The forecast was spot on today. We woke to torrential rain, lightning flashes and sustained rumbles of a thunderstorm overhead. Hopefully all that rain will soak into the ground rather than run off causing flooding. Since then it has rained on and off all day and been generally warm. I went out during a dry spell and dug up a couple of pounds of potatoes for tonight's supper. I planted a few potatoes some years ago and they keep reappearing as if by magic.
I was really tired at choir last night and though I've slept well since we got home I'm still pretty tired. Not surprising since I only slept for two hours on Monday night (too hot) and about four on Saturday night (too much excitement and thoughts going around my head). I've had a quiet day catching up on small jobs and wasn't too disappointed when I found that I was the only person booked in for tomorrow's riding lesson. Rather than have a private lesson, expensive and too much focus on me, I cancelled for this week.
I did still manage to do some more work in the garage, mainly moving tiles around so that all the spares including a lot of roof tiles (not sure why we need 60 giant square roof tiles) are in one place.
Now for an account of our Saturday -
It was yet another sunny day while the wind had dropped so the waves were more ripples than breakers suitable for bodyboarding.
Vytas and Sally came to our place in the morning and the three of us walked back into St Ives. It was already busy as we walked along Fore Street but we decided to save our serious shop browsing until after we had had a wander around Downalong and The Island.
Naturally I had to show them my old home and took a photo of Vytas to match the one I have of my mother sitting outside the entrance into the Sail Loft Gallery that she ran. It looks like those are the exact same doors as in 1960.
It was on The Island that I found out that the Cornish name for St Ives is Porthia. In Cornish Porth means cove/gate/port (of St Ia) and like in Welsh Cornish words mutate so Porthia becomes Borthia after some prepositions. Borth used to be Y Borth which is the mutated form of Porth meaning gate, door or port. A nice little connection.
From the top of The Island we could see down to Porthmeor beach which was unsurprisingly busy,
and looking across Downalong we could see the harbour and Porthminster beach.
Walking back through Downalong I took a photo of Sally standing under an arch to match some postcards I have from 1911. This area which housed fishermen and port workers already existed in the 1600s.
Having enjoyed the views from The Island we then had a leisurely stroll along Fore Street where we browsed craft shops, thought we'd lost Sally in a bookshop but then found her engrossed in the local geology and history section, picked out handmade chocolates (thank you Vytas) and in the same shop were plied with sample after sample of local spirits, the spiced rum with honey was very nice but my favourite was Cornish Nevek, a cream liqueur similar to but nicer than Bailey's. Again thank you to Vytas who bought me a large bottle of Nevek.
We also bought pasties which we took back to the apartment to have for lunch followed by chocolates for dessert with Pete who had been enjoying a well deserved rest after the previous day's drive.
But the youngsters are always full of energy and after lunch we walked down to Porthminster beach. Vytas and Sally did some snorkelling but saw no fish while I went in to above my knees and then decided the Atlantic was far too cold and beat a retreat to lay on the sand enjoying the sun.
Later we all met up to enjoy local ales and listen to some live music at the Mine Taproom. We were serenaded by a girl who sang very mellow slightly jazz covers of popular folk music accompanied by a guy playing a guitar who sometimes sang as well. One ale enjoyed by our little group was a very clever play on words. It was called FeS2 which if you were a scientist you would know is iron sulphide, iron pyrite aka fool's gold I guess if you drank too much of this yellow drink it would make you a fool too. Not being a beer drinker I had a delicious glass of home made lemonade.
And course we had to end the day with yet another meal, this time a Chinese take away. Rather than pick out individual dishes we settled on a 'meal for four' which turned out to be far more than even the youngsters could eat. Better too much than not enough I suppose.
And that was Saturday. I couldn't think of a nicer way to spend my 70th birthday.
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