Friday March 20 – Rinsey to Porthleven

The Cornish air is a natural remedy for anyone with sleep apnea, so needless to say for someone who doesn’t suffer from the inability to sleep, we have been sleeping well…very well…and long. In what was left of the morning, Stephen took us to the picturesque village of Perranuthnoe, east of Penzance, and Marazion. Here one of the local draft stores “Perranuthnoe Village Crafts” has Stephen’s paintings on display for sale. He is very talented and paints Cornish scenes for sale as pictures as well as cards. He is also an avid gardner and grows competition level vegetables and flowers. By trade, he is a pharmacist. We are so lucky to be staying with someone who is as knowledgeable as Stephen about history, and life in general. Camille is no slough either. She has won, and placed in, many photographic competitions in Cornwall and other parts of England.

We drove down the coast to another pretty coastal village called Rinsey, parked the car, and headed out along the coastal path towards Porthleven. This was a 3 ¾ mile walk up and down the cliff path; around rocky caves a hundred and fifty feet above the sea, through kissing gates, over stiles, and along the side of Cornish hedges (i.e. stone walls). The views were stunning looking out over the ocean and the rocky coves. In the late 1800s Cornwall was a tin and copper mining area – mainly in the north. However when Bolivia and Malaya started mining using cheaper labour and easier mining methods, the mining industry in Cornwall started to die. By 1939 most mines in Cornwall closed up although there was a brief resurgence during the war years. On our walk, we passed the remnants of two mines, Trewavas and Wheal Prosper. We also saw a fabulous rock formation called the Bishop at Camel Rock and passed the Beacon Crag guesthouse perched on the side of the cliff and silhouetted in the bright sun.

Porthleven is another charming town with a well protected harbour, and we sat outside a pub at picnic tables on the cobbled streets to eat lunch. Our walk was about 4 hours, and with an hour walking around Porthleven it was late in the day when we got back home. In the evening we went to the Sand Bar in Praa Sands for dinner, a beautifully located beach bar on the ocean front.