Nellie Windmill

In my last blog post I introduced you to the lovely Daniel and Shakti who graced us with their presence for a whole week! Turns out we did in fact get up to quite a bit and couldn’t quite fit all that goodness into one blog post. So without further ado, I present the rest of our week:

Bedruthan Steps

We were all quite keen to take in a bit of the dramatic Cornish coastline on a walk. On the advice of our Lonely Planet book “Walking in Britain”, we headed to the Bedruthan Steps. In what was to become our pattern we rocked up sometime in the late afternoon, decided it was lunch time, or dinner… “dunch”? and proceeded to make toasted sandwiches. I can imagine this would be rather infuriating behaviour for most travellers but as previously mentioned we’re all quite similar and weren’t in any hurry. We probably managed to take in about 0.3% of the walk described in Lonely Planet but it was a spectacular 0.3% so we were pretty chuffed.

It was lunch time for this little guy too:

We plotted to push Shakti over the cliff:

…and failed:

I did my usual “take macro shots of tiny little details that take my fancy” thing and left the grand panoramic vistas to Mike:

It’s a fairly crappy photo but I just love this round mound of earth covered in little flower-type things:

Mike and I felt like we’d been transported back to Ireland when we rounded a corner and took in this cliff-top blanketed in the very same flowers that bedecked many an Irish landscape.

St Ives

We hadn’t actually planned on visiting St Ives — a very popular tourist destination in Cornwall — but the next walk we decided on doing happened to begin there. At this stage in our travels we don’t get excited about places just because they’re popular. Everything’s relative and I suspect its popularity amongst the Vitamin D deficient Brits is due in large part to its sand beach – not exactly a drawcard for someone who didn’t even know there were anything other than sand beaches until relatively recently and grew up in a fishing town on the “90 mile beach” in Victoria, Australia. I’m sure the Brits would find the things I get excited about equally amusing — wonky buildings, thatched-roof cottages and pretty much anything older than 200 years.

We sat and ate overpriced but very nummy chips overlooking the harbour at low tide. We watched as a very cheeky seagull stole a whole pasty out of a plastic bag, then fought over it with much fuss — whilst the owners of said pasty were completely obliviously chatting a metre away. It occurred to us all a bit belatedly that we probably should’ve shouted down a warning.

A group of young English guys sat down next to us and proceeded to make fun of the Cornish accent — it’s so fun being able to understand the natives again! When we were first back in England we were doing some grocery shopping and I was overhearing all sorts of private conversations — I felt like I was eavesdropping and I wondered how they could just talk about all of this personal stuff with everyone around being about to hear and understand every word!

Daniel wanted to watch the tide come in which, despite its rapidity, I thought was not dissimilar from watching paint dry so Mike and I took a walk to photograph the boats on the beach:

Once again, around late afternoon we headed off on our coastal walk — which, of course, we only actually managed a minute fraction of.

Earlier I’d inadvertently sparked a debate about the meaning of life, the universe and everything when I commented on the way bees prefer the hexagon to every other shape for it’s innate sturdiness is the type of thing that makes people believe in intelligent design. We ended up spending the entirety of the hike with each duo trying to come to grips with the others’ spiritual (or lack thereof) beliefs and grappling with new and different concepts. One thing that struck me about the conversation –in hindsight — was how much it reminded me of a similar conversation I had with a Christian girl a few years ago. She asked me questions about how I explained the meaning of life, the universe, and everything without a religion or spirituality. My answer then and still is that I don’t feel the need to have an answer to those questions and even if I did I wouldn’t expect to get one, which is just fine by me. She found this a rather unsatisfying response. I think it’s hard for spiritual people to comprehend that lack of need – like a fish imagining life out of the water.

As you can imagine the debate got pretty lively and toes may have been stepped on but at the end of the day I don’t really mind what anyone believes in (in fact I’m kind of jealous of those who believe in nature spirits and angels- they’re just plain cool), as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone — an addendum which of course means that there are quite a few religious groups out there that I do indeed take issue with.

Guys, thank you for being so open to talk about your spiritual beliefs with a couple of sceptical godless heathens!

On the way back through town I spotted these gorgeous ceramics by Karen Shapley and proceeded to imagine them adorning my future kitchen:

They make me want to take up ceramics!

Daniel and Shakti’s bus back to London was at the uncivilised hour of 5:45am so we attempted to get an early night and stumbled out of bed around 5am to drop them off at the train station. Now we have two more precious little hooks back in Melbourne tugging at our home-body heart strings. I wonder when our Melbourne-based hooks will reach critical mass and we’ll pack up and go home?

