Having checked for guest houses and B&Bs when I got home on Saturday, I found a farmhouse B&B just outside Fowey and booked myself in, with that in mind I set off for the trip back down at Lunchtime on the Monday, I spent the morning re-packing my gear and giving the bike a bit of a check over. It was a beautiful day in Hampshire and my neighbour told me it was actually the best one of the whole Easter Break so far.
Strange how the weather changes so easily in this country, I had left Cornwall in beautiful sunshine and come back to very drab and damp weather it now looked as if it was going to turn completely, as the forecast for Cornwall. A lovely relaxed run down listening to my MP3 player a couple of short stops, to refuel and get a cup of tea at a roadside van near to Boscombe Down but all the time it looked as if the weather was going to be okay.
I got to Exeter just after 2pm and I thought I would get to Fowey in about another hour and a half, that would give me time to do a bit of a stretch down the coast I thought and then head back to the B&B I had booked, but as I got out onto the A30 towards Lauceston the clouds started to build quite ominously, yet as I looked more towards my destination it did seem brighter, or that’s what I told myself, a bit of wishful thinking on my side in reality.
By the time I reached Launceston the heavy drizzle was set, and there seemed no breaks whatsoever, I pulled over at a layby Café first of all to get a hot drink in me but to also put on my waterproof outer jacket, I stupidly thought it’s not far I won’t put the trousers on, big mistake. Just after Launceston I looked at the trip meter and worked out that by the time I reached Fowey I would be pretty much empty again so I stopped to fill up and then pushed on, all the time the rain was getting heavier and the cloud lower. Now I couldn’t wait to get to the B&B at the end.
The only problem being the further I went, the heavier the rain and now there were rivers of water running across the road in places, so I had to reduce my speed, Now the second problem, the slower speed meant my visor wasn’t clearing properly and at the same time with all the damp it was starting to mist up, I therefore opened it a bit, which now meant the water was getting inside, in fact at one stage I couldn’t work out whether there was more rain on the inside of the visor or the outside.
With the constant efforts to keep it clear, my gloves now resembled a pair of sponges on my hands. Not to mention the water had now gone through my trousers, through my thermal long johns and my underpants were soaking as well. On top of all this the rain was running off my helmet and down my neck, If I had got the collar of the waterproof jacket any tighter I would have probably passed out from strangulation, yet the rain still got in and I could feel it seeping down my back.
All in all not a very pleasant experience and worse was to come, as I reached Bodmin, the rain became biblical in proportions and the wind started to really get up and gust quite strongly. ‘I do this for fun’ I kept telling myself over and over.
On the road down to Lostwithiel I was actually holding up the cars, as the weather was that bad compounded by the fact I couldn’t see where I was going half the time. Thankfully then the B3269 to Fowey itself was fairly empty but I really was riding at a snail’s pace by now.
I did do one quick lap down through the town so I didn’t have to cover that route again. I then went to find where I was staying. I had booked in at Coombe Farm now it got really tricky, because of the rain and the slick mud on the lane, it was pretty much a nightmare getting to the farm and then I got it all wrong and went down a track that led to the back of the farmhouse and got myself jammed in when I finally got there. Thankfully the dogs warned Tessa of my arrival in this unconventional way.
Before I got completely in a mess, Tessa came out the back door to rescue me, coming in this way did have one advantage, and I was able to dump all my soaking gear in the kitchen and back rooms without traipsing them through the house. Tessa showed me up to my room so I could get changed into some dry gear; she then invited me down for a cup of tea to warm me up. Whilst enjoying the warmth and the tea Michael came in and immediately switched the television over to watch the postponed MotoGP so I was able to sit and enjoy that, it is very interesting the background of the farm and how tough it is at times for farmers and their families. They really are a very welcoming and natural couple and I enjoyed my stay, after the GP was over I retired to my room which was very good, the rain, wind and cold had really taken it out of me, so after eating the sandwich and cuppa soup I had brought with me. I got into the bed for an early night.
The next morning dawned clear and bright and after a full breakfast, I rescued all my gear that had been drying next to the Aga in the kitchen, it was then recovering the Bike from the back of the farm. Thankfully Michael had come back and moved his huge Tractor out of my way and I was able to get it up the bit of a track and then through the yard up to some concrete hard standing where I loaded it back up. When getting back on to the bike though, my boot brushed against the seat and with all the mud around you can guess what happened, I ended sitting on a big muddy patch, until a few miles later when I was able to get off and wipe it and the seat of my trousers clean, not a great start to the day.
The roads were very tricky after all the rain had washed so much dirt and mud on to them the night before but thankfully after getting out of the lane and up on to the main road, it was an A road for a while up and around St Blaise then on to the A 390before turning off down to Charlestown the sign on the picture tells the story, it is a working ship repair yard but of a very special nature.
After a brief stop for the photo and a clean up, I got underway pretty quickly, the early night and staying on a farm meant I had got an early start so I was hopeful of making great progress today, looking at the maps, it looked hopeful, however I had, had one warning the back lanes up around the upper reaches of the Fal were in a bad way and there had been an accident the night before which some of them were closed so I decided that I was going to take the King Harry Ferry but this was some time away yet.
Back on the road it was down the lanes to Pentewan before getting on to the B3273 to Mevagissey a lovely ride and the weather was getting better all the time. Mevagissey is a very small and stunning little village; I stopped on the way out to take the following picture back down of the harbour. 
