Covid-19 (and my own laziness) has interrupted my travelogue of last September’s UK adventures.  I’d been a week on Islay in Scotland, then drove with my cousins in Somerset to Morvah, Cornwall.  It seems a very long time ago and it has done me good to revisit my journal and remember. Here is installment thirteen:

Towards the end of the very windy day wherein a pirate mended my glasses, we went on a search for the Merry Maidens, a circle of standing stones the guidebooks all say are in a field indicated by a stone marker and a wide area for cars. We found a Celtic cross near a stile and a sign that said Public Footpath. I salivated at the public footpath sign and was eager to climb the stile and look for stones in a field.

Over a stile

“I think this is it,” I shaded my eyes to make out something at the far end of the field.

Sue came over the stile. “I think that’s a gate.”

Wendy came over the stile. “That’s a gate.”

But, but. My footpath.

I always want to walk the footpaths, which in many cases just means you are allowed to walk the edge of the field, which is not going anywhere notable like a magical well or thousand year old merry maidens.

We got back in the car and drove slowly around two joyless hikers, the man with his nose in a paper map and the woman looking resigned. A quarter of a mile down the road was a stone marker, a wide space along the side of the road and a huge sign that said Merry Maidens. One could even see the standing stones from the road. The guidebooks couldn’t have told us all this?

Merry Maidens standing stones

Merry Maidens

Over the stile we went and approached the circle of nineteen stones. An officious man had his camera and his patient lady-friend in his force-field. A few free-spirited women danced. We all tried to give each other a chance to photograph the maidens without being tacky tourists in the background.

The most elegant maiden

The joyless couple arrived. The man, his nose still in his map, stopped obliviously in the center of the stones. He was skinny and wrinkled, his back straight, his neck curving forward like a shepherd’s staff. A Dickensian undertaker had wandered into the scene. His resigned wife stood outside the circle and we all waited for him to get the hell out of our photos. After a long study of his map, he and his wife moved on without having even looked at the Merry Maidens.

When we had the Merries to ourselves, I watched Sue take photographs and then stood in her place to take my own. Wendy sat on a rock, thinking her own thoughts.

She photographing the Merry Maidens

“Wendy, you are like Patience on a monument,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s something from Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, I think.”

“Pithy on a rock cake,” Sue said.

“What’s that?”

“You know rock cakes? Pithy are the little curls of lemon or orange rind on the top that everyone flicks off because no one eats them.”

“So you’re saying that Wendy is superfluous?”

“Isn’t that what you said?”

“No, I said she was patient.”

Wendy, through this whole exchange, remained the Head Teacher, not taking this nonsense seriously. She knew she was the only one who could drive.

From the Merry Maidens we went to Lamorna Cove. I felt immediately that this was the place I wanted to be left alone for three days to watch the surf, take walks and write. A small beach with a few houses and one café, it’s hidden away at the end of a narrow wooded road flanked with thick hedgerows. The Dickensian undertaker and his wife clomped past us as we headed for the café, apparently still not the least bit interested in their surroundings.

Elena at Lamorna

We arrived back in Morvah late afternoon in time for Sue and Wendy to get a short rest before packing themselves off to a concert in St. Ives. I was never so glad in my life that I elected to not get a ticket. I craved a quiet evening.

I was watching an episode of Silent Witness when Sue, of Alec and Sue, the owners of the cottages came in clutching her guest book for us to sign. Sue is gone during the week so this was only my second time seeing her. She’s in the medical field; we thought a nurse. She certainly has a bit of the head nurse about her: cheerful, bracing, interested, no nonsense and always with the catch phrase, “Well, I’ll love you and leave you.”

She asked me about our stay. We reviewed the various appliances and devices Alec had been called in to fix. She loved me and left several times before the front door closed on her. I went to bed and didn’t hear Sue and Wendy return.

In the morning we made a shopping list for our last port of call, one more stop on our tour before returning to Butleigh. We needed milk. Three different kinds of milk: lactose-free for Sue, skimmed for Wendy and whole milk for me. To go with our two different kinds of tea.

As a goodbye, I bought all the catnip mice in the church across the road. I found the graves of the sisters who had built Trebeigh cottage: Maude and Laura Annie Noye, may they rest in peace.  I was mooing at the cows when Sue joined me.

“That’s not a very English moo,” she said. “You’re not getting the vowel right.”

We delivered the signed guest book to (the other) Sue where we found her, Alec and James cleaning a cabin and watching a soccer (I think, I don’t care) game on the telly. I told them that a pirate had mended my glasses.

“Oh you mean that guy over at Land’s End?”

“I don’t think he takes that costume off when he goes home,” our Sue said.

“Oh he does,” said James. “I saw him on the cliff path with his lady-friend and he looked normal.”

We loved and left everyone, loaded up the car and headed into St Ives for a final stroll and shop before heading to our last destination, worlds away from Trebeigh Cottage. Next up: a night in a caravan park.