Sightseeing in a Sandstorm – Cornwall Day 2

For our second day in Cornwall, we decided to venture as far west as we could go.  The goal was to catch the sunset at Land’s End – which we were there for.  However, a giant cloud decided to roll in right as the sun was setting which made for a less than spectacular sunset.  But even though we had a slightly disappointing end to the day – everything leading up to the end was amazing.

We started our day in Marazion on the southern coast at St. Michael’s Mount.  St. Michael’s Mount is built on an island just off the coast.  But at low tide, you can walk across the causeway to get to the island.  We arrived just before they were scheduled to close the causeway – only to find out that the castle and gardens were closed for the day due to high winds.  As in 45 mph winds with gusts at higher speeds.  That meant that the ferryboats would be unable to run once the causeway closed and we’d be trapped on the island until the next low tide 9 hours later.

That was a bit disappointing, but we were able to get some good photos and had a good laugh as we were blown across the beach.

I even took a short video of the sand blowing across the beach just to show you how crazy it really was.

Since we had paid to park, we decided to walk around the town a bit to explore.  And then we walked down the beach to watch the kite and wind surfers in action.  Rough day to be a tourist – great day to be a wind surfer.  

From here, we crossed to the north side of the coast (just 20-30 minutes away) to the town of St. Ives (along with every other tourist in Cornwall).  We made about 5 attempts at finding a parking spot in the various car parks around town before we finally found one at the rugby club.

And first things first – I stopped to get my first souvenir of the trip.

45 mphs winds make for excellent hairdos.

Then we stopped to pick up lunch – a traditional Cornish pasty from Pengenna Pasties.  Cornish pasties are so well known that they are now ‘protected’ and only pasties made in Cornwall can be called ‘Cornish Pasties’.  If it’s not made in Cornwall – it’s just a pasty. 

The sun was shining, so we decided to head down to the water to stop and have lunch (there’s no seating in the shop). 

And then we set off to explore.  We spent most of our time watching and listening to the waves crash against the rocks.  The great thing about 45 mph winds is that it makes for great waves.  

The waves were so strong that Luke got taken by surprise and ended up with very wet feet. 

Between St. Ives and Land’s End is an area called Penwith Heritage Coast.  Along this part of the coast are numerous old mines – mainly tin but other things as well.  They have fallen out of use and most are ruins – but they make for some striking images.  And after watching Poldark (see previous post) we were in awe. 

We pulled off at the Levant Mine and parked and then walked south along the coast to take photos.  Before we parked, Luke had started getting a bit grumpy – which was understandable.  We had already done quite a bit that day, he was still tired from the race and he now had wet feet.  But as soon as we started walking along the cliffs and we could feel the salt in the wind from the waves crashing against the rocks, his energy levels peaked and he was like a kid in a candy store.  This was exactly what he wanted to see during our trip.  And this made me really happy.

If you look really closely you can find Luke in this photo.

 The power of the wind and the waves was amazing.  And the coastline was breathtaking. 

And even along the coast, the fields are divided by rock walls.  Rock walls that have been there so long that the plants and grasses are reclaiming them.

And once we were thoroughly windblown, we headed back to the car to drive on to Land’s End.  We took a few shots before we decided that the sunset was a bust and headed off for dinner.

All in all – it made for a wonderfully exhausting day.  And all are places that we’d love to go back and explore more at a future date.  Hopefully we’ll be here long enough to do just that.

Love you & miss you,

Aubs, Luke & Luther

Southwest England - Cornwall Day 1

Luke and I were asked to travel to the southwest of England to represent Tyndale House at a conference happening in Somerset.  We were honored to be asked and jumped at the opportunity to explore a bit of that part of the country.  Cornwall was definitely on our list of places to go and since we were going to be so close, we decided to tack on a couple of days to the beginning of our trip to see what we could find.  I booked a private room through Airbnb with a single woman who owns a home in Golant.  It was - as always - fantastic and we were made to feel right at home.

We decided to take our first day in Cornwall easy because Luke had rowed the Head of the River Race the day before and was completely knackered (translation: exhausted).  There's lots of hiking to be done and lots of water sports to be had (yes - even in early spring), but we decided to start the day with one of our favourite things - a castle.  

Restormel Castle is managed by English Heritage which means that we can visit for free as members of Historic Scotland.  And it is one of the most unique castles we've visited.  It's ROUND!  And had a moat.

From there we decided to head to the coast and the city of Charlestown.  A few weeks ago, we told someone at church that we would be away to Cornwall for Easter and she asked if we had seen the new BBC drama Poldark.  We hadn't so of course we watched it later that week.  It is a remake of a series that was done in the 70's based on a book series.  It is set in Cornwall and takes place just after the American Revolution.  I would definitely recommend it.

Charlestown is a port town and hasn't changed a lot in a really long time.  Some of the filming is actually done in Charlestown.  After our day exploring, we went back to the house and watched the previous night's episode and saw places where we had just walked.  Pretty neat experience.

The town isn't very big so we covered it in record time but found a nice pub for lunch and had our first of many ice cream cones.

From there we headed east a bit to the town of Fowey.

And of course we had to stop for a cream tea to refuel.

Traditional Cornish Cream Tea - Jam First! 

Chocolate Cream Tea - with Nutella

 So that's what 'taking it easy' apparently means for us.  Definitely still a full day.  But it was a really good day.

Lots more to come so keep an eye out!

