Exeter and St. Ives

We said goodbye to Linda and Lloyd, our hosts, and left Glastonbury headed for St. Ives. The drive wasn’t too bad, and we broke it up with a short detour to see the Exeter Cathedral. Savvy to the ways of tourist travel in England by now, we used the Park and Ride service and made it to the center of town without the hassle of city driving.

Exeter has a central section that is really an expansion of the pedestrian zone concept: no cars allowed, only public transportation. How nice! And the Cathedral was certainly worth the trip. Just look at the photos.

As for St. Ives, I’ll break my pattern here and quote from my notes.

“St. Ives is great. Yes, it’s touristy, but in its way it’s like Seaside. Doesn’t look a thing like Seaside, of course. But there’s an architectural unity here, it’s clearly pitched to the vacationer, and there’s a thriving artistic community—along with good seafood!”

We had a nice room in an older place up the hill from the harbor, we spent one day in St. Ives and another taking an open-top bus ride through Cornwall . We went all the way to Land’s End on narrow, often one-lane, roads, occasionally crowding past other vehicles. As for all the swimmers, waders, and boaters in St. Ives, I’ve never seen such changes in the beach with tides going in and out! I think we’d go back to St. Ives again, just to enjoy it some more.

When we left St. Ives, we headed out for a drive through a corner of Wales to Hereford, with only a short detour to get a close look at the Godrevy lighthouse, just three miles or so across the bay from St. Ives.