― Anna (Anna), Friday, 14 February 2003 17:04 (twenty-one years ago) link
― robin carmody (robin carmody), Friday, 14 February 2003 20:50 (twenty-one years ago) link
― robin carmody (robin carmody), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 00:54 (twenty-one years ago) link
My Cornish niece got married recently. I appeared to be related to half the village.
― stevo (stevo), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 06:02 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Matt (Matt), Friday, 11 April 2003 00:25 (twenty-one years ago) link
then dr vick's brother's children threw a surprise finn family moomintroll party JUST FOR ME, with lamps in the trees and pancakes and jam and cups made out of leaves and the king's ruby in a suitcase (= a rear bikelight) and a blood red full moon rising out of the sea as the stunning unplanned climax!!!
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 10:42 (twenty years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 10:46 (twenty years ago) link
And yes, Dawlish is worthy of big cakes. I live at the top of that there cliff.
― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 10:51 (twenty years ago) link
apparently some mad people dive off the esplanade railing into the rock pools
plymouth council has put up signs saying "nuffink to do w.us guv it's your lookout"
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 10:57 (twenty years ago) link
― Tim (Tim), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 11:00 (twenty years ago) link
Actually Tim, you're right, it sucks. Let 'em have it.
― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 11:01 (twenty years ago) link
(was walter potter related to beatrix potter? i hope so!!)
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 11:10 (twenty years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 11:15 (twenty years ago) link
Bet that ooky place fits rather nicely on Bodmin Moor (a place which always gives me the creeps).
From the train even Teignmouth looks nice.
― Tim (Tim), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 11:21 (twenty years ago) link
the museum is right next door to Jamaica Inn, which — in all the news stories abt potter — is described as the one which inspired D.Du Maurier, but may actually just have taken the name quite recently (so said the v.v.cynical local I wz visiting with). Anyway it is all souped up for OAP coach parties with a school-dinners type foodbar and would — I suspect — belong in Pumpkin Publog Hall of Infamy. The guy who served us had the best barman-as-cherry-lipped-poisoner manner and fake smile I have ever encountered: he said "What can I get you this lovely day?" but he fairly clearly meant "I shall kill you in the night and you shall see my face in your last agony"...
the outside wall is cornish tiling but the roof has been covered in this weird rubberised goop which looks like they're making a mould to recast it in plaster of paris
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 11:29 (twenty years ago) link
I've just looked at that Potter site again and it's the most horrible thing ever ever (though the photos of various siamese twin creatures are a bit compelling (haha SIAMESE CAT!) )
RAT WITH TUSKS!
Jamaica Inn = Authentic Tourist Trap = alright by me.
― Tim (Tim), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 11:39 (twenty years ago) link
cornish hamlets have nice names: HATT and GANG were two
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 11:43 (twenty years ago) link
it means ant! I suppose tourists do swarm.
― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 11:48 (twenty years ago) link
― Tim (Tim), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 11:54 (twenty years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 12:01 (twenty years ago) link
― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 12:46 (twenty years ago) link
― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 12:51 (twenty years ago) link
― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 12:59 (twenty years ago) link
(oh btw tico tico, ptee and starry, dutch for woodlice = because of the smell)
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 13:01 (twenty years ago) link
Riding through Hackney on a no. 56 bus this evening I heard a man of about 60 telling his friend about his holiday. The holiday cost him 'ninety paand' and if you go to a nightclub in Newquay and miss the last bus it's 'ten paand' for a 3-mile cab ride. Something else cost him 'thirty six paand' but I couldn't catch what it was.
― David (David), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 22:45 (twenty years ago) link
― Matt (Matt), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 00:12 (twenty years ago) link
Anyway, revive, I'm going to Cornwall again THIS FRIDAY so let's talk about it and you can all recommend me fun things to do in and around St.Ives.
(Yes I know there was a bit of discussion on the places on the British coast holiday thread, but this is specific KERNOW thread so suggest specific Cornish fun pls.)
