King Arthur and on the road again

On this cold but clear morning, we left Truro early and headed for Tintagel Castle en route to Bath. I suspect Google Maps got us a good one again, taking us down some of the narrowest lanes yet! One even had a warning sign that it was narrow (that's the first one we've seen. If they did that for the just butt-clenchingly narrow lanes, that would be a lot of signs! This one was special.). Our message to Ed Sheeran is that driving at 90 down those country lanes to get to the castle on the hill is quite irresponsible. (Adrian tried but only got to 60mph)

After some tense moments, we arrived in the small yet touristy village of Tintagel. We were early again (we win at being the first people to get to places, what do we care about opening times!). We had a bacon and egg bloomer bread (i.e., sandwich) in the King Arthur's Arms Inn, the first place we found open.

With an hour before the castle opened, we headed down the steep hill to the beach and bided our time looking at the spectacular view on a fresh but sunny morning before climbing up a lot of stairs to the castle entrance.

According to Wikipedia "The castle has a long association with legends related to King Arthur. This was first recorded in the 12th century when Geoffrey of Monmouth described Tintagel as the place of King Arthur's conception." A medieval castle was built on the site in the 13th century although it has been a citadel since about the 6th century.

The castle is mostly in ruins now but the highlight is the statue titled Gallos (c. 2015), which represents "the use of the site as a summer residence for the kings of the sub-Roman state of Dumnonia as well as the Arthurian legend." Gallos is Cornish for "power". The statue and the spectacular views are worth the trip to Tintagel (and clambering up and down all the steep hills and stairs to get to it) although we also hit the jackpot (again) with the weather.

The rest of the drive was uneventful, and we spent the afternoon getting our bearings in the beautiful City of Bath.Read more