The car drive from Dorset is frantic with traffic in all directions even early in the morning…changeover day in Devon and Cornwall! Lunch was a salady business and then the lure of the Swordfish becomes too much and we head on for a pint or two and maybe some tunes on the juke box. We feel like locals (almost) and chat to one or two. Another old boy makes some great music selections…we are all very predictable! Newlyn is a great place in so many ways. We have lots of fond memories and good times in a gutsy working harbour, but with enough of the creature comforts necessary for effete southerner yachties. We don’t think we would stand up to the hearty souls who fish for a living or who race their gigs around here…
We had heard about Cornish fishermen selling quotas to Spanish and French boats last year, but now there is a big sign on the ice plant and several boat…”NO FISHING SELL OUT” with a big map of ‘our’ territorial waters. Hmmm…but we don’t express our views too loudly!
Dinner in the Red Lion is always memorable, but it also has on display a curious book entitled Salt of the Earth, which seems to be about local women and what they do to various stuff which their husbands bring home. The picture on the front reminds us of pictures we saw in scotland of the herring Gutters!
Sunday is not a day to sail to the Scillies so we have a leisurely morning admiring some Turnstones who have decided the pontoon is a cosy spot…they are very cute.
We take a walk along the coast to Mousehole and encounter some very strange graffiti and wonder idly what Banksy was doing down here…
We also pass some clifftop garden which are also curious and wonder, not for the first time about what goes on in these parts…
Rather more soberingly, it also takes us past the old Penlee lifeboat station with its memorial to the 1981 disaster when it went to the rescue of the Union Star. Eight lifeboat men died together with 8 Union Star crew. The old station is closed now and the modern boat is moored in Newlyn. A salutary lesson about the sea and what the lifeboat crews are prepared to put themselves through.
Mousehole is touristy now, but nonetheless very quaint and attractive.
Lunch in the 2 Fore Street restaurant is fantastic and is has a great courtyard garden…
and we then heave ourselves back to Newlyn in time to do a last minute shop and take in a movie at the Cinema.
heydays346 