Day 11 Penryn to St Just

Quick Facts

Sunny H25 L17 Humidity 72%

Depart from Penryn University Glasney Rooms

Destination: The Old Post House BnB 24 Bosorne Street St Just. TR19 7LU

Planned ride: 28.4 mi

Planned ascent: 1,617 ft

Planned decent: 1,572

Lorraine’s Actual ride:40.7 mi

(No I didn’t get lost!)

Lorraine’s actual ascent: 1,811

Lorraine’s acrual decent: 2,087

Check out Corner to Corner, Day 11: Penryn to St Just activity on Strava: https://strava.app.link/X1z3DZkRpsb

The university cafeteria opened at 9 am so we got our start at 10:00 - again into the sunshine and cool breeze.  We used A359 out of Penryn so Ralph started the day happy. « A » roads have become his « friends.

These are a few shots from the campus

The Welcome sign:

Ralph was amazed (appalled???) that what started out as a fine arts college doing pottery.. is now a major campus shared by Penryn and Exeter Universities-  with gaming for computers their major draw for students.

We must have traveled 10 miles this morning on a smoothly paved country road. Not wide enough for two cars to pass of course,  but drivers slow down or stop or we find a widened place to let the car or truck or farm implement by. 

It was pretty nice.

The farm crops have changed to cabbage and I think rows of potatoes being piled into wooden crates. This is a change from the grain harvest and straw baling we have been peddling by.

It was a hot day.  Just after eating a picnic lunch in the shade of the sign at Gondolphin Cross I saw gentleman at the end of his driveway.  I was low on water so took the opportunity to ask if he could bring out a pitcher for me.  Off he went into the house and brought back a glass of water and a pitcher. These acts of kindness along the way get a mention in my blog and a photo. Andy moved in front of a dry stone wall he is building at the top of his drive.  This started a discussion about stone wall construction. The main message I took from his guidance was….. if you pick up a stone …… place it!

Thank you Andy.

You can see behind Andy blooming Hydrangeas.   I would be remiss if I didn’t include a beautiful bush in my blogs about Cornwall.  These hydrangeas are blooming white, pink and dark purple all over the countryside. A beautiful splash of colour down the country lanes

By the way, it is interesting to be going along a road and suddenly see a bus with the destination of St Ives…. Or a lady on a white horse.  All sorts of old nursery rhymes pop up. 

We headed toward the Cornish coast coming down the hill at Marazion.  This medieval town was full of tourists walking across the causeway in low tide to visit St Michael’s Mount. The tide was coming in and people were already wading so it didn’t seem a good idea to give our bikes a salt water bath but I was awfully glad to see it.

This spot seemed a good one for a coffee break. I established myself on good at a cafe Ralph had chosen.  Good real estate is two chairs in the shade with my bike within hand’s reach leaning on a wall.  I sat and people watched eating an obligatory Cornish chocolate ice cream to justify my use of thr real estate.  A bubbly family arrived with the ten year old, Aahan sporting a Blue Jays cap!  (This is the winning baseball team from Toronto, Canada). It turned out they weren’t Canadian but had visited Toronto.   They are actually from Rugby UK where the sport apparently was invented,  at least in one version of the story.

Ralph and I headed out on the fabulous Mount’s Bay Coastal Path.  

It looked brand new.

Thousands of people were spread out along this wide, long, mostly sandy beach all the way to Penzane. Ralph kept trying to remember more of the words than “I am the very model of a modern Major General” from “The Pirates of Penzance. He had a huge advantage over me because he had played the part of the Major General in the play.

We did some shopping (soap) and banking (cash) in Penzance and were on our way.  

 Ralph gave Fiona, our BnB hostess in St Just, the heads up that our ETA was 5 pm ish.  There were lots of distractions along the way such as the Drift Reservoir, quaint small town churches and telephone boxes.

The South West of England is in a drought and apparently the reservoir is not as big as it needs to be according to one local.

We arrived at the Old Post House BnB in St Just on time.  It is charming as is the proprietress Fiona.  I dropped my heavy panniers and headed off the 6 miles to Land’s End while Ralph chatted with Fiona and relaxed for the evening.

Land’s End was a busy place with live bands playing, families having supper and waiting for the sunset, fireworks and full moon rising. The fireworks were canceled due to the very dry conditions but I don’t think many of the cars streaming into the parking lot knew this when they left home.

The biggest surprise I had was that the famous Land’s End sign is a commercial family operation and has been so since 1950! I paid and had my picture taken anyway.  Very entrepreneurial of them.

I really enjoyed the End to Enders little museum; 

England’s First and Last Cornish Pasty and the music.

I left about an hour before the actual sunset so that I wouldn’t be cycling back to St Just in the dark as 1,000 cars exit the parking lot.

When I got back to The Old Post House BnB, Ralph was just leaving to visit an ancient burial grounds and Cape Cornwall.  We walked through town and out to the Cape where the sun was setting and the moon rising at about 9 pm.  There was an abandoned mine with its tall smokestack as well as the burial mound and view of the coast.  There were several locals walking dogs or just enjoying the location for their regular evening walk. 

All in all a very nice evening at the end of what Ralph and I think was the nicest cycling day.

Safe cycling.

Lorraine