The answer of course was 1 - I was going to St. Ives.
Today I was that man, but actually there were 4 of us going to St. Ives, or maybe 9 if we counted everybody on the train. We didn't meet a man with 7 wives, but we did get a heck of a deal on the train - round trip for 4 adults was 11 pounds and 20 pence ($23)....not bad for a day out.
The plan was to do a loop walk from St. Ives to Carbis Bay and back, but it did not really work out that way....I downloaded a free Cornwall Walks app, and then paid to download the directions for the walk that we were going to do. The location of the starting point was impossible to find - the map in the app had no street names, and Google Maps did not show the parking lot named in the app. @@#$#%%&*
So instead we walked the coastal path from St. Ives to Carbis Bay and then on to Lelant, by which time the rain was coming down in sheets, and so we sheltered in St. Uny's church until the squall passed through. With no coffee shop in sight, we ate a snack in the church foyer (with birds nesting above us) and then headed back to St. Ives.
At Carbis Bay we stopped at a fancy restaurant on the beach for a coffee, and the lattes were almost worth the price. But it was warm and dry in the restaurant, and so we nursed our drinks.
We arrived back in St. Ives around 1 pm and it seemed that every man and his brother was there. I would hate to see it on a sunny August day.
St. Ives is very popular with art lovers, who come to visit the Tate Gallery and the 500+ other galleries that seem to fill almost every available storefront in town. There was some very good work, and not overly expensive, but too awkward to carry home.
The town itself is built on the leeward side of a promontory, with a nice calm sandy beach. How would you like to do a jigsaw puzzle of the picture below? A very similar 1000 piece puzzle is available.
We wandered along the seafront street, which was mainly restaurants, cafes & ice cream stores, and then through the artsy area, to the windward side of the promontory, where the sea (and the temperature) was very different, as it was a very windy day. Why would the family in the picture below put up screens to block the wind, when they could just move to the leeward beach?....must be English I guess.
From here we walked through the non-artsy area which sold mainly touristy items, including the liqueur shown in the photograph below. I didn't dare try it for fear of what it would do to me, and thought that Marlene might take offence if I suggested that she try it, so we moved on to other stores.
Our train journey back to St. Ives was uneventful, especially because yours truly remembered that we had to change trains at St. Erth.
After a dinner of leftover Indian takeaways, we booked tickets for an outdoor play on Thursday afternoon, which should be a lot of fun - The Rise and Fall of Magbeth, supposedly how Shakespeare would have written about Margaret Thatcher. No plans yet for tomorrow, so we will have to figure that out over breakfast in the morning.
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