
The master bedroom. There are two other bedrooms on the first floor, one of which we'll put all our bags in to keep this one uncluttered.
Gu-vu takes up his position on the bedroom window ledge.
THe kitchen end of the kitchen/diner.
The fridge is already stocked with our pre-ordered supplies!
And the diner end.
And a little garden at the back. When we get our hire bikes we can keep them in the shed, and in the seemingly unlikely event of a warm evening, it would be nice to sit outside for dinner. But best not get our hopes up: the forecast is not good.
Right, let's go for a little walk...
It's hard to be far from the sea here,
There's a lot of beach when the tide is out.
Another little cottage not dissimilar to ours, but we have a much nicer setting.
It's very lush and green. This does have a certain implication, of course...
One of the smaller landing places for boats.
We'll take a selfie at the top of the track. I'm not sure what it's technically called: it's not quite a causeway, not really a jetty...
Oh look, a dolphin sculpture, just in the middle of the bracken.
That's King Charles' Castle. The Charles in question being number 1 of course.
Well that sounds interesting! I mean, you wouldn't expect those two to have side-by-side his'n'his castles. Was there some Royalist/Parliamentarian bromance before the Civil War that we don't learn from our history books?
No, not quite. The revisionist historical bestseller I had in mind to write will not be able to say "based on a true story".
King Charles' Castle was built in the mid-1500s to protect the islands from French attack. Obviously that was well before Charles took the throne, so that wouldn't have been its original name. Whatever it was originally called, though, it was basically a bit of a cock-up in design. After some abortive attempts to fix it, an entirely new fortification was built on a different island entirely: the 'Star Castle' on St Mary's. [It will transpire that we visit that place later, but at this moment we don't know that.]
Anyway, at the end of the Civil War, the Scillies were still held by the Royalists, who gave the castle its name. They couldn't hold out for long, though, and they blew it up when the Roundheads came to take the islands. Cromwell's forces probably didn't get too angsty about being deprived of a pretty useless castle and soon set to building their own.
These guns look like they're ready to fire at any invading hordes, but they're not pointing anywhere near the harbour the castle was supposed to defend.
Consider ourselves warned.
I'm a bit mystified, though. Is there really anyone who is going to read that and think, "Oh! I wasn't going to take care, but I will now that I've been warned!"
Take care! The steps are steep!
We have found a small black cat. Oberon and Titania would not have enjoyed the journey but would undoubtedly find much to interest them if they were here.
This looks interesting...
Indeed.
This church is modelled on the one just round the corner behind our cottage.
We light a candle in the shape of a stone and it's time for bed.
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