| Dublin | Holyhead | Iona | Portree | Orkney |
Fowey (Cornwall) England, June 5, 2005
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When we arrived in Cornwall, it was easy to imagine Capt. Hornblower
arriving in his carriage ready to be rowed out to his sailing ship.
The little houses probably have not changed significantly since the
Napoleonic wars. I have it on good authority that Fowey is pronounced the same as Foy, so like much British, just drop the extraneous letters (in this case "we"). We took the lighter (90 passenger barge with water jet engines) to the landing, climbed 2 flights of stairs to the parking lot, then boarded our busses there. |
| This is the area of King Mark (600 AD) and is the area that is the focus
of Tristan and Isolde (King Mark is part of that story as well). Our first stop was at Castle Dore. There's a very nice gate to get to it, but no place to park either car or bus there, so we parked here (and yes, it's raining quite a bit), then went around the hedge you see on the right, and walked across the farmer's field to get to the castle. It wasn't too bad, nobody got mud higher than their knees, and if you looked carefully, you could avoid the cow pads as well. |
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The castle dates back to about 200 BC. It was part of a chain of fortified "holes in the wall" used to move goods over to the water and back again. Construction was pretty simple - just 2 earthen walls with a moat between them, all put at the top of a hill. You can see the valley to the right (well, almost) and the next fort would be in sight in good weather. |
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| Our next stop was Restormel Castle. This castle was built between 1100 and 1272 (these walls are the latter). The place where I'm standing taking the picture (of these very wet people) would have been a bailey - a separately walled area for tradesman and homes for those caring for the castle. |
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The wide windows probably were in the wall of the prime living space.
They also indicate that this really wasn't a fort for fighting purposes, but
for show. To imagine this in its prime, put a coat of plaster, then white wash on the outside walls and you can see how beautiful this must have been. |
| Just as with Castle Dore, this castle is built at the top of a hill
looking down into a beautiful valley. In the valley below, at the time
this was constructed, was probably a river large enough to take a boat to the
river we anchored the boat on (today you can wade through the river).
Also in the valley is the train tracks that will take you from here to London in about 4 hours. |
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As we left the harbor, I noted that the lighthouse on the cliff walls also serves as the channel marker (note the red color). Hopefully nobody gets too close to the channel marker. |
| Dublin | Holyhead | Iona | Portree | Orkney |
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