From Glasgow to Cornwall

June 12 – We had the day to spend in Glasgow, and decided on brotherly advice to visit the Riverside Maritime Museum. It was a 40 minute walk with a freezing wind blasting us and occasional bursts of light rain. The Museum was excellent, but as usual was a complete overload of information. The exhibits covered mainly various types of transport over the years, including cars, buses, motor cycles, steam trains, ships and boats of all sorts, and a variety of other exhibits. We spent a couple of hours there, then walked back via a Sainsbury’s supermarket to catch up on shopping for the next three or four days. It is a little more expensive than other supermarkets, but the quality is good and we like their shops. The end of the day was spent resting up and preparing for next day’s travel.

June 13 – Our next major event has been planned as a three day coast to coast walk in Cornwall, but we have broken the travel from Glasgow to Padstow into three days. The first of these, Glasgow to Wigan is today’s target. The drive down has been mainly on the M6, three lanes and few speed restrictions, other than occasional roadworks. The countryside has consisted of green rolling hills and plains, a change from some of the more jagged mountain ranges in the north and the islands. We had to go a little past Wigan to an Ibis Hotel in an industrial estate, but it was comfortable and with very friendly and helpful staff.

June 14 – Today we continued on through to a southern town called Wells, in West Somerset, and then on a little further to a tiny settlement called North Wooton. Here we had a really nice place to stay called Crossways. A major benefit for us is that it is only six miles from the Glastonbury Tor, a place we had wanted to visit out of curiosity. Most of the way was easy going on the M6 and M5, but for the last section of the journey, from Bristol to North Wooton, our GPS took us on a torturous path through what appeared to be the centre of Bristol, then followed around thirty miles of suburbia and narrow, winding country lanes. The country lanes are very attractive, but the driving is slow and a little stressful at times. Luckily we didn’t meet any trucks or buses. As we arrived at our hotel around mid-afternoon, we decided to leave our Glastonbury visit until tomorrow morning. As a reward for the driving experience, we settled for a nice restaurant meal instead of preparing our own food in our room.

A bit squeezy in Glastonbury

 

 

View of Glastonbury from the Tor

History of the Tor Abby

 June 15 – The final day of our southern sojourn arrived and we headed for Padstow in Cornwall. We couldn’t help but drive through Glastonbury to pay a visit to the famous Glastonbury Tor. This meant that we were then obliged to climb up to the tower on top of the tor.  It was not a difficult climb and gave us a great view over the surrounding countryside, soon to be filled with thousands of people (more than 130 thousand) attending the annual Glastonbury Music Festival. We continued on our way, with the rest of the journey starting off well on the fast flowing M5, but halfway through we had to divert onto a lesser road. This was good for a while, but the closer we got to Padstow, the narrower the roads became, sometimes reverting to single lane sections. As always, the scenery was really relaxing, except for sections where the hedgerows had grown so high that we couldn’t see anything past the edge of the road and a wall of greenery. Padstow eventually loomed into view and we made the mistake of trying to drive into the town to find our hotel. It is a typical English coastal town, steep drive in, narrow streets, overcrowded with tourists and vehicles. We had to beat a hasty retreat to a car park on the outskirts and then walk down into the hotel to check in, and also to meet up with a friend, Alex Melbourne. We then did a car to hotel gear shuffle and arranged to take the car to a long-stay car park in a paddock on a farm, where we could leave it while we did our three day walk a day later. We had dinner with Alex and arranged to meet the following morning for a day of wandering around Padstow and surrounds.

June 16 – A bright, sunny day dawned, and after a slow start we took off on a long walk out of town to an adjacent beach where Irene could have a paddle and Howard could search for interesting pieces of slate to add to his rock collection. On our return from the beach, we did a thorough investigation of the rest of Padstow before sending Alex on is way so that we could concentrate on preparing for the next three days. It was starting to look like being a very hot walk, with temperatures rising into the high twenties and cloudless skies.