This past week has been one of the highlights of our entire trip. We didn’t see any grand sites or explore any exotic locations. We spent a leisurely week with the lovely Daniel and Shakti. Daniel’s an old friend of Mike’s — they went to primary and high school together — and he visited with his charming partner Shakti, who we took an instant liking to.

This was our third-or-so attempt at meeting up — we originally thought we’d meet in Italy and visit the Alps together, but we couldn’t make the timing work with our visas. Another couple of plans later – one involving Greece, another France – we’d found one that would work.

We had booked a nearby site that would serve as our base for the week, a mere ten minute drive from the site we’d been staying at for the last few months. It was bleak — mouldering caravan on one side of the tiny square of grass that was the site, bounded by a heap of rubble and a decrepit portable on the other side which we suspected was the bathroom. I could smell the musty, mouldy interiors just looking at them. The site was infested with rabbits. Usually I find rabbits cute. Turns out, when they congregate en masse they begin to take on a decidedly vermin air. As we sat contemplating bringing our friends back to this depressing wasteland for their weeklong get-away in the Cornish countryside, Mike, ever the optimist, immediately called up the other site that was our first choice, but which was originally booked out. We were thrilled to find that they’d had some cancellations. We sped out of there, hoping no one had seen us come, freak out, and go.

Our second attempt was much more successful — the site was one of the nicest we’d seen and near-deserted, the owners friendly, and we got the best spot in the whole place, amongst a few birch trees with a view over rolling hills and verdant crops.

We drove out at midnight, along the dark roads, peering through tendrils of mist, and found Daniel and Shakti at the nearby Rudruth train station. We stayed up until about 3 or 4 catching up after our 2 and a bit year separation. Mike found it remarkable to think it had been that long and that it was like no time had passed at all.

Over the course of the week we all commented on how nice it was to travel with people we have so much in common with. We are all night owls, happily staying up until 3am and getting up at 12pm. We’d all eagerly anticipate the next meal even before the one we’d be in the middle of was done. Most importantly, we’re all about the slow travel and they had no intention of doing a whirlwind tour of Cornwall to cram in as much as possible. We went for walks, weather permitting, through the little country lanes:

…and picked blackberries, which Daniel and Shakti had big plans for — homemade jam and chutney!

We indulged in the products of their culinary genius (Daniel and Shakti have both served stints as cooks at an ashram near New York). We eagerly took notes on their creation and learnt how to make chai tea, jam, chutney, vegetable soup, chipatis (except, it turns out what we thought was flour that we bought in Italy was tapioca starch — such is the result of the permanent bewilderment we experience while on the road) and Thai red curry, which had always turned out as slightly red water every time we tried to make it. They even made things that we’ve both been cooking for years that tasted like I was eating them for the first time – pasta with a Napoli sauce, burritos, scrambled eggs with creme fraiche and cheese and an Indian style curry.

We played canasta on rainy days, much to Daniel’s delight.

Some canasta butt was gleefully kicked.

Although some gloated more than others:

On the rare nights we weren’t up until all hours cooking, eating and talking we watched movies (aptly, the foodie movie “Julie & Julia”) and Flight of the Concords episodes.

There was at least one night of shenanigans. Much to our delight Daniel and Shakti proved to be very cheap drunks. This — apparently — is “The Chipmunk”:

The Chipmunk with props:

Too much Chipmunk:

My thorough enjoyment of this week reminds me of the Clare Bowditch song, “Between the Tea and the Toast”, which goes:

“Of all the days we’ve ever had, it’s these quiet days that leave me satisfied the most. When our holy ghosts have room to dance between the tea and the toast”.

We are quite the paradox. Two home-bodies travelling the world. I mentioned this to Shakti and an idea for a painting, maybe even a children’s book, was born: “Snavelling Trails” – a journey by snail.

Amongst all of this we somehow still managed to find the time to see some beautiful Cornish sites. Our first excursion was to the beautiful Kennall Vale Mills; the site of an old gunpowder mill that was shut down in 1914 and has been reclaimed by the woods around it. The walk takes about an hour; we took around four, taking lots of pictures and leisurely ambling along.

I like how they look like intrepid explorers in this photo. I think they’re tracking the movements of a rare and endangered species of frog in a remote forest somewhere exotic:

I came across some colourful autumnal leaves in a little pool of water being fed by a constant stream of little waterfalls and rivulets running down a stone wall. I collected a few and spent a good long while getting splashed by said waterfall as I arranged the leaves for photos.

I felt like a little kid exploring the forest. I sacrificed a couple of the leaves for a ‘leaf floating down the stream’ shot and we all got in on the action with me on leaf drop, Mike on camera 1, Shakti on leaf rescue and Daniel on camera 2. Good job team.

I wonder how many people have the best time in a faraway land when they’re just hanging out with kindred spirits and taking it slow – is there anything better?