Tickling the Toe of Great Britain!

We had booked Penzance Youth Hostel as our base to explore the tip of Cornwall before travelling on to the Scilly Isles. It was a friendly place with a large accessible bedroom and shower room. The only downside was that the self catering kitchen was downstairs in the basement which Racheal couldn’t get to.

Penzance itself we didn’t find very easy to navigate with Racheal’s wheelchair. The road was closed along the seafront, even to pedestrians, and the lifts up to the town were out of order. We gave up and moved on to Mousehole which, although a lot smaller, we found easier to walk round. While we were having our picnic overlooking the tiny harbour, we witnessed one seagull snatch a sandwich from a child’s hand and another swoop down to steal pizza from a family’s picnic table! Fortunately we didn’t lose any of ours.

From Mousehole we meandered our way round to Lands End, for a very brief stop and obligatory photo, before heading back to the youth hostel.

On our second day we visited Geevor Tin Mine museum and spent much longer there than we expected. It was one of the many mines which closed in the 1990’s, but was fortunately saved almost intact to open as a museum. Although the trip down the mine wasn’t accessible, there was plenty to see, and lots of sensory experiences for Racheal, on the surface, including one of the guides playing his accordion! On the way back to Penzance we found a small craft shop and tea room for a little light refreshment.

The final day in the area, we took a scenic route down to Lizard Point. Our first stop was at Porthleven to admire the view while drinking the hot drinks we had made in our travel mugs. From there we made our way to Mullion for lunch at the chocolate factory and craft units. Perhaps a little purchase of chocolate also occurred!

We had a beautiful afternoon to walk along the coast path to the lighthouse at Lizard, and to see the most southerly point of Great Britain. Lizard Point is much less commercialised than Lands End and we would happily have stayed longer, but we had to get to Falmouth by 4pm.

The next stage on this trip is the Scilly Isles, which means leaving the car in secure parking in Penzance for a week. A colleague of my brother had agreed to look after the three weeks of Racheal’s medicines we wanted to leave behind, so they didn’t get too hot in the car. We had arranged to meet him at the university campus. Despite our best efforts to get there on time, we were delayed by a road closed by a bad accident and then the slow diversion down small lanes. We returned to Penzance by another route!