SWMBO and I had a break down in Cornwall a couple of weeks ago, staying at the rather lovely Gurnard’s Head, just beyond St Ives. A couple of really excellent meals.

It was also a good excuse to actually take some photos – I’ll warn you now that if you’re not interested in photos of waves then there’s not going to be much here for you!

After we arrived on the Friday, we took a stroll down to the actual Gurnard’s Head – quite pleasant, and rather odd with the cloud level somewhere about the height we were at.

Saturday morning was spent at Sennen – we had originally planned to walk round to Land’s End but couldn’t be bothered in the end. The seas were really spectacular, and combined with a blue sky and sunshine to make brilliant weather for photographing the waves.

I like this sequence – it gives you a good idea of how big the seas were.

In the afternoon we went down to the Minack Theatre, spectacularly built into the cliff over the Atlantic, with a great view down to Porthcurno.

The waves at Porthcurno looked really good, so we went down there and I took more photos of waves…

Sunday morning was spent enjoying a Force 9 gale at the Cape Cornwall Coastwatch Station – very strong wind that made photography really quite difficult. I took more pictures of the sea. The coastguard helicopter was looking for an old man who had gone missing from a care home in St Just (nearby). A quick Google search shows that he was found safe and well.


BTW, have a look at the Coastwatch’s Shipping page – it’s got a live ship tracker. Minutes of fun!

On Sunday we went back to Porthcurno and had a wander round the Telegraph Museum – Porthcurno is where the under-sea cables first came up, where Cable & Wireless were formed (the cable company merged with Marconi’s Wireless company) and where they used to have the Telegraphy College. Really quite interesting, and SWMBO was able to get a bit geeky about the modern fibre-optic cables. I couldn’t believe that the cables were coming into Porthcurno in 1870.
The place was basically empty, so we got a personal talk about the place and demonstration of the old telegraph kit.
Well worth a look if you’re a bit geeky – I bought a great pair of circuit-board cufflinks!

It’s worth mentioning that both the Minack Theatre and Porthcurno Telegraph museum have an excellent scheme – if you pay your entry with Gift Aid, you can go back for a year free of charge. And visiting Minack gets you a discount off the Telegraph museum.

1 Comment

  • Sue dunkley

    Just taken a look at your blog from Cornwall. Your photographs are stunning. It’s such a wild and magical part of our country and your photos show that so well.. I saw your tweet that you took a few hundred do I hope you show some more soon.

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