Category: England (Page 2 of 2)

We started out this morning by visiting Clovelly. A cute weird little seaside village that doesn’t have cars. The cobblestone streets are only like 6-7ft wide in most spots and it was so amazing to imagine living someplace seaside like that with no car alarms, no tires, squeally brakes…. I think they’re doing something right here! Except that the entire town is owned by one person who rents spaces for houses and businesses. I’m not sure how exactly a single person ends up owning an entire town and charging visitors admission to enter the town… But never the less, it was cool. Would have been infinitely cooler if it wasn’t pouring down rain making the stone path so slippery we were all worried we were going to end up rolling down into town.

   

               

  

  

    

  

 After Clovelly, we drove through Morwenstow…there was a 3 mile hike here along the jagged coastline but again….rain, cold and self-diagnosed bronchitis…I decided I’d better not. Although from what I’ve read- so many ships used to get wrecked on these rocks and the rocks were so jagged that the townspeople would find pieces of limbs among the rocks. There was an old graveyard here though and good view of the coast from afar.

  

   

 Our next stop was St. Nectin’s Glen. A remote waterfall that flows through a rock. It was over a mile hike each way in the freezing rain so we nominated the geologist. 🙂 I kinda wish I wasn’t so sick because the pictures looked so cool… And there as a money tree along the trail! I’ve been searching for a money tree all week! The local legend is that if you hammer a coin into the tree, it will cure illness and anyone who removes a coin will be struck with the illness. (You know these trees could never exist in the US, some methhead would pull every coin out and try to scrap the metal or something haha)

   

        

    

  

 Next was the town of Tintagel, the home of King Arthur’s castle. But when we got to town, it was so touristy we decided it wasn’t worth it. Lol we did spot the Castle Hotel that said that you had to try the “Cornish Cappucino Delux” so we stopped to try it. Turns out it was a fancy tea room and we have a not so fancy two year old 🙂 they didn’t have “take away” cups, so no Delux Cappucino. lol however, there were beautiful views around the back and you could see the castle ruins without paying the admission and without dealing with steps or tourists. Yay!

   

         

We then headed all the way out to the southern most tip of England to Penzance. If I didn’t have to drive in it, I would think these little seaside towns were amazing but they were all built before cars and not redesigned since. 

   

 

This was not a one way street, by the way

  

 We visited the Minack Theatre- an open air theatre sitting right on the edge of the island. I can’t imagine seeing a Shakespeare play or something here…

The water was so turquoise…unexpected with the climate they were having. 

     

                     

 

The plants at the theatre were very unique too

    

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

As we left on our way to St Ives (we did NOT meet a man with 7 wives) we could see St Michael’s mount off in the distance and the fog. We will be closer tomorrow, I hope to get better pictures.

  

St Ives from the top of the hill  

  

We then made our way to our hotel for the night. It was 5 floors up (no elevator) but we have an amazing view!

   

 

   

 

 

It has been brought to my attention that my sleepy typing has tons of grammatical and spelling errors. Lol I apologize. I always see how bad it is the next morning, too. If Kegan is still awake, he proofreads for me… But since he’s usually a loser, you get stuck deciphering my sleepy ramblings that look slightly like a drunk person. Haha

So.. I’m still pretty awake- let’s see how well I can do this evening. Haha 

We had a 2 floor penthouse apartment last night! Which sounds fancy but I swear was a cheap option. We stayed in downtown Liverpool in the Docklands. Lots of history here.

You can see the ‘Radio City 96.7’ tower in the distance. There used to be a Buck Rogers Space themed restaurant at the top in the 70s (I would have loved the cheesiness of that! Haha) but now is just an observation deck over the city.    

Our building last night  

We stayed in Wapping Quay

We walked past this coffee place this morning and Kegan thought it said “Cafe Nerd” – he said “hey! It’s your place!” Haha    

The docks in Liverpool were really important during their time. The design was revolutionary. Opened around 1850- This was the first time a ship could pull up right to the wharehouse and load/unload. Warehouse fires were always a huge risk because of the construction materials of the day using timbers. These warehouses were the first to use a stone construction. Also, before refrigeration, a lot of parishables like sugar or tea were hard to store and didn’t keep fresh very long due to the heat or humidity of warehouses. The open design and waterfront location made these warehouses perfect for storing parishables and basically all of the Far East trade items were stored and shipped from here.

         

  

  

  

  

  My new favorite vehicle ever. Lol

  

Even the coffee house inside of Albert Dock had the old warehouse elements preserved.   

 

  One of the oldest tall ships in the world. 

  

 

  The Beatles are from Liverpool so there is a big museum and attraction at the docks. We did think we had time to go because of a cool war museum but turns out we would have had time…

  

The candy store next door had a picture of The Beatles made out of jellybeans  

We drove across town and parked at the war museum. Under this building was a secret war bunker where the Atlantic defenses were planned during World War Two. They have a big map room (think life-sized game of Battleship) with giant open signs. And nothing on their website…and nothing visible from the $9 car park. Only to see a little note on the glass that they are closed for “circumstances outside their control”. I rang the buzzer and talked to some electrician who I couldn’t sweet talk into letting me in. Lol bummer.   

So, anyway- I pirated a picture of the map room from their website- I’ll pretend I paid for the rights to use it since I did pay them $9 to park in their parking lot for no reason 🙂 

On the road again. Next stop: Birmingham. And not Alabama. This Birmingham is old. Like, they’ve found 8000 year old tools sort of old.. But in present day, it was England’s 2nd city and its trade center. The canal network ran goods all across England. It was a gorgeous downtown city.

  

  We were looking for lunch when we arrived and found a street food market has just opened up that day in the square for Easter holiday festivities.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  A coffee shop on a boat. Brilliant!

  

  

  

  

  

“Enjoy Bank’s Fine Ales at the Merchant Stores completely unspoilt by progress”

  

  

  

We saw the first bit of stereotypical English countryside as we left Birmingham.   

  

  

  

  

   

  

We sat in traffic on the interstate for over an hour and therefore we were late getting to Tinturn Abbey by 15 minutes and they were closed. Still think I got a few good photos but I REALLY wanted to go inside…

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

We picked up a few groceries in South Wales on our way to the hotel at an ASDA. (Which it says is “part of the WalMart family”) 

I heard once and always remembered for some reason that the Welsh were like the inbred hillbillies of England- and after going in the ASDA I might have to agree! It was like we walked straight into Alabama. Fat people in wheelchairs, Mohawks and mullets, cut off shirts…I’m not sure if I can stereotype Wales based on a trip to WalMart though… I mean.. Would you want to be stereotyped based on WalMart here? 😉

But…they did have a McDonalds- so Norah got a little slice of America tonight for dinner….and sometimes a little familiarity is all you need.