Today started badly, despite buying a ticket for the car park we discovered we had a parking fine, no idea why, a rude letter will be sent to the burgers of Mousehole about the gross miscarriage of justice. Mousehole harbour is shown above, we are staying in the pub on the right hand side of the picture.
Whilst the weather forecast was not great and even Penzance’s own web site said there was hardly anything to see in the town (all their recommendations were for places out of town) we walked the three miles along the coast to Penzance. They undersell themselves, we had a very pleasant day before walking the three miles back again.
There are some nice grand old buildings, admittedly some were a little scruffy but others, like the Egypt House shown here were great. (the Egypt house has been restored by the Landmark Trust so you can stay there which might be fun).
Penzance also has an excellent little museum and art gallery featuring the Newlyn School of painting and at the moment they also have an exhibition of paintings by Dame Laura Knight some of which were interesting.
She won a silver medal at the 1928 summer Olympics for one of her paintings as in those days the Olympics were not just about sport.
She was commissioned to produce paintings during the war and one called Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech-ring took my fancy not just because of the name. Apparently Ruby was a very good engineer despite having little experience and the War Office wanted a picture of her for propaganda purposes.
A second was of the Nuremberg War Trials, a very unusual subject but the painting is very well executed as of course were several of its subjects.
Talking of art, Gill and I have been unable to agree for some time over a bit of art for the big wall in our living room and hey presto we spotted a huge hanging made out of sari material which we both liked. It could well be one of those expensive holiday purchases which we will regret as we have no idea how large the wall is but we could always turn it back into saris!
Tomorrow the weather is supposed to take a turn for the worse but we don’t care as we will be off home after a very enjoyable holiday. Hopefully we will be home in time to catch some of the Party in the Park, one of the best Bishop’s Castle events.