Barbara's travels continue 2018

What a rare occasion it was to see the heavens open and a real downpour overnight. It was so cosy in our hotel bar, and despite the rain, it was still lovely to look out to sea. Next morning we were greeted with a wonderful sunrise and beautiful golden, shimmering waters past the lighthouse and castle.It was a great sendoff. We had a long day ahead of us to get back to London. Fortunately, nobody wanted to do the visit to Jamaica Inn pub, famous due to Daphne du Maurier's book, Jamaica Inn. This meant an hour was freed up to enable a flying visit to Glastonbury town, famous for its yearly festival, when 175,000 music lovers descend upon the area on the outskirts of this very new-age town.  The name of the first pub we passed echoed my thoughts about this pretty little L- shaped town, with almost every other shop selling incense, books of myths and magic and anything spiritual. Goodness knows how they all manage to earn a living. Perhaps they rely solely on their income during the

This was a day full of fabulous visits, starting with the very pretty fishing port of Boscastle on the north coast of Cornwall. It took some very very teeny tiny roads to get to it, but Samuel managed it, very quickly in fact! It is a very small village, but judging from the size of the car park, high season must be a horrific time to visit.  Sadly, the tide was out, but it was nevertheless extremely picturesque. The narrow entrance to the harbour must have been quite tricky in anything but the smallest of boats. It had been a smugglers' cove, but they would have certainly had to be skilful sailors. Having tried the left side of the river and finding myself on very uneven slopes, I turned and headed on to the other side, which quickly afforded me some magnificent views of the headland, and a path all to myself. Perfect! I loved this pretty cottage with its unique seat.  The next stop, only some minutes down the road was Tintagel Castle, Kastel Dintagel. This truly dramatic site da

As England shut down once again, this time for the funeral of Her Majesty, we took the ferry back to Portsmouth, once again with perfect sailing conditions, and made our way to Winchester where Trudi and I were leaving our nice wee group with driver Dan, who was fantastic, to meet our next group with driver Samuel.  We got to Winchester Cathedral just as the funeral service had ended. What a pity. It would have been wonderful to sing along with the hymns in the funeral in one of the largest and grandest cathedrals in England. Anyway, it was still a deeply moving time to watch the procession, and to cast an eye upwards at the remarkably tall pillars of this amazing place. What a masterpiece of construction so many hundreds of years ago.  The experience with Samuel as driver was certainly not the same as with Dan, who was calm, careful and precise in every manoeuvre. Things didn't start well with a rather disrespectful comment about The Queen. You can have your own ideas about the mo