Continued from Part 1…
Saturday morning and happily engaged, we woke up, grabbed breakfast, and set off on our daily adventures. We had an odd experience leaving Exeter trying to find a petrol station, we followed the closest icons on the satnav only to find five different petrol stations that had been closed in the past 8 years (the age of the car satnav), all in Exeter city centre! Eventually we found one, then set off to the end of the world.
First stop was Minack Theatre, after a two-and-a-half hour drive. Minack Theatre is an open-air theatre built in to the side of a cliff a few miles from Land’s End, mostly constructed by Rowena Cade, her gardener, and a close friend. The views all around were incredible, and the theatre itself was very well made.
Every summer, the theatre hosts numerous plays, but unfortunately for us, there are no events on during the winter months. One summer we’ll definitely be back here to watch a play, but today we settled for a couple of steak pasties and a slice of chocolate roulade.
After Minack Theatre, we took a brief trip to Land’s End, it was extremely wet and windy when we got there, and we had to battle to get to the café looking out on to the sea. Most of the facilities were closed, but to our surprise the Land’s End signpost was an attraction in itself, surrounded by a short fence with a booth, that charged £10 to get close to it. We declined to pay the extortionate fee and instead took our pictures from the barrier (naturally Helen managed to not only get her fingers in the photo, but also struggled to get both me and the sign side-by-side, not to mention that the photo was originally upside-down requiring rotation before uploading below).
We left Land’s End with the plan to buy a 1ft square of land nearby, to erect our own signpost on for people to take pictures of for free. But on we went with our adventure, next stop: St Ives.
We arrived at St Ives around 15:30, to unfortunately find that the Tate was closed for renovation until some time in the middle of next year. We had a walk around the coast, battling with the wind but admiring the views.
After a brief walk, we visited the Barbara Hepworth museum and sculpture garden. There were a couple of figures we liked, but mostly the sculptures just reminded us of the little stone ornaments you can buy from Next or Ikea. Our three favourites (below) were “Image”, “Forms In Movement”, and “Conversation with Magic Stones” respectively:
We walked around St Ives some more, visiting various galleries, in particular the Society of Artists, which was a large gallery inside an old church (we had to get special permission to take photos inside the Society of Artists, but the curator allowed it so long as it wasn’t of any piece in detail).
At this point, shops were starting to close, so we decided to set off back towards Exeter. On the way out, we decided to pull over and take a last couple of shots looking out across the town, after seeing just how picturesque it looked:
Arriving back at the hotel around 19:00, we decided to just stay in and get dinner in the hotel restaurant itself. A good choice though, as both the service and food were fantastic! After dinner it was pretty much straight to bed, but not before being gifted a bottle of bubbly from the bar staff when they heard we’d just gotten engaged!
Well you’ve certainly covered a few miles. It’s a shame that the Land’s End council haven’t made more of an attraction of it rather than allowing visitors to be ripped off! We enjoyed St Ives as well but were there when the temperatures were in the 20s.
Looks like you are both having a lovely time despite the weather. Keep practising the photography Helen!