"Oh My God" Is More Than an Expression...

St.Mawes

Lands End

Yesterday.  What can I say?!  It was quite an experience.  We escaped from the seaside town of St. Mawes where we felt like the "princess in the tower" and decided to give Cornwall's seaside one more chance!  So our plan was to go to Penzance (you've probably heard of the popular operetta "Pirates of Penzance"!) and then go to Lands End, the farthest west point of England and not to be confused with the store Lands End in Oregon, Wisconsin.  I was still hoping to experience fish and chips and/or Cornish pasties!  Well, we did drive to Penzance, but we had to drive through it so quickly I never did see if there were pirates and Bos was so worried about hitting people, cars, building, etc that we got almost no pictures!  So, next up, a group of stones in a ring, like Stonehenge, called "The Dancing Ladies."  Our trusty GPS Jill even knew where it was.  Except there was nothing there.  Oh well.  On to Lands End.  Which is an amusement park/shopping center.  Clever Brits!  Charged 5 pounds to park.  And what you could do was shop!  So---I saw a cafeteria that said they had fish and chips and pasties.  Lunch.  Burp. Not very good.  Great for a diet though!

It reminded me of something from my childhood in Wisconsin.  There were a lot of Cornish miners, from the tin mines in COrnwall, who transplanted themselves to the tin mines in Wisconsin.  And they took those Cornish pasties to work with them!  What are they?  Well, they are really greasy meat pies folded in half.  The Wisconsin Cornish families lived on "Shake Rag Street", where the wives would wave rags to let their husbands know it was time to come home.  Enough history lessons.  But more interesting than an amusement park in Cornwall.

The lower part of the sign says,
 "Not suitable For Motor Vehicles"
and led to a path through some
guy's barnyard.

So, escape # 2.  We took off for Dartmoor forest, where we were to stay in Manor House # 2 called Gidleigh Manor.  This was wayyyyy more exciting!!   Jill GPS all primed, we took off for a 2 hour drive that took us 4 hours!  Why, you ask??  In England, their roads were really cow paths that turned into roads.  And those cows were DRUNK!  They did not go in a straight path, but w.a.n.d.e.r.e.d all over the darn place.  And cows are not as wide as cars.  And English fences are made of big stones piled on big stones.  And covered with ivy and vegetation, to cleverly disguise themselves, so you don't KNOW they are STONE!! So, you know the beep-beep-beep your car does when you get too close to something?  Well, OUR car beeped continuously, all four hours long.  I felt like we could compose some kind of rock song using the beeps.

See the countryside?

Smaller road

The "wide" road.

Entering Chagford

Smaller still.

Leaving Chagford

If I were Queen of ENgland, I'd be ashamed that I could not create a better system of cow path/roads system than this! In America, in only 200 years, we have the interstate system.  And I don't know of any road with those sneaky ivy covered stone walls.  Yes, if I were Queen Elizabeth, I'd want to be Queen of America, not Englan .  And the worst part?? the Brits don't care.  They just "adjust" to the beeping, I guess!  Or maybe British cars turn off the beeping.  That could be!

Touch both walls!

Not quite a one car bridge!

How'd you like to meet a car?

So, with trusty Jill taking us down drunken cow paths one after another, me gasping and swearing alternately, praying we would not meet an oncoming vehicle (no, these are not one way cow paths!), we alternately hurtled and wandered, with me going ".5 miles and then turn right; .4 miles and then turn right; ,.1 miles and then turn right; 300,200,100 feet: " And Jill would say, "Recalculating" because somehow we had missed a turn -- or maybe there wasn't a turn.  We DID end up twice in a farmer's barnyard.  And we did meet 5 cars coming toward us , who were so polite (these are Brits, you understand, and the definition of Brit is polite!) that THEY backed up!  Only once, and it was a Jag, did we have to VERY CAREFULLY inch backward into the ivy stuff!

Gidleigh Park hotel at the end of the hair-
raising drive!

My observation was:  we had to be on the wrong road because "Noone in their right mind would ever build a hotel at the end of these cowpaths" -- except I was wrong.  They actually DID build a hotel at the end of several cowpaths. Maybe that is why there are only 24 rooms.  And we made it.  Yes, we did.  Only I am NOT LEAVING THE GROUNDS OF THIS HOTEL UNTIL WE CHECK OUT!!

Polite.  Yes, they are ALL polite.  Overly polite.  And formal. Overly formal. Can't get them to break down and lose that politeness. Or formalness.  Dinner last night.  First, you have cocktails in the drawing room, one of several drawing rooms.  It is there you order your dinner and, from an exhausting list of wines, a bottle for dinner.  (The first bottle we ordered, the only one we knew and from Nappa, the sommelier told us "had gotten tired" and recommended another from the same vinyard -- pretty formal, huh!) Then exactly half an hour after "cocktails", they come and lead you into one of 3 dining rooms.  There you sit in splendor, since the next couple will not come for 30 more minutes and on and on.  Dinner was luscious.  Beautifully "plated" and tasted just as good.  And I swear there are at least 5 staff members for each guest.  We are overwhelmed with polite, formal people!!!

Room with a VIEW!
 And a babbling brook to boot.

The stair thing is getting better!  We were back to third floor - 3 sets of stairs once more.  And today, with pleadings from Michelle travel agent, we are on the first floor in a room meant, it appears, for handicapped people (little low sinks, and handles all over!).  Oh well. I'm getting more and more handicapped.  I have a patio overlooking the grounds and, since I refuse to leave the grounds, good thing they are beautiful!!!

We are here for two more days.  Bet there are fun things to do if you take a car around, but to get out we have to hit the cowpaths again.  Not doing that.  So we will have to wonder what is out there in Devon.  Maybe our imagination is better than the actual thing!?!

 But what lies ahead in this Irvine adventure?  Isn't there a saying: "Life is what happens when you have other plans"?   And we still have dinner tonight....