19.09.2011 – 19.09.2011  16 °C

Another early start today as I was driving all the way up the Cornish coastline to Westward Ho which is right up the top of the peninsular near to Exeter Moor. I had decided to do a pit stop today at Tintagel. Tintagel is the home of many of the Arthurian legends and is supposedly the home of Camelot and the infamous round table.

Today the castle is a 12th century ruin. The castle that was built in the 12th century was built on top of an older settlement dating to about the 6th century. It is unknown whether this is the home of King Arthur but it is likely that some sort of Cornish king did have his base out on the small island of Din-tagel (where the older ruins have been found).

The ruin that is today’s Tintagel castle was built in the 12th century by Richard Duke of Cornwall. He was the brother of one of the kings and it is thought that he may have built his castle on top of the ruins to get some sort of prestige from the Arthurian legends as there is no other reason to build your base in Tintagel (there is no river or port- so nothing to defend!) The ruined castle is built out on this small peninsular that is connected to the mainland by a very narrow stair case (and it wouldn’t have been much wider in the middle ages). The coastline around the castle is really spectacular. Today the wind was blowing fairly hard and the morning was very misty but the sun did come out right before I left the castle. The changes in the weather left for some fairly rough seas which meant nice big waves splashing up over the rocks!

To get to the castle you have a monster of a walk down a very steep hill (which means a very steep home journey) and then once you arrive at the visitor centre you have to walk up these very steep stair cases in order to get to the top of the island.. Certainly not for the faint hearted or anyone slightly unfit! The view from the top of the ruined castle was just magic! I even saw some seals floating in the little bay next to the castle!! Of course King Arthur’s castle wouldn’t be complete without Merlin’s cave and what do you know there are multiple caves around the peninsular!!

After a very exhausting trek back to the small town of Tintagel I settled down to some very tasty potato and leek soup before continuing my journey to Westward Ho. I arrived at the town at just after 5pm, which meant no real time for site seeing (although I had never planned to site see in this town… it was always just a break in the drive to Bath). Did some shopping and cooked myself dinner before turning in for an early night. (Again there are only 3 of us in this hostel— which is a really nicely outfitted house… 5 star kitchen— so no real conversation.. My only excitement for the evening was watching a documentary on “travellers” in England—Irish Gypsies—I did not know that the UK had its own version of Gypsies.. unrelated to the ones in Romania.. basically they travel around the UK in caravans.. there is currently an issue here in that they have the right to park their caravans in many parts of the UK for free, but the issue is that there isn’t enough places for them to park so they are illegally parking, not keeping the areas tidy etc. etc.. interesting issue, I think I’ll need to do some more research……..)