Day Ten – Tuesday, 22 March 2012

Marazion – Mousehole – St Ives – Padstow

Temperature – 17 degrees and overcast

Accommodation – Penjolly Guesthouse, Padstow

Our accommodation was a lovely B&B on the main road through Marazion and we would have stayed another night however the inn was full!  For the first time I tried kippers for breakfast and it was very enjoyable.  We took one more look around Marazion and saw tourists lined up on the causeway waiting for the water to subside.

The kipper was smoked locally...5kms down the road.

It was a day of touring beautiful harbour towns on the Cornish coast.  Mousehole is only a short driving distance from Marazion and was the smallest village we visited today.  It is still and active fishing port with safe harbour walls housing many small boats.  We wandered the tiny cobbled streets and came across the house where Dolly Pentreath passed away in 1777 at the age of 105.  She was the last person to speak Cornish fluently.  A famous portrait of her is exhibited at St Michael’s Mount.

The beautiful harbour village of Mousehole.

After an hour or so enjoying this little village we drove onto St Ives which is a much larger and busier harbour town. After parking on the hill we had a short walk to the centre.  We couldn’t pass Madeleine’s teahouse situated in an old house a street back from the harbour.  The window displayed amazing home-made cakes and the window had two pages to choose from including Victoria sponges, ginger smudge cake, and teacakes.  We had to choose the scones with jam and clotted cream as we couldn’t leave this part of the world without doing that!  The cream is incredibly thick and with two scones each it certainly filled us!

Yes....tide is still out just up the road!  St Ives.

You have to admire British optimism!

There are many many galleries in St Ives and it is touted as the art capital of the area.  We spent some time walking the streets and generally enjoying this lovely town.  The harbour was empty of water and is much bigger than Mousehole.

It was then onto Padstow where we quickly sorted our accommodation for the night (a very luxurious guesthouse just out of town) and went to the carpark for the walk down the hill.  Padstow is a very busy tourist town made especially famous by Rick Stein who had several eating houses including a café, patisserie, fish and chip outlet and world class restaurant.  We settled on a pub meal of mussels, hamburger and curry! 

Delighful and busy Padstow!

All up it was a lovely day of exploring these delightful harbour towns.