Taking a bus instead of driving is definitely easier on us but not on the bus drivers. We took a bus to Penzance, expecting it to travel on the main route. Instead, it rather quickly cut off on a “white” road to a small town. The road brought back a lot of scary memories. We couldn’t believe a bus--a double-decker, no less--would be routed on a one-lane road. But instead of treating it as an error and turning around, the driver kept taking on more challenges, including a 16% grade downhill into Penzance (where we saw not a single pirate, by the way, despite what the souvenir stores would have us believe). From there we changed to another bus for a short trip along the coast to Marazion, where we could walk at low tide to St Michael’s Mount, one more of the National Trust properties--not to be confused with its twin, Mont St Michel, across the channel in France.
This is fairy tale stuff: At low tide a cobbled causeway is discovered, leading to an island, where a tiny village lies at the foot of a hill, in the shadow of the gloomy castle. Part of the fortress is still lived in, while the rest is open to the public. The grounds are so well kept and beautiful that there is a separate charge for walking through the gardens.
We spent the better part of the day there before walking back--well before the tide was due to come back in--and then bused back to Penzance. We did note that there was ample parking for motorhomes along the waterfront, but we were glad to have Rover safely parked in a campground.
Penzance is a little tired-looking town that spills down a cliffside to the harbor. We walked around a bit before taking the bus back on the same one-lane route. This time we had a more careful (timid?) driver, but it was still exciting, including two bus stops on the way up the 16%-grade hill as we left Penzance. On a blind corner we also met a tractor, pulling a wagon, that took some very careful maneuvering to pass. We could have reached out and grabbed hay out of the wagon.
On Saturday we woke up to strong winds and heavy gray skies. We had been expecting bad weather to catch up to us at some point, and Daphne du Maurier had prepared Susan for lashing rains on the Cornish moors--and buffeting winds, too...don’t forget them--so we bundled up and took yet another bus to St Just and Sennon Cove. These turned out to be two too-tiny towns along the coast with not much to see other than a couple of local art galleries and lots of stone buildings. The surf was up in Sennon Cove, where there is a wonderful wide sand beach, and several brave wet-suited souls were out in the water.
We had hot crab bisque for lunch to warm us and then headed back to do some much-needed laundry. There has been no rain yet, but the wind is howling so hard around Rover that we dare not hang laundry out to dry. Instead, reluctantly, we have paid £2 (about $3.30) for two cycles in the campground’s dryer.
We have decided a couple of things. So far we have traveled 933 miles in 34 days: an average of 27 miles per day. At this rate we will be lucky to get to Scotland. So we have decided we will not take a ferry to Ireland or try to get to the northern coast of Scotland. We have some long drives planned in the next couple of weeks--on motorways--to get us further north.
We are also aware of how content we are to just be here--no wishing we were close to coming home. Maybe the wonderful weather so far has had something to do with that feeling. We are cozy and happy in our 160 square feet with everything we need. We listen to the BBC and have had enough decent internet connections to stay in touch and do our banking. Unlike our experience on the Continent, we haven’t needed to buy a single International Herald Tribune. And knowing the language probably has a bigger effect on our comfort level than we realize. We have traveled safely and have stayed healthy. And while the money seems to be flowing out faster than ever, we are still blessed to be here doing what we love to do.
Which reminds us . . .
A friend told us he was surprised that we kept making these trips to Europe because “your blog entries are so full of problems”...or words to that effect.
It made us wonder whether we were accurately conveying our experiences. In the end, we decided two things contributed to what our friend had sensed.
First, our aim in writing this blog--besides assuring our children we are still alive--is to encourage American RVers to consider doing what we’re doing and to alert them to what they might be letting themselves in for if they do. (The answer, we hope, is “Nothing you can’t handle if you plan ahead and if at least one person in your travel group is an optimist.”)
So we don’t blog much about the wonderful things we’re seeing: our readers can Google thousands of examples of that sort of thing. Instead, we write about roads into campgrounds and dumping black water and the cost of gasoline (and also the absence, at least so far, of Sta-Bil in English stores). Of necessity, then, we also write, perhaps disproportionately, about horrible roads (and how we’ve determined to avoid them in the future), losing tires on autostradas (but also about kind Austrian couples who go out of their way to help us), and the relative im- (or unim-) portance of making reservations at campgrounds (unim- on the Continent, very im- in England during Bank or School Holidays).
This may make for a certain tone to many of the entries.
There’s also this:
A couple of days ago, having discovered that the Land’s End about which we’d formed such romantic images was, in fact, not a hardy fishing community clinging to windswept cliffs but instead merely a couple of ordinary gift shops and seedy carnival rides, we sat waiting for the bus to take us back to our campground. “Or we could walk to the next town and meet it there,” suggested Susan. “Why?” asked David: “The bus will be here in 20 minutes.” “I don’t like doing nothing,” she said.
Indeed: she really really doesn’t. Neither does he (although not as much as she doesn’t). So instead of spending hours sitting in chairs by the RV like many of the people we see in campgrounds, we tend to fill the time by doing things.
Not that we are avid adventurers--there’s no danger of Rover ending up at the tip of South America, like some RVers we’ve read about--but our experiences (and therefore our blog entries) will probably reflect a bit of exertion, sometimes discomfort . . . and, very occasionally, outright disaster.
But at least we’re not often bored.