The Beginning And End

After a lovely breakfast, we set off from the home of my relatives at the extremely late hour of 10:00 AM, aiming for the southwestern tip of England.  We decided not to use the motorway both ways, but to explore a bit on the way, and hurry back again by the motorway.

So, off we went, through Dartmoor National Park.  The inspiration for Wuthering Heights and The Hound of the Baskervilles, I expected this area to be very bleak and forbidding, but at first, it was simply another corner of rural England.

The area was crossed by many single lane roads with "Passing Places", and we had some fun negotiating our way across.  And as we climbed up higher, we began to see the bleak terrain that causes escaped prisoners to knock on the door of Dartmoor Prison, and ask to be taken back in.

It doesn't look too bad, but try to picture this on a misty winter's day, with every third step being deep into unexpected boggy terrain, and you begin to think differently.

Remember, these pictures were taken on a warm, summer's day, after all!

Exiting Dartmoor, we stopped for a BLT in Yelvington, then on across the River Tamar at Portsmouth Plymouth.  We were aiming for the southernmost place in mainland Britain, having visited Dunnet Head (the  northernmost) only days before.

And here it is, the Lizard lighthouse, where we were charged £4 to park!  But we took a few photos of the lighthouse, and some of the treacherous rocks that were the scene of many maritime disasters.

It is in these waters that the Royal National Lifeboat Institution carried out their biggest rescue in their history, at a time when the lifeboats were powered by oars, and had to be rowed out to the scene of the shipwreck and back again, time and again, for hours on end. In the middle of a terrible storm.

Coming away from there, I spotted an unusual "Gate Guard" at an RAF base:

I'm struggling to identify it, but I think it's one of Britain's first jet fighters, produced immediately after the end of WW-II.  From the shape of the fin, I'd say it was a de Havilland, but so far, I can't quite place it.

Anyway, off to Lands End, where they charged me a scandalous £6 for parking, and smugly told me that the parking ticket entitled me to return as often as I liked, for the next seven days.  WTF would anyone want to go back twice?  Far less seven days in a row?

The place was a terrible tourist trap.  They had a haunted house fer gossake! What was that doing there?  And it was packed with 1,000 tourists!  Well, actually 1,002 tourists...

But we bypassed all that, and went to look out at the landscape (or seascape).

And I am pleased that they agree with John O' Groats as to the distance between them!

It was getting late by then, so we bought a couple of Cornish Pasties (my Mum used to make them, and I'm interested to compare) and hopped on the motorway for a mad dash back to my cousin's home for the night.  No photos -- my camera battery died, and the motorway isn't interesting anyway.

After a 350+ mile round trip, we were back home again by 8:30PM with the sun still in the sky.  This is our latest finish so far, but today was also our latest start.

So a fine dinner, some conversation, and bed!

Wednesday, 20th September: Editing to add that I have finally discovered the identity of the gate-guard aircraft mentioned above.  It is a Hawker Sea Hawk, not a de Havilland as I originally thought.  This is an appropriate gate-guard for HMS Sea Hawk, the naval establishment at RNAS Culdrose, and was placed on duty in 1958, making it the longest serving gate-guard in the Britain.