― Karen D. Tregaskin, Monday, 20 September 2010 14:25 (thirteen years ago) link
Anyone recommend a cottage to rent in Cornwall? For 2 people.
― djh, Wednesday, 2 February 2011 20:17 (thirteen years ago) link
.
― djh, Thursday, 10 February 2011 19:14 (thirteen years ago) link
Have used Classic Cottages a few times for Cornwall and the West Country. They're a little pricier than some other holiday letting companies, but the standard has always been dead good.
― seminal fuiud (NickB), Thursday, 10 February 2011 21:25 (thirteen years ago) link
I need to read this thread properly but looking for Cornwall recommendations: places to go, restaurants, pubs etc. Will be based in Hayle, just outside of St Ives.
― djh, Sunday, 8 May 2011 15:56 (twelve years ago) link
Hayle kinda sucks tbh (altho the nearby beach by The Towans is good), maybe try to spend as much as time as you can in St Ives re the above stuff
― Let me help you with your URL problems (blueski), Sunday, 8 May 2011 16:34 (twelve years ago) link
Thanks Bluski. Any particular St Ives recommendations? A good pub crawl for instance?
― djh, Tuesday, 10 May 2011 20:59 (twelve years ago) link
The Sloop and The Castle (the Sloop has the views, only place on the waterfront where drinking is allowed, but The Castle has the beer selection) and if you can walk the 6 mile trail (only 4 miles if you can find the secret overground shortcut) to Zennor, you've well deserved a pint at the Tinner's Arms.
I have to heartily recommend Spinacio's, even if you're not vegetarian, it's just plain amazing food. (Had a table of meat-eaters sat next to me exclaiming over amazing it was.) I found Porthmeor cafe to be the best, though Porthminster gets all the good review. (I'm sure Sick Mouthy will second that suggestion, too.)
― Karin Treijer-Gaskersson (Karen D. Tregaskin), Tuesday, 10 May 2011 21:04 (twelve years ago) link
St Ives - Zennor: a recommended walk?
― djh, Tuesday, 10 May 2011 21:12 (twelve years ago) link
It's not my absolute all time favourite Cornish country walk (that would be Mousehole to Lamorna which is just incomparably beautiful, esp if you time it to arrive at Lamorna just at sunset over the creamy-yellow harbour walls, and walk back over the ridge in the gloaming, I get shivers just thinking about it) but it's definitely top five.
The coast path St Ives to Zennor is quite hard going in some places, esp near the end where you have to clamber over some quite huge boulders, and it's very up and down (most of that 6 miles is vertical) but it is so so so v v v pretty and completely worth it, Burthallen and Tregerthen just such amazing almost tropical turquoise coves, D.H. Lawrence was not kidding when he talked about peacock coloured Atlantic.
There is also a bus back from Zennor if the walk kills you dead, like it did the first time I did it (the open topped 300, which is also worth taking all the way around the coast to St Just and Lands End and round to Penzance and back to St Ives, all wiggly-windy roads and sea views to lose your breath, though bring a jumper it gets cold up on the high carns.)
If you're interested (which you're probably not but I'm just gonna put this out there anyway) I forgot my camera the last time I was in St. Ives so I ended up sketching landmarks instead, there's lots of suggestions of interesting things to see and do in this set of sketchies, Zennor and Tregerthen and St Ives are all in there:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/masonicboomk8/sets/72157625669311648/
― Karin Treijer-Gaskersson (Karen D. Tregaskin), Wednesday, 11 May 2011 09:13 (twelve years ago) link
These are gorgeous! I for one am glad you forgot your camera.
The St Ives to Zennor walk is definitely recommended. St Ives is a great place to stay, especially if you like art (Hepworth museum and Tate are both well worth visiting).
― rener, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 10:01 (twelve years ago) link
I agree, that whole set is eye-candy, Kate!
Can't wait for some Cornwall walking myself.
― Whiney G makes me wanna smoke crack (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 11 May 2011 11:09 (twelve years ago) link
I feel like I am derailing the thread by adding my wuv for those KTG pictures, but they are too good to go unpraised.
