Godolphin Wisteria
We are off along the A30 again this morning (I have covered this road more than any other in the country this year) until we follow the sat nav turning off to find Godolphin House – and once again we are on a mad trail around some narrow roads. The relationship between the Tiguan’s sat nav and the best route to a destination appears to be completely coincidental as we often seem to be heading in the wrong direction. Once we get close to the destination there are no brown signs (from our arrival direction) to aid final arrival (just like the Helston Railway a couple of days ago) and I make use of the phone only to find the blue spot (us) is moving away from the red dot (the house) when I set off. We turn around and spot a brown sign! Hooray.
The main reason for the limited signage is the limited opening time. The National Trust opens the house to the public for the first week of each month (but it worth checking specific dates as it changes) and for the rest of the month it is a rather exclusive (and I suspect expensive) holiday rental, not on AirBnB as far as I am aware.
The walk from the car park is particularly pleasant as the bluebells are in full bloom and provide a bright display as we progress along the path.
Being so far west it is not a surprise to find that once the family became prosperous they were largely absent landlords renting the house to tenant farmers who used the (now lost) Great Hall for their animals. The stonework of the Great Hall was then re-used to construct more suitable buildings for the animals and feed stores at the rear of the site known as shippons. Due to this much of the interior of the house was lost or damaged and therefore when acquired by the National Trust it made no sense to undertake a potential restatement of what was there historically and so they undertook the adaptation to valuable holiday accommodation. We get to see a very modern kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms now housed within the building.
These days many of the room guides are generally far more loquacious than I recall from historic visits to historic houses and at this location Jackie has been indicating that she believes it to be haunted. So when one of the room guides tells stories of potential ghosts which have been seen Jackie accepts that whilst the lady concerned may not have died on site she, or someone, certainly haunts the surroundings. Her hairs have been prickling ever since we entered the house and she soon determines that there is no way we will ever hire this for a place to stay.
Class 150 St Ives
Our dinner destination is Porthminster Beach Café which is the at the next beach along from Carbis Bay where we were yesterday. Behind the Café is the branch line to St Ives and we use the station car park at St Ives for parking – having become entangled in a set of road works just outside the station car park. A pair of GWR Class 150 units trundle in and out of the station regularly (and it is almost a year since I was here to traverse the line from Penzance).
The Café has a daily specials menu as well as the ongoing menu online and this rescues the choice somewhat as there is a rather large tomahawk steak on the specials which Jackie and I share as we have eaten mainly fish so far this week. Oddly unlike some of our other meals we feel really stuffed after consuming this. Again the food is excellent and we have dined well throughout the week.
Travelling home later than normal is somewhat distressing as the A30 is closed – just as it becomes a dual carriageway leaving Penzance and we follow the yellow diversion signs – which seem hard to spot in a couple of cases and then lead to a very strange point in the middle of nowhere going through a tunnel at Carn Brea under the railway line. Something went wrong somewhere and I think one of the signs either pointed in the wrong direction or there were two separate diversions in place and somehow I accidentally followed the wrong one. We do eventually get back onto the A30 and find our way back to base.