English trip part 3... Cornwall

Well, first my pictures have been falling behind... and now my blog has been falling behind too!

Let's try and correct the situation properly.

Life has been very busy, and lots of new pages in my life have been written...

We shall pick up the story first where we left off... and hopefully catch back up to the "present" ... when we left off... we left off: in the safari.

So after the Safari Erika and I drove down to Cornwall via Glastonbury [village], the supposed burial place of King Arthur. Here we stopped and hiked to the top of the Tor. It is said that the wind always blows into the tower at the top of this hill in the middle of the valley - straight up the shaft to the top, a place of great energy concentration. As we approached the top, and the main gate's contents revealed themselves I saw three people standing inside of the Tor, and one of them certainly looked like a wizard. His long hair and coat flapping in the wind, his arms extended, hands open, head arched back. I stood beside them and closed my eyes to feel what energy I could also muster.
If I felt anything, it was a sense of floating, and of spread being. As if my consciousness was able to thinly spread out across the valley before me.

On the way down we went for a nice meal in a vegetarian restaurant - this place was so eco-hippy conscious it was nearly ridiculous. According to guide books, a meat eater has just as hard a time finding meat in Glastonbury as a vegan in mongolia.

Later on we drove a very long distance to Tintagel, thats on the north coast of the start of Cornwall. It was dark by the time we arrived, and the rain started to pour down hard. The roads were tiny, so small that two cars can't pass each other - I've never seen such small roads before! The only hostel in Tintagel had just one female bed left, and 5 miles away in another village there was a hostel that only had one male bed left - so we were in a bit of a dilemma. We decided to do the double drop off: each of us at one hostel, and then regroup in the morning routine. But I never made if to my hostel. On the way to the first hostel, the one where they just had female beds left, we got caught in a dead end, on a dirt road, in pot holes, with thick rain covering all the windows. I needed to back out, no way forward. And upon backing out suddenly the right wall was way too close to the car! Eeeik! The fear of damage to the car took over me... but there was no way to know until it stopped raining what, if anything, had happened to the right door of the car from the wall...

When we finally did make it out of the dead end and along the bumpy pot hole filled road to Erika's hostel, it turned out that they had men dorm beds too, but they were just full. The room where she was sleeping in had extra beds, but they were being very bureaucratic "sorry, this is a women's room only, we can't sell these beds to men"! Grrr! I've been to many hostel's, and this was the first one that refused to offer me a bed when they had one left just because of silly rules. I decided I wasn't driving in the rain along that road again, so I slept the night in the car. It was quite a surreal sleep. Even though I can't say I slept well, somehow it was a good sleep in a different kind of way because by being half awake all night it keeps your ego-concious more aware of sleep-conciousness... if you follow.

So the morning comes, the rain is no more, and we are in Tintagel. The supposed birth place of King Arthur. This is a very quant coastal village that has a real irish feel. Along the cliffs is a peninsula where the ruins of a castle domain. A ruined castle that came complete with its very own bridge troll. Yup, as you cross the bridge to get to the peninsula you see a little shack, and there in the shack, here in the middle of no where is, sure enough, a young lady you licks: "that will be three pound fifty per person please"...

Our car was a good distance back, and we had no money on us. How bizarre to have a tariff on this bridge for some ruins! I felt like I was in a Monty python scene. Surely I thought there must be a secret password we can utter to pass! reasoning with the woman was getting us no where, and us walking past her a little was not making her very happy. Finally Erika suddenly had a vision and uttered a very powerful word, and we were through! She said: "do you take credit cards?" - which, to my amazement, the troll happily fingered with glee in its hands as it whipped its colorful surface along a piece of paper so that it could keep a memory in ink. How odd it is that bridge trolls accept plastic? I thought... so modern.

The ruins themselves were really nice, the photos will [once they finally get uploaded] speak more than my words here... if I had to use words I'd say: contained, subdued force, epic faces faintly echoed in towers of stone, swirling observing wise seagulls that know more than we do, layered pancakes of stone that create beautiful windows, vivid blue and shimmering white set against deep shades of gray and gray blue... peaceful and yet sad. Isolated and yet a source of forged electric form.

The car... alas was well damaged. I estimated in my mind at least 250 pounds of liability here... if not more depending on how brutal they are. Until we got back to Bristol the thought of damage was on my mind. I thought back to the trilogy "his dark materials" [a highly recommended series of books by Philip Pullman]. In one of the books, the witches have a spell: the spell of invisibility. The way the spell works, is it doesn't actually make anything disappear - instead it makes someone just not notice you, or the thing in question - their mind is distracted by something else and an appearance of invisibility takes form. I thought to myself: this is what we need to do, we need to prepare an invisibility spell for the damage on the car! Erika seemed keen on the idea, so we discussed the invisibility spell a number of times during the remainder of the week.

The next day we drove down through a touristy town, didn't stop and instead we pulled out at a beautiful brown sandy beach. Now instead of being in ireland, I felt like I was in New Zealand again. The beach was very deep, a good 200 or 300 meters of sand before the waves crashed on the shore, novice surfers flopped about the sand, there was moss along the cliff walls lining the beaches, thick vivid green moss - and grottos. Lots of them, little caves that lined all the sides of the broad beach. We clambered through stone archways, into caves, over puddles and rocks for a while here as I watched distant storm clouds pass us to the sides and rain on other parts of the land. The sun was out, and the light was golden.