When Rener and I were in St. Ives we liked the one pub that is in the Camra guide. It had an endearing "serious drinkers only" ambience in the front (and young people jumping around to music in the back). I will try and find its name and post it here.
― The New Dirty Vicar, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 12:00 (twelve years ago) link
you should make sure also to have plenty of cream teas, so that you do not waste away after your long walks.
― The New Dirty Vicar, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 12:01 (twelve years ago) link
Would buy all those pictures as a set of postcards and send them to all my friends and relatives, who would phone up and say "when were you in Cornwall?" and I would go "uh, I wasn't, but, is it not pretty?"
― russ conway's game of life (a passing spacecadet), Wednesday, 11 May 2011 12:10 (twelve years ago) link
If Kate's not sitting right now in a shop in Cornwall selling those, then she's not being a millionaire by next week.
― Mark G, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 13:03 (twelve years ago) link
yarp.
― The New Dirty Vicar, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 13:04 (twelve years ago) link
Beautiful sketches, feel like I want to see those landmarks and buildings IRL now.
― Bill A, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 13:08 (twelve years ago) link
Thank you everyone for saying such nice things about my sketchies, that's a bit overwhelming. :)
I actually have quite mixed feelings about St. Ives and in particular its "arts scene" which probably make me feel a bit precious. It is a very pretty town, pretty to the point of being twee and sometimes a bit cloying. But especially the kind of cottage (fnar) industry surrounding the whole "move to St Ives and paint the sea" ~lifestyle~ - I dunno, there's some very good art that has come out of St Ives in the past. But there's also a LOT of phenomenally *bad* art (badly executed art, overly mawkish "K-mart Art", match-the-sofa art) floating around the town *everywhere* which makes me kind of hate the place.
There are these sort of... glassed-in booths in buildings just off the seafront, and all around Downlong, which are combination studio/shop spaces and there's something just so desperate about them. Like these artists in cages, like performing animals, painting the same picture over and over and over, and you can see that it's probably not because they are obsessed with that image but because that's what sells.
Not that there's anything wrong with creating art to sell, but because they look so *unhappy*, or maybe I'm projecting because that situation would make me so unhappy, but it's this commodification of this dream which starts with "escape the ratrace" and ends with a glass cage in an art supermarket where you perform for the tourists. (And yes, I recognise the self loathing implicit in my ph34r.)
So I'm glad that you all like them, but the idea of sitting in a shop in Cornwall selling them as postcards fills me with utter abject terror.
So what I like best about St Ives is actually the ability to run like hell and be out of it in about 15 minutes, and up in the hills and miles away from "Artists", even as I'm sketching. I didn't really understand the amount of anger and loathing in Sven Berlin's Dark Monarch until I spent some time there, and then completely understood his wish to blow the place up.
Feel bad now because I do not want to put DJH off hir holiday, and I'm sure they will have a lovely time because it is very very beautiful. But this is why, when people say "you should set up shop and sell yr..." (as lots of people, not just on ILX, have said) I run screaming with my hands over my ears because I see those glass artist cages.
― Karin Treijer-Gaskersson (Karen D. Tregaskin), Wednesday, 11 May 2011 13:34 (twelve years ago) link
(I wasn't being serious, you know, it was more my way of saying "they are that good")
Yes, I have seen those oldish blokes with beard/strawhat/pipe, doing nowt but making sure nobody nicks the art...
We have been pondering visiting CWall for a weekend... Hmm, there's a bank holiday coming up.
― Mark G, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 13:43 (twelve years ago) link
No, I know, and thank you. But there are, f'rinstance, ppl in mine own family that say that kind of thing FOR REALS like I am squandering some giant opportunity and pointing at the glass artcages as we walk by saying "YOU SHOULD TOTALLY DO THAT" with the implication that I am stupid or selfish or petty for refusing their brilliant idea.
