April 29 Tintagel

We woke to rain and that persisted for the day. Gaye was starting to feel a bit better and I wasn't. We packed up and said our farewells to St Ives and headed back towards the A39 to get some supplies in Camden.

We then we headed off towards Port Isaac but a wrong turn getting back on to the A39 took us down a back farm goat track with stone walls and hedges brushing both mirrors for about 6 miles. With rain all the way we decided to give Port Isaac and Doc Martin a miss as I wasn't feeling up to the walk down from the carpark and back up again. We decided to carry on to Tintagel Castle and when we got there the rain had eased a bit but it was blowing a gale and freezing cold. Adopting the Billy Connelly saying of there being no such thing as bad weather just bad clothing we layered up and headed out.

The castle is reportedly the place where King Arthur was conceived thanks to a spell by Merlin who lived in a cave below the castle. The spell made Arthur's father look like the Duke of Cornwall to his wife the Duchess. Anyway long story short the bridge to the castle was closed and so we took a few photos bought a bottle of mead and caught a 4x4 shuttle back up the hill.

Google Maps is a brilliant piece of software except when you are in a large vehicle and it just wants to tell you the fastest route somewhere and where you can shop on the way. The way it selected to get to our campsite for the night might have been fast for Valentino Rossi on a motorbike but we were quickly down a road with hedges touching both mirrors and no way of returning. After half an hour of heated discussion and much abusing of Google we manged to turn around squeeze past a Ford Transit van in an area that 2 mobility scooters would struggle to get past and find our way back to where we started. Fastest route my arse. We then followed some B roads to the camp where we crashed for the night.

The photo of Merlin's cave is stolen from the internet. The one I took was blurred and clearly the weather was a lot better.Read more