Next morning the weather had improved significantly and after we had a quick walk around the Padstow harbour area – it isn’t very big – we were chauffered back to our car up the hill and then collected Erin back in town and were off again for the day’s adventures.
I expect most will be familiar with the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, well today’s first stop was Tintagel, situated on the Atlantic coast of Cornwall. Tintagel Castle is associated with the legends surrounding King Arthur – reputably his birthplace – although the origins of the castle are believed to date back to the 13th century. We wandered around the site in the blustery winds – very wild country indeed !
We drove on and our next stop was the village of Clovelly on the Devon coast. The town is very unique – It was first owned by William the Conqueror then since the 13th century the whole village has been privately owned by just three families ! The village is built into the cliffs and has steep cobbled pathways down to a small walled harbour. The main village is not accessible by vehicles although there is a separate access to the harbour. We had lunch in a little cafe overlooking the harbour before slowly making our way back up the steep cobbled pathways to the carpark.
There was still a couple of hours driving to get to our stop for the night in Wells – further across Cornwall and into Somerset. On the way we stopped in a small town called Hatch Beauchamp. Now since I first saw it as an 8 year old, I have been a big fan of the movie Zulu, about the actual Battle of Rorke’s Drift between the British Army and the Zulu warriors in the Anglo-Zulu Wars in South Africa in the late 1800’s – 150 Brtitish soldiers – a Welsh company called the 24th Regiment of Foot – held off 4,000 Zulu warriors at a small outpost after another large column of British soldiers had been massacred at Isandlwana nearby.
Officer in Command on the day was Lieutenant (evemtually Colonel) John Rouse Merriott Chard, Royal Engineers, who was at the post to build a bridge but, due to seniority took charge when the Zulu’s attacked. The held off the attacke over two days before the Zulu’s retreated and 12 Victoria Crosses were awarded to members of the British forces – including Chard. Well, Chard is buried in a churchyard in Hatch Beauchamp, his home town, and my treat for the day was to visit his grave !
We then didn’t have far to the village of Wells where we stayed for the night. It has a large cathedral across parklands near our hotel – and lack of parking like many of these towns ! We parked in the supermarket carpark a few blocks from our hotel but luckily Erin’s hotel was just across the street nearby. We had an easy dinner of excellent American style burgers just next door to end our day.