― Karin Treijer-Gaskersson (Karen D. Tregaskin), Wednesday, 11 May 2011 13:48 (twelve years ago) link
Shaun Ryder made a comment one time about "the things that you love, start to own you"
― Mark G, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 13:51 (twelve years ago) link
when I was in St. Ives there was some local musicians playing (or maybe a lifeboat choir, it does not matter) on in front of the harbour. People were standing and listening. Two young ladies who had been drinking alcohol came by and stopped because one of them wanted to listen to the music. Her friend wanted to keep talking drunkenly. Another woman who was listening to the music asked her to be quiet, whereupon she threw a wobbler about how tourist scum had no place saying anything to locals (before her friend hustled her away). A few minutes later the friend (the one who liked the music) came back and hugged the woman who had asked the angry drunken woman to be quiet; she was rather overcome by the experience.
― The New Dirty Vicar, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 16:09 (twelve years ago) link
Trying to remember the Cornish language bookstore people like
There's a great bookshop in Falmouth called Beermoth (iirc) that has a bar and sells wonderful Cornish beer.
― fetter, Wednesday, 21 February 2024 09:26 (two months ago) link
For coastal walks I can recommend Fowey > Polpero, finishing off at the Three Pilchards Inn for fish and chips and cider. It's a pretty tough up-and-down walk but with beautiful views.
If you really want to push the boat out, go to Burgh Island Hotel for a night or two, it's full-on 20s Art Deco opulence. Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" was set on a fictionalised version of the island. You get there on a Sea Tractor and there's a pub owned by the hotel on the island.
― Critique of the Goth Programme (Neil S), Wednesday, 21 February 2024 09:41 (two months ago) link
My only advice is not to bother with Land's End, one of the most disappointing tourist spots in the world.
― This is Dance Anthems, have some respect (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 21 February 2024 09:45 (two months ago) link
do not trust satnavs if driving near Polperro, speaking from experience
― Colonel Poo, Wednesday, 21 February 2024 09:48 (two months ago) link
Tim - if I'm driving down the m5 and want to make it just past Exeter before stopping for dinner with kids early on a Friday evening, is there anywhere you'd recommend that's not too far of a detour? pretty much any pub with food and room to stretch legs...
― kinder, Wednesday, 21 February 2024 10:18 (two months ago) link
Sennen and Gwynver beaches are gorgeous - particularly out of season. There are loads along the north coast that are beautiful though - Harlyn, Holywell, Constantine, Porthcothan.
I'm not mad on the ley lines bollocks either but there's something about West Penwith. You can stand on headlands or alongside menhirs and look at 3000 years of history where little has changed. Not many places left like that in England.
― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Wednesday, 21 February 2024 10:36 (two months ago) link
Kinder - would I be right in thinking you’re planning to go north around Dartmoor rather than south? If so the Old Thatch at Cheriton Bishop was alright the last time I went, which was probably 20 years ago now. These days I rarely make it west of the river Exe, mostly for special occasions like seeing Mark S and his UXBs. I’ll ask around a bit, see if friends or colleagues know any gems.
― Tim, Wednesday, 21 February 2024 14:55 (two months ago) link
Recommendations from a local friend with kids: If you’re taking the southern route (ie A38 towards Plymouth) the Ley Arms at Kenn. If the northern (ie A30 skirting Okehampton) the Huntsman Inn at Ide. I haven’t been to either but can advise that Ide is pronounced to rhyme with deed rather than died (the latter is how I pronounced it for many years).
― Tim, Wednesday, 21 February 2024 22:34 (two months ago) link
thank you! yeah it'll be northern!
― kinder, Thursday, 22 February 2024 10:29 (two months ago) link
I’m told by other friends that the bit of the M5 near Exeter (esp the roundabout at Sowton) can get absurdly congested round about close of play on Friday nights FYI. I couldn’t say whether their definition of absurd congestion and my London-centric ones are the same.
― Tim, Thursday, 22 February 2024 12:09 (two months ago) link
Urgh, thanks....
― kinder, Friday, 23 February 2024 10:00 (two months ago) link