Seven Wives, Seven Sacks, Seven Cats...

Yesterday was a crash course in Cornwall tourism, with us packing as much as possible into a single day. And I gotta say, we did an excellent job -- saw lots of sights but not too many, with plenty of leisure time for pints at a pub and some photography walks.

After a quick, light breakfast at our hotel, we took a taxi out to Land's End, at the far southwestern tip of Cornwall. I mainly wanted to see it just to say I'd been there. We started at the Land's End attraction, a kind of touristy complex (which we did not enter) with entertainments and a hotel, and we walked the coastal path from there up to Sennen Cove, a little more than a mile away.

It was a beautiful stretch of coast, with sculpted rock forms and windswept vegetation. We saw porpoises in the water and lots of seabirds, the rusted hulk of a shipwreck, and several lighthouses.

Remember the old postcard I bought of the First & Last House in England, back in 2022? I'm sure you don't, but I posted about it here. Well, we saw the First & Last House, which is still there and serves refreshments, though it wasn't open when we passed by. You can see it in the top photo, on the cliff at upper left.

At Sennen Cove we called our old friend the taxi driver, and he collected us and took us all the way up to St. Ives. These two taxi rides -- from Penzance to Land's End and from Sennen Cove to St. Ives -- were our one great indulgence, as they cost altogether about £90, but they got us around fast. I'd thought we might take a bus but apparently the bus is pretty slow and we wanted to use our limited time more wisely. We passed through little towns like St. Just, Pendeen, Morvah and Zennor on the way.

St. Ives is an artsy community and quite well-known as a tourism hotspot. It made me think of the nursery rhyme, and I kept singing to Dave, "When I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives..." He had no idea what I was talking about, so I played him a Sesame Street rendition on YouTube, which made even me laugh. Do you all know that song? I had it on a record when I was a little kid so every time someone mentions St. Ives I think of it.

(Apparently there's some dispute about whether the St. Ives in the song is the Cornwall town or one up in Cambridgeshire, but I'm not taking a position on that.)

Anyway, we walked down to the train station to look at train times back to Penzance, and then explored the town. We went to a swanky pub for lunch with big glass windows overlooking the harbor, where I had a "charred watermelon salad" (if there was charring it was very subtle) and Dave had mussels.

We wandered through town, did a little shopping, and then we went to another sculpture garden -- because this is apparently what one does in Cornwall. This one was the former home and studio of Barbara Hepworth, one of Britain's most famous sculptors. Several years ago I posted a picture of her "Winged Figure" outside the John Lewis store on Oxford Street. We saw lots more of her works here.

Peering into her studio made me realize I could never be a sculptor. The dust! The shavings! The chips and shards! I'd go crazy.

From there we walked down to a bench on the waterfront, where we had coffee while watching the passing crowds and the seabirds. This seagull (above) was obsessed with that ball, which I think was a dog toy it found on the beach. I swear it was playing keep-away with the other birds, all of which were trying to snatch it.

I left Dave on the bench while I took a walk out to the pier and then around some back streets. Some poor woman sat next to him with an ice cream cone, only to have a seagull swoop down and carry off the ice cream! Maybe that's what the seagull above thought he'd found -- a scoop of ice cream.

We went to a pub for a couple of pints and then had an early dinner at a modest-looking restaurant called Silco, which was recommended by one of Dave's co-workers. The food was excellent. From there we walked to the train and headed back to Penzance, getting there in plenty of time to collect our bags from the hotel and return to the train station for our overnight train back to London...

...which is where I am now, home in bed!