Penwith in the rain

Today was a totally damp and miserable day, so it was obvious that today would be the busiest in terms of searching out the stones. We'd arranged to pick up Mikki's niece Kari to take her out to see the stones today, so we didn't have quite as early a start as normal, and I'd put together a very busy itinerary, but the weather meant some hard decisions had to be made - Bodrifty and Mulfra were cut immediately.

The first stop was a gentle introduction to Lanyon Quoit, and to check on the tadpoles I'd seen there yesterday. We then moved on to park up at the Men an Tol Studios. I've been wanting to visit the stone at Watch Croft for a while, and according to the maps, this was the best approach. It also allowed Kari to see the Men an Tol and Men Scryfa on the way.

The usual problem of cows in the field prevented a close up look at Men Scryfa, so as a consolation prize I pointed out the Four Parish stone before moving up towards Watch Croft. Unfortunately, the maps don't always give the full story, and the way was barred by barbed wire, and a fairly solid looking covering of gorse. So with the weather closing in, we returned to the car and moved on, out to the coast road, then in again to Woon Gumpus.

The walk up to Chun Quoit was uneventful apart from a cowing lowing loudly in an adjoining field, and we took a good look around Chun Castle at the summit. On the way back down, the noisy cow had moved into the field we had to cross, and we found out why she was so noisy. She was nudging a calf on the ground near the stile, and licking its face, but it was obviously sadly no longer with us. We'd not noticed the calf on the way up...

As the rain started again, we cut Tregeseal from the list, and headed into St Just for soup at the Cook Book, where I picked up a copy of The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth. I had downloaded the text from the Internet, but wanted a paper copy.

After lunch, a short drive took us first to Cape Cornwall (which was busy!), then down to Cot Valley and Porth Nanven. We then intended visiting Boscawen-Un, but the rain had set in quite hard, so we just took a tour round past Chapel Carn Brea, pointing out the stonehenge tribute at Treave, Tregiffian Barrow, Merry Maidens and the Pipers before dropping her back home at Carbis Bay.

A busy day, but not as many sites actually visited as planned.