Cornwall

We just returned from a fabulous week's holiday in Cornwall. What a gorgeous and unique part of England!

Cornwall is England's southernmost county and therefore is its warmest and sunniest. The winters are relatively mild and snow is rare. My kind of place! It is located on the peninsula at the southwestern tip of England and is bordered to the north by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the English Channel and to the east by the county of Devon. As with Florida, you don't just 'drive through' Cornwall. You have to make a special effort to get there. And to make it even more difficult to reach - there are no motorways! Perfect.

Apparently some 30% of the landscape in Cornwall is national recognized and protected as 'Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.' Once you visit the place, you can see why. Cornwall has more ancient monuments than any other county in Great Britain, with over 11,000 listed buildings, houses, churches, mines and castles.

Most of the interior landscape is made up of patchwork fields divided by heath and stone hedges and full of heathland, moorland, yellow gorse, and cattle and sheep (and horses). I read somewhere that there are as many registered sheep living in Cornwall as there are people. Reminds me of New Zealand. Most of the driving is along small two-lane 'B' roads which take you through tiny villages with centuries-old stone cottages, barns, pubs and churches.

Cornwall's northern coastline is made up mostly of impressive rocky cliffs, thanks to the winds blowing off the Atlantic. The south coast, also known as 'the riviera', is a bit milder. There are loads of harbours and beaches located all along both coastlines. The tidal changes pretty much dictate life here though. When the tides are in, all of the harbours of full of water and boats can freely come and go. But when the tide is out, no one goes anywhere, as the harbours are completely empty of water leaving all the boats sitting on top of the sand. It's wild. Likewise, when the tides are out, sandy beaches that weren't there before suddenly appear. Where we stayed in Hayle, there was hardly any beach when the tide was in, but when the tide went out we had 3 miles of wide sandy beach to enjoy.

Cornwall is also full of footpaths for walkers to enjoy the scenery. You can get just about anywhere by foot. In fact, the South West Coast Path runs a whopping 630 miles around the southwestern coast from Minehead (north of Cornwall) to Poole Harbour in Dorset along the south coast.

Old deserted tin mines also mark a lot of the Cornish landscape. These tin mines used to be a huge part of the Cornish economy, although the last mine in Cornwall (and last working tin mine in Europe) closed in 1998. The closure ended a 3000-year history of mining. In the 1800s, Cornwall mined HALF of the world's tin. But this all collapsed when mines that were nearer the surface and easier to excavate were located in places like Australia, South Africa and South America. Cornwall just couldn't compete - even though tin is still quite plentiful in Cornwall. What you generally see still standing are the tall chimney stacks and walls that formed the old engine houses used to anchor the mine engines to the ground and protect them from the elements. Some of these mines contained up to 12 miles of underground workings that descended 1000 feet or more.

These days, food and drink and tourism form Cornwall's biggest industries. The Cornish pasty alone is worth £150 million to the economy. Pasties were originally created for Cornish miners as way of feeding them a hearty and easy meal while there were working in the mines. They are basically meat and veggie meals cooked in a pastry crust with a crimped edge for holding the pasty while eating. You normally get them filled with steak, potato and turnips. They are definitely tasty and filling and weigh a TON.

Cornish clotted cream is another big thing and is used to form local specialities such as Cornish fudge and Cornish ice cream. We were lucky to find a shop in Hayle (called Mr B's) selling home-made Cornish ice cream. It was heavenly.

I could go on and on about what makes Cornwall so unique. Suffice it to say that we love it enough to want to retire here. That has now become our next goal.