Tintagel Castle

Having enjoyed a day with shorter drives, we abandoned some plans involving longer drives to St Ives or back to Penzance, and decided to visit nearby Tintagel with no specific plan except to spend part of the day there, as well as to visit a beach in the latter half of the day.

The drive to Tintagel, while short, was quite fun for me as the driver. I enjoyed driving through all the narrow hedge bound lanes cutting across to the sea-side town of Tintagel.

We decided to go visit Tintagel Castle, and enjoyed some picturesque hikes and views of the stunning north coast of Cornwall. The scenery and hikes were so amazing, that we ended up spending quite a bit of time here. The kids enjoyed the hikes, and Tejas was quite the trooper and came with me on a hike up to the headlands, where we enjoyed more stunning views.

The castle itself, it turned out, was closed to visitors for repairs on the cantilever bridge, which had developed a gap in the middle due to thermal expansion/contraction.

As the tide receded, we walked down to the small beach and explored Merlins cave.

After some lunch at the cafe, we walked back up to our car, and tried to buy some beautiful, rustic, made on-site pottery, but failed since we didn’t have any cash on hand.

We then drove to the town of Polzeath, since it looked like that was the nearest and most accessible beach. With some luck and patience, we found a parking spot right along the beach and set up beach blankets for Jayu Paati. Mridhu peeled off to hang out with a school friend who happened to be vacationing in Polzeath. The rest of us made the looong trek to the water’s edge. The beach was super shallow, and the waves extremely mild. The safe break was super popular with surfers, and we enjoyed playing in the water while watching the surfers in the water.

On the way back, Tejas and I went off to one side to walk through the rock pools, and investigate the shallow waters there. Tejas thoroughly enjoyed splashing in the pools. We were able to catch a tiny crab and quite a handful of brine shrimp by trawling the waters in the pools.

We walked back to the blankets, right on time to join Purni and Aarav setting off to find ice-cream, coffee and Pizza.

After snacks, we packed up our stuff and headed back to the house, enjoying the windy roads, and a route taking us through an abandoned air force base.