Shortly thereafter we arrived in Saint Ives. This was a very quaint Mediterranean feeling port town, with ultra skinny stone streets, lots of boats and little shops all along the sea side. We stayed the night and then the next morning we did a 4 or 5 hour hike by foot along the north coast cliffs. It was great hiking, there was one short moment of rain and wind, but for the most part, it was dry and sunny. The waves crashing far beneath our feet with a purposeful thunder. Seagulls spontaneously becoming angled diving arrows. Fields of purple flowers, flying fox bulbs, caterpillars in the palms of my hand... the glimpse of a stretching emptiness of space. The open ocean.

After our hike, we hitchhiked back to St. Ives with an english man who just moved to Cornwall himself, and then we drove down to 'Lands End', the most western part of mainland england.

Here the weather changed and became layers of rain clouds that all pilled in on top of each other. Between them columns of misty light that looks like its pouring from heaven would prevail in small spots, but for the most part, the distant light houses were battered by a setting sun that meant only more waves cast with rain in a returning darkness. Erika and I took a nice nap in the car [where it was warm] and then a cup of tea before continuing to our new hostel. This third hostel was the best of the lot, nice open grass field with a view of two rolling hills that abruptly end in cliff faces, a soft violet orange purple sunset, a farm house with the first night star twinkling overhead. Night came in fully, and I slept with some funny italian men in my room who liked to walk around the hostel room in their white underwear and spread all their cloths and things all over the floor [sadly their messiness somehow distracted me and I ended up forgetting a few low value possessions when I left].

The next day was to be our last in Cornwall, we headed to the south where there is an open air theater house, and here it was raining lightly still. We got out of the car for breakfast, and then decided to walk a short distance up the hill. Before we knew it we walked all the way to the theater, and the cliff top where you can look onto the beach. This was the most beautiful beach of all. Here I felt like I was in Ibiza, or New Zealand again. Palm trees and tropical plants, rough rock vegetation, large leaved plants, beautiful small sandy beach with rolling waves tucked between high rising fingers of earth on either side. The sand: pristine without a single human or traceable foot print. The drizzle did offer this one advantage. This is the one place and time I didn't have my camera with me, which is a shame because the photos would have been stunning.

The rain settled into a consistent mist of moisture you didn't want to walk in anymore, we drove on some extremely tiny roads and eventually we found and stopped the car to see a small stone circle called: "merry maidens". I really liked the energy here too. I could really feel that in the past many important psychic events here had taken place, and the stones were here as witnesses to some important secrets. I walked in a circle with my umbrella in one hand resting my right hand on each stone until I touched every single one and then made back for the car before I was soaked to the bone. It was like walking through a shower now, my cloths were getting wet. Visibility was getting as low as 200 meters. From the stones I was left with a latent base tone that I felt in my hand, arm and shoulder. It felt good; it was solid energy.

We made a brief stop at Penzance to try and see the distant foresters-island that it's famous for, but the visibility was so bad, all you could make out was the distant darker trace of where the island met the ocean. But anything above 10 meters from the water was lost in a carpet of gray misty rain drizzle that extended up into the sky. Here we again took a little nap in the car, as its quite pleasant to sleep in the rain in a dry spot with a nice view, grabbed a little bite and some coffee and then we made for Bristol in one dash-spring on the freeway. 6 or so hours later, we were back in Bristol.

It was time to return the car, now was the time to see if we could pull our invisibility spell. I pulled the car into the main parking area and parked the car right in the middle of it - making absolutely no intention to hide the part that was damaged; in fact, the side that was damaged was facing the office, so it could not have been in more plain sight. I figured that any attempt to hide it would just draw attention to it, so best to just completely act as if there is nothing to hide at all. We walked in, discussed some issues we had about the CD player, and then Erika suddenly remembered she had left a CD in the player. So we all walked to the car, with the damage inspector. I was very friendly and bubbly, so were we all. We got to the car, Erika opens the door to grab the CD and magically here two ankles line up exactly where the two deep dents are. The inspecting lady walks around the car, gets back to the damaged area as Erika leaves the car for her to get in, she checks some more things, and then we all walk back inside... it worked! The invisibility spell was completely effective! Naturally Erika's smooth move was 90% what it took, but it certainly wasn't planed and worked in the most natural way you could have never anticipated. I was really happy! And jumped up and down along the street for at least half an hour.

We got back, I packed up, and then I was on a bus off to London...

by 8 in the evening I was back in London, and back at Ada's house. I spent one night again with her and got to meet her boy fiend - a really nice guy. There was a fancy dinner we all ate together in the roof room under the sky lights, and then I went to sleep knowing that the next day Bibi was arriving - it was time to get ready for a new phase of the holidays - the last phase with Bibi and it was going to start with a 50's costume party...

Some Cornwall pictures of part 3 are online [but not all yet] you can see them on: Photo Album Part ONE