Spring Holiday Part Two - Boscastle & Tintagel

 We started off our first full day with a visit to the very pleasant town of Boscastle. If you're a similar age to me, and went to school in the UK, you'll remember the name of Boscastle and memories of the terrifying flood, that we learnt about in geography lessons, will come flooding back (excuse the pun). Heavy rains in August 2004 flooded the village, which sits in a steep sided valley. The amount of rain was extraordinary, and made worse by the so called brown willy effect (I assure you, that's no joke). The river became a raging torrent, washing cars out to sea, demolishing buildings & houses, and over 150 people were airlifted to safety. How no one died in the event is perhaps the most incredible thing, the emergency services were mobilised quickly and evacuated everyone. 

A view of the river now, with the improved embankments to help mitigate further flooding.

It took several years for Boscastle to be rebuilt, and many further construction projects were developed to prevent it from happening again. It's hard to believe such a calamity could have occurred here, now it's a sleepy but cute town with many tourists coming to visit.

What I really liked was the way a lot of the drainage systems had been built to blend in with the local architecture & the landscape, like this overflow channel with it's lovingly built stone exit with greenery.

We walked down alongside the river to the harbour, where several fishing boats were moored. This end of town was rather quiet, and we quite enjoyed the calm walk together. 

    Here you can see one of the harbour walls, built in 1584 to create a more sheltered harbour for fishing vessels. It looks a little out of place here, but let me tell you, it's quite needed! The waves coming in even on a calm day like when we visited were strong & the sound of them crashing down on the rocks was very noticeable.

We had a nice little clamber about on the rocks, where you can see several cut out area's that we thought were perhaps ruins of houses or warehouses. You had to be careful through, they were wet and slippery and occasionally we got splashed by a bigger wave! 

And here's James looking out over the harbour melancholically, although he says he was just cold and damp! We headed back into Boscastle, enjoyed a cup of tea at one of the little tearooms, before heading onto Tintagel.

We arrived at Tintagel, got parked up and then walked up to visit the castle, to discover it was closed as the bridge was receiving conservation work. That was a bit annoying, but our fault for not checking. If you've never heard of Tintagel before, it's supposedly the place when King Arthur was conceived.

These two seagulls are enjoying the view!

What we do know about Tintagel Castle, is the fact that it was first settled by the Romans, as evidenced by excavations that have discovered coins & other artefacts, indicating some sort of settlement or fort here, although the exact location of which has not yet been discovered. A castle was built in 1233, of which you can see the ruins dotted about. 

Part of one of the walls of the castle as you enter the site. 

We are planning to go back at some point and try and visit the castle properly. Quite when that will be is anyone's guess. Maybe next summer, or the summer after. The problem is there's too many places I want to visit! Maybe I need a lottery win then I can spend forever travelling and exploring. If you know of any good numbers to try that have been lucky for you, let me know in the comments! 

We did explore the inlet a little more, there's a staircase that leads you down to the water's edge, and it's really rather beautiful there, I wish the pictures did it more justice! 

  

It's a mixture of sand & stone on the beach, and I discovered very quickly that the new trainers I had on were not as waterproof as I thought they would be! But I nimbly tried to dart across the stones, although failing miserably when I put one foot on a particularly slippery rock and went up to my knee in the water. Never mind I guess, it's all part of the experience. I also got the other foot wet trying to beat a wave to get a picture of the carved face of Merlin in the rock. I got the picture, took a moment to admire the carving as the wave rolled in, making sure both of my feet were sodden!

Back in Tintagel Village, we had a little look around the Old Post Office, a National Trust property which is a 1300's house, which then became the post office for Tintagel in the Victorian Era. It's kept in this era, although you can see much of the history of the building as you wander through. It's by no means a must visit destination, but if you're in Tintagel, it's worth popping in and looking around. It's got a lovely feel to it, a very cosy & homely place. You can probably imagine it's not the most accessible, with narrow doorways and a very steep staircase. Entry is from £8.80, but as always if you're a NT member, entry is free. 

A view of the back of the house. It does have this look that it's about to collapse, with the bits and pieces added on over time and two bulky buttresses added on. There's a nice little garden too, which even had a couple of early tulips coming up! 

Our final stop of the day was Widemouth Bay. This was somewhere James had wanted to visit again, he had previously been here and taken some brilliant photos. He'd brought his big Nikon camera (a professional camera as I like to call it) and got more amazing shots. I was using the camera on my phone (a Samsung, but I can't give you any other detail than that), but I still managed to get some nice ones.

We were the only ones on the beach except a chap in the distance with his dog, and having the place to ourselves was lovely, despite the fact it had started to rain and the winds had picked up. But it created this fun sort of slightly out of focus effect on sights a distance away from us which gave it a sort of ethereal vibe.

Same with this one, although here the beach was more sand and a lot softer. Luckily I'd changed into my army boots in the car so I wasn't going to get wet feet again!

Here's some of the rockpools and little water channels that run along the beach on the rocks and seaweed formations, and with the waves breaking further out. It was a fantastic sound to hear! 

       

Here, someone had managed to balance a stone atop the bedrock, while I had great fun exploring the little rockpool's that had formed, although I failed to find anything particularly interesting of note. Not even a shrimp or a crab to be had! 

And finally, although it was time to head back for dinner, and bless him James was getting rather cold, I pushed on to get the perfect picture of this area on the beach which had an almost moon/lunar style feel to it with the bobbled rocks dotted about. Really a rather interesting sight to see! 

I was glad to get back to the accommodation though, a nice hot shower with some dinner was well needed to get warmed back up again. Saying that, I couldn't wait to see what tomorrow would bring!