Dinner date with lovely weather

A couple of months ago, popped over to Cornwall, when I pit stopped in London for a long time. (Popped over, meaning taking the 8 hour overnight train from London to St Ives. It is the best way to do it, in my opinion.) Cornwall is pretty spread out, so it takes a couple of days to explore and eat. Cornish food is probably some of the best in the United Kingdom. Almost everything is near the coast, which means seafood is plentiful, there are tons of free roaming cows and dairy products are excellent and all things point to a generally tasty time.



What I usually did was ate a ridiculous breakfast at the bed and breakfast and went off out of St Ives for the day, walked and saw gardens and beaches and came back for dinner. On the last evening, I got back to St Ives and climbed over the hill to the other beach (there is a beach at the St Ives train station as well as on the other side of the town), and had dinner at the Porthmeor Cafe Bar.

Cornwall as a little bit of a surreal time. Especially since there was excellent weather. Grumpy warned me not to bring any shorts because I wouldn't need them and to bring a woolly sweater (jumper?) It was so hot, that I had to stretch the summer portion of my bag so thin, and got a sunburn on top of that. The locals said that this sort of weather was unheard of, but I was none the wiser, meandering through tiny cobbled streets on the way to the train station early early in the morning, with seagulls screeching intermittently overhead. The roads are so windy and little and the town was so small I didn't bother with a map. In the 4 1/2 days I was there, I didn't manage to pin down a route to or from the train station. Inevitably I'd slip into another road and I'd go off on a walking tangent.



This was about a 5 minute walk down a steep incline from my bed and breakfast, and maybe a 10 slow uphill struggle from the cafe back up. My favourite thing to drink while I was there was elderflower cordial/water/juice/soda.



I had some ricotta fritters and some turbot with potatoes that were scrrrrumptious, curled up with a Cornish food magazine that used some matte paper stock and had a large fish on the cover and watched crazy people swim in the ocean. God it was cold water. Then, before attempting to drag myself up the REALLLY STEEP HILL back to a HOT SHOWER, I came across a mini Stone Henge on the beach:

Cornish Cows, Cream and Ice Cream

I was going to write a post about London, but after watching the Eden Project DVD that I forgot that I had, I was eager to post about Cornwall. I went to Cornwall about a month ago, newly recovered from a monstrous illness that made me sleep 18 hours a day, or approximately 3 whole days out of 5. Determined to get better before I left, I took a load of antibiotics. If I was a cow, I would've thumbed my nose at me and refused to consume any of my dairy products or meat. Hell, I'd even consider my saliva toxic. But what can I say – I love human antibiotics when consumed responsibly and I don't plan to be eaten by any organically conscious carnivorous meatatarians on a blood thirsty food trail.



This is the standard postcard and painter's view of St Ives, a hilly little town by the sea. I decided this was going to be home base and found a B&B on the hill. Check out the view! This was just one of the windows of my room. There were 5 in my room.



I know England is the home of B&Bs, but I've had some pretty amazing B&B experiences in America. I stayed at Tregony Guesthouse and they offered either the full English breakfast with two kinds of bacon and more food you could stomach, or a healthier smoked haddock and poached egg. Either breakfasts come with cereal, fruit, yogurt, juice, toast, jam and coffee. Enough to push me over the edge if it wasn't for the absurdly steep hills with handrails to climb.

Anyway, I wanted to get to Porthcurno. The bus stop in St Ives is nondescript. The roads are so narrow, it's doubtful that a big bus could pass through them. Candice warned that buses were infrequent and things were difficult to get to in Cornwall if you didn't have a car and it was really a place where 2 or 3 days didn't cut it. No biggie, I had a bunch of time. So on the first day, and the most beautiful cloudless day, I decided to go to the hardest place to get to. No trains went there so it was alllllll bus. When I finally talked to the bus station manager, who rolled into work at 9.35, he told me that the best way to get there was to take service 300 all the way around. St Ives is on the top right corner of this crappy webcam screenshot map and Porthcurno is at the bottom, 1 stop past Lands End.



Jeepers.

When I boarded the first bus of out St Ives, I asked the driver what time we'd get there. And he said well, it was 9:45 now, and we'd get there at about 12:15. I balked. Then hesitated. Then I probably made a face. "But it's a LOVELY ride!" sigh. I paid the £6.50 and hopped on, thankful that I was still groggy from the overnight train ride into Cornwall and wasn't aware that the return ride was also another 2 1/2 hours.



It was probably the most beautiful bus ride I'd been on. It was open top and I roasted to a crisp on a cloudless day as we drove by fields and coastline. One of the first places we drove past was Zennor, which is between St Ives and St Just where Moo-Maid ice cream is from.



Actually, there is a legend about a mermaid of Zennor. But who cares about mermaids when you can eat some MOOMAID ICE CREAM? Especially when the ice cream comes from happy cows such as these:



This is how all cows should live, but big industrial agribusiness says NOT. So make sure all your beef and ice cream is grass fed, y'all.



Indeed, nobody can resist a moomaid! Unless you are unfortunately lactose intolerant.....or is that reallllly a deterrent?

On another day, I went to Trebah Gardens. Apart from a very nice garden map, giant rhubarb taller than you, some fresh fish and some Roskillys ice cream at the award winning cafe, I wasn't that impressed. It was rated one of the best gardens for children and since I'm easily entertained, a garden good for children is usually good for me. However, apart from a couple of kiddy signs and playgrounds, there wasn't anything every entertaining about it. Double disappointment, especially since I'd taken 3 trains and walked a mile to the bus terminal only to find out that the bus information was wrong and I'd missed my bus and the next bus was in an hour. I was fuming. I took a cab and when I arrived there, I told the concierge flatly that there was misinformation on the website and for an organization that prided itself on being green, encouraged sustainability and strongly suggested green travel, they made it AWFULLY hard to get there by foot and public transportation. I'm not that into gardens, but I'm into food. Flowers couldn't really make up for it. Only some Roskilly's Cornish Clotted Cream Ice Cream could.



Could you NOT be happy after this unless you had clotted arteries???



Look, happy bunnies!

Ice cream is all over the place in Cornwall. When I was so grumpy at Trebah, I made up for it with 3 ice creams. I had an extremely chocolatey one in Falmouth, the Roskilly's at the Garden and some Moomaid when I got back to St Ives. Good thing ice cream scoops in England are small. I also had some Kelly's clotted Cream ice cream in Porthcurno, but that was pretty unspectacular.

The Eden Project's ice cream was something to shout about though. I had 2 scoops of honeycomb and 1 scoop of ginger with the loose change I had left in my backpack.



This is an ice cream place under a verrrry cute cafe in St Ives, about 5 minutes from my B&B. What I'd like to know is...what is the Hokey Pokey flavour....