Back to Tintagel, like some kind of magnet, October 2004

Dwight Peck's personal website

It's October 2004 -- so it's time for another visit to Devon and Cornwall

Back to Tintagel, like some kind of magnet

Tintagel, said to be appallingly awful at mid-summer, is lovely in the off-season, so we'll pack up a few sandwiches in Trebarwith Strand and walk on up over the ancient coastal slate works and have another look in. 20 October 2004.

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

Steeply out of old Trebarwith Strand, we get off with a good loping gait early in the day.

Kristin waves adieu to the Port William Inn for the day and then strides vigorously past all the coastal remnants of ancient slate mining sites. It's hard to imagine what life was like for the workers here 200 years ago. Or even why they bothered. It must have been a half-crazed survival instinct or something.

This suggestive artifact is improbably said to have been left behind by slate miners because it has lower quality slate. They just skipped that part and worked around it.

One of the sights near Tintagel, with its convincing Norman look, a sturdy late 11th and early 12th century church, and rows of sad dead folks still lingering all about.

Cool nave and a Norman font

Classic vistas of the Norman church and the probably very kind former people planted there.

A grey day in the graveyard

Kristin in the electric mist among the Norman dead

Not the worst place for your eternal post-life retirement, but chilly, and wet.

The Tintagel Old Post Office, originally a 14th-century manor house, used as a post office in the 19th century and now a National Trust property. Once inside, don't stamp your foot or sneeze.

Kristin stopping in at the Celtic Legends shop to see if they carry The Guardian or The Independent.

King Arthur's Arms hotel, which wisely makes no claim that King Arthur actually slept there (though George Washington may have). The knightly figure and caparisoned horse painted on the wall are wearing armor dating from about 800 years after the real King Arthur if there was one.

Heading home at the end of the day -- that's Gull Rock standing off the coast near Trebarwith Strand.

Kristin planning strategies, and tactics

Trebarwith Strand, and the Port William, loom below us near the end of the day. (Loom below us!)

Nearly dinner time at the Port William (far right)

Two hikers playing the jackanapes.

Steeply down into bustling Trebarwith Strand

The Port William Inn nearly at dinnertime

Low tide on the strand, and Gull Rock off the coast.

Okay, the dinner gong has sounded.

But what shall I wear? Are we formal, or casual?