Love you & miss you!
Aubs, Luke & Luther

7 Kilometres of Hell - #HORR2015

Hughes Hall M1
Bruce, Andrew, Luke, Salvator, Han Wei, Pavel, Jason, JP and Jen

The Head of the River Race is one of the biggest rowing races in the UK.  7 kilometers along the Thames Tideway between Mortlake and Putney.  It is the same course the Oxford/Cambridge teams will row later in April.  This year 345 crews took part.

Luke and his crew from Hughes Hall have been training rather intensely since the end of February in preparation for this race.  They were on the water 4-5 times per week (sometimes twice a day) and in the gym on the ergo machines at least 3 nights a week.

In Cambridge it's hard to row 7k.  Most of the races on the River Cam are 2k or shorter.  And rowing on the Tideway is very different from our narrow little river.  There were hopes that they would be able to do a practice run in the morning before the race.  Unfortunately that didn't happen - but they did great anyway.

The past two years the race has been cancelled due to poor conditions.  And again, this year the conditions were less than ideal - 20-25mph winds with gusts at higher speeds, rain, cold, choppy water.  But they went ahead with the race and (as far as I know) everyone made it through safely.

On Friday before the race, the guys dismantled the boat - taking off the riggers and the seats and separating the boat in half - in order to put it on the trailer.

We set off from Cambridge early on Sunday morning to head to Putney Town Boathouse on the southwest side of London.  Two of the guys rode with the Kings College boatman and the boat and once everyone arrived at the boathouse we went to the task of putting the boat back together.

One benefit of the River Cam is that you can stay dry during the process of getting the boat in and out of the water.  The Thames is not so nice and requires you to get into the water.  I would recommend a pair of wellies because the river is not so clean.

Where the guys put the boat in was right near the start of the race, so they didn't have far to go - at first.  So once they were in the boat and their boots were taken back up to the trestles, I set off for Hammersmith Bridge where I could watch them as they came under at the 4.5k point.

The Hughes boat was number 291 of 345 - so it took them a while to come through.  Fortunately JP's girlfriend lives in London and came down to watch as well so we were able to keep each other company.  We waited in the wind and rain for a couple of hours.  We were miserable - but not as miserable as the guys who were sitting in the boat all that time just waiting until they could start.  But, we got to watch lots of boats come through.

City of Cambridge Rowing Club M2 Boat

And I got to see our friend Pete Gurry on his way back up the river after his crew was finished.

And then the guys finally came past.  I cheered loud - although I'm not sure that they heard me.  And I was able to get at least one good photo.

The tough thing about rowing as a spectator sport is that you only see a very small segment of the race.  So I wasn't able to see them finish.  Instead, Kate and I started our 5k walk back to the Putney Town Boathouse so that we would be there when the guys got back.  Yep - that's right - once they finished their all out 7k race, they had to row 7k - against the wind and the current - back to the boathouse.  Poor guys.  Fortunately Luke had made chocolate chip cookies the day before while I was rowing so they had a treat waiting for them when they got back.

And then it was time to get the boat out of the water and take it apart again so that it could go back to Cambridge.  Fortunately that didn't take too long and we rewarded ourselves with a nice meal.

Overall - amazing experience - but really tough.  Here's to hoping that next year's conditions will be much better!

Love you and miss you!
Aubs, Luke & Luther

Running for Grammy - Kew Gardens 10k

Last Sunday, Luke and I ran our first race - a 10k at Kew Gardens. I sort of took up running while we were living in Scotland but pretty much stopped after we moved to Cambridge.  At the beginning of the summer, I decided it was time to pick it up again and asked Luke if he'd run with me.  He said yes but told me that he needed a goal.  So I went online and started looking for races that we could participate in.  The Kew Gardens 10k met what we needed.  It was about 3 months away which would give us adequate time to train, it was relatively close and 10k seemed like a good starting race with a little bit of challenge mixed in.

My grammy has Alzheimer's and I've known that if I were to run a race that it would be to raise money for Alzheimer's for a long time.  And so we signed up with the Alzheimer's Society.  You can read our story on my fundraising page: https://www.justgiving.com/Aubree-Wisley/.  We even got cool running tops.  And I didn't think about it when I was ironing on our names, but it was so nice because the volunteers could cheer us on by name as we passed by.  It's the little things, right?

We used the Women's Health 10k Training Plan and were able to stick pretty close to the schedule.  Our time scale was a bit longer than this one so we repeated the middle weeks a couple times.

Because the race started early on Sunday, we went down to London on Saturday afternoon and rented a room via Airbnb in Chiswick.  We really liked the area and hope to go back and explore more.

We woke up early on Sunday and walked to the tube station to go the three stops to Kew Gardens.  You can see our sleepy faces in the picture above.

The day was beautiful - perfect running weather.  Blue skies, cool start to the day.

Kew Gardens was also great because it the scenery was beautiful. For some reason the view makes a huge difference when we're running.

Somehow we started off near the front of the hundreds of other runners.  That didn't last long though.  How someone runs at that pace for 6.2 miles I will never understand.  Oh well.

My goal was to run it in under an hour.  And we did!  53 minutes 16 seconds.

And the feeling you have when you finish is amazing!  Totally wasn't expecting that.

At the end of the race, we picked up all of our post race treats - which included your standard British post-race necessity:

However, we opted for ice cream as it was still only 10am.  The beer made a great accompaniment to our dinner that evening.

Overall, we really enjoyed the experience and would like to do another race in the near future.  I'll keep you updated.

There is still time to donate if you'd like.  Just click on the link: https://www.justgiving.com/Aubree-Wisley/.  And it doesn't matter which side of the pond you are on.  They've figured all that out for you already.

Love & miss you,
Aubs, Luke & Luther