thirtysomething...

Finally made it over to St Ives this last weekend. Also finally rented a car & drove around South-West England. That was an experience of itself, having never driven on the left side of the road from the right side of the car and shifting with my left hand. Especially in the Dartmoor Forest. Most of the roads in the Moor were quite narrow. About a lane & a half wide with cars going both directions. Luckily we didn't come across too many people coming the opposite direction. There were places where you would have to back up quite a ways to let someone pass. Now imagine doing that for 30 or so miles with 8 foot hedges on either side of the road. I know why American drivers are Teh Suck in Formula One. We have straight roads in the US. There are no straight roads in the UK. Zero. Nada. Zip. Everything is a curve. Especially in the Moor. I connote it to driving the Tail of the Dragon (US 129 in NC & TN) or driving on track. Constantly looking ahead. Constantly driving the line. The only difference being there Are blind driveways & roads that spring up and the ever present threat of livestock on the road. And they won't move if you honk at them. The "A Roads" were fine. Quite like Hwy 17 in Coastal South Carolina. Didn't drive any "M Roads" which would be I-85 in the US.

I only got honked at once in a roundabout (cause this jackass was trying to fly up my ass) and only drove on the wrong side once, for about 50 feet. Oops. Put about 500 miles on the rental. It was a 5-speed Vauxhall Astra 1.4 Life 16V Estate (read: stationwagon). I did brush a few curbs with the left side tires on a few in-town curves and put the passenger side into a few hedges in the Moor (those roads are TINY!,) but no damage. :)

So yeah. Saturday morning we all piled onto the train at 7am to start our journey. A 4 hour ride to Exeter, switching trains & stations in London. Got into Exeter around 11 or so and picked up the car. From there the Adventure begins. Heather is in the back seat sporadically calling out directions and I'm doing my best to figure out driving in the UK while trying to comprehend what she's yelling from behind me. We head down to Dartmoor & drive through the Moor, stopping off in a tiny village that is reported to have the best scones and tea in all of Britain (I wasn't too impressed with the stuff.) From there we drove (read: got lost a few times) over to Tintagel where the Tintagel Castle is located. Reportedly the birthplace of King Arthur.

Tintagel was quite interesting. The island where the castle stood was quite beautiful. If you have any interest in the Arthur legend/myth, you should definitely walk the grounds. I positively felt transported back in time. Be prepared though, you'll think you're working out on a StairMaster for the entire visit. Unfortunately we did not have alot of time to spend at he Castle, we needed to be at the B&B by 7pm, and we were about an hour away.

Sunday we woke, ate a hot breakfast of sausage, egg, toast, and 2 rashers of bacon, then headed down to St. Austell to see The Eden Project. That place was very cool. HUGE, and I mean Gigantus greenhouses (read: Biomes) covered the property. One one side was the "Tropical" Biome and the other was the "Warm Climate" Biome with a restaurant/info area in-between the two areas. The main grounds of Eden Project, not in a Biome, were covered with plants of Britain. The whole "project" sits in the bottom of an old abandoned clay pit mine. The majority of the flora in the project were I guess what you could call "working plants", not just pretty flowers & whatnot. Rubber, cola, cocoa, banana trees & the like. Definitely a must see if you come to the UK. From there we drove over to Mount St. Michael. Same idea as Mont St. Michel in France, but not really executed as well as the French did. The tide was in and the weather wasn't permitting ferry transport, so we didn't actually get to expore the Mount. Hopped back in the car and ventured further down to St. Ives.

St. Ives rests around a natural harbour on the Atlantic side of England. Very close to Lands End. It's a quaint sea-side resort type village with a few pubs, lots of art galleries, and a few touristy type shops. I rather liked the place, but I imagine it could get very hectic during the "on-season". To me it felt like what Charleston could have been like 50 to 75 years ago. Not that I was there, but I just had that feeling.

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