I was determined not to waste the early start by stopping too much, I was also noticing that the more I rode the more ‘ride fit’ I got , I didn’t get the same level of muscles cramping up due to the long hours in the saddle as I had when I first started this challenge. Out and on to the back lanes once again towards Gorran Haven and Boswinger, where there is another Youth Hostel and I had tried to get in there as well but it was fully booked. Actually I was quite glad of that I wouldn’t have made it that far on Monday night.
After leaving Boswinger I chalked up my next castle. Caerhays Castle I think I am now at 11. Caerhays Castle overlooks Porthluney Cove, near Mevagissey. The Trevanion family owned the land since 1390 and the house itself was built for John Bettesworth Trevanion, who at the age of 21 inherited the estate in 1801. John Nash, a fashionable architect of the day, was employed to create the mansion in 1808. Profligate living plus the costs of building the mansion ruined the family, and in 1840 the family were so heavily in debt that they fled to Paris, where John Trevanion died. Caerhays Castle was thus abandoned for 13 years.
Eventually in 1853 it was purchased by a Cornish Member of Parliament, Michael Williams, who restored the property. He was also a mine owner who it’s said found ducks swimming in the round dining room. At the turn of the century J C Williams arranged plant gathering trips to China. The gardens are famous for their magnolias, camellias, oaks and rhododendrons. The fifth generation of the Williams family still lives at the castle and there are a number of Trevanion family portraits still evident.
I had now witnessed almost 20 vessels moored up off the South West coastline since I started this ride and no I am not going to start recording these as well, as I think it will get stupid and almost did within the hour.
I did add one more Castle to my list (12) with St Mawes Castle. St Mawes Castle is among the best-preserved of Henry VIII's coastal artillery fortresses, and the most elaborately decorated of them all. One of the chain of forts built between 1539 and 1545 to counter an invasion threat from Catholic France and Spain, it guarded the important anchorage of Carrick Roads, sharing the task with Pendennis Castle on the other side of the Fal estuary. A charming clover-leaf shape originally surrounded by octagonal outer defences, St Mawes was designed to mount heavy 'ship-sinking' guns. But particular care was also taken with its embellishment, and it is still bedecked with carved Latin inscriptions in praise of Henry VIII and his son Edward VI. It owes its fine preservation for modern visitors to the fact that, unlike Pendennis Castle, it was little developed after its completion. Easily falling to landward attack by Civil War Parliamentarian forces in 1646, it remained neglected until partial re-arming during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Did you know that the UK has the 2nd and 3rd largest natural harbours in the World? Poole is second behind Sydney Harbour and Falmouth is the 3rd.
The A3078 is the road in and out of St Mawes and it loops around the peninsular and the town and provides some wonderful views before heading back out up to St Just-in- Roseland before turning off to King Harry’s Ferry. There has been a Ferry here since 1888 and the latest is the 7th to operate the service in this time and came into service in 2006.It has one very interesting additional feature, a full size mannequin of an old ferry man looking down river from the upper walk way to the bridge. Sorry I didn’t get a picture of that but I did get a couple of interesting shots, particularly one up stream. There were even more ships moored up even further up stream I can’t tell how many but there was at least 3 more and even one more hidden behind the car transporters, so that was a total of 8 in this small space. 3 car transporters and 5 ore carriers. So the one big boom industry right now is finding space for storing out of work ships.
After coming off the ferry on the Feock side it was down through Feock itself and then to Penpol and Devoran followed by a quick blast along the A39 before turning off to Mylor Bridge and Mylor Harbour and then into the outskirts of Falmouth at Penryn
After a quick stop on the sea front for a cup of coffee and a quick sandwich. I pushed on around the Helford River estuary, via Port Navas, Gweek, Mawgan, Helford before heading down through Saint Keverne to Coverack. It really is a beautiful part of the world however it appears all is not well behind the scenes second home owners in Helford are blocking the plans of the local council to develop a jetty for the local fishermen it appears that some 70% of the houses remain empty during the winter.
The next major stop was going to be down to The Lizard the sun was out and the weather was really very nice at this stage. I tried to get as close as possible to Britain’s Southernmost point and had to make do with the with a point next to the Suevic memorial due to the crowds, where a nice lady agreed to take my photo.
Due to the crowds and cars coming and going from the car park it was a very quick stop.
The SS Suevic story really is quite interesting and I can see why there is this reminder. The Suevic was a steamship built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast for the White Star Line. Suevic was the fifth and last of the "Jubilee Class" ocean liners built specifically to service the Liverpool – Cape Town - Sydney route. In 1907 she was shipwrecked off the south coast of England, but in the largest rescue of its kind, all passengers and crew were saved. The ship herself was deliberately broken in two, and a new bow was built on to the saved stern portion. Later serving as a Norwegian whaling factory ship carrying the name Skytteren, she was scuttled off the Swedish coast in 1942 to prevent her capture by ships of Nazi Germany.
On one 1903 voyage, a young officer named Charles Lightoller was assigned to crew Suevic as a punishment. During the voyage, he met an 18-year old woman who was returning to her home in Sydney, and after a shipboard courtship, the two were married in Sydney on 15 December 1903. Lightoller would later become the second officer on board the RMS Titanic and the most senior of her crew to survive the disaster.
White Star then ordered a new 212-foot bow section from Harland and Wolff in Belfast, which was launched head-first in October 1907. It was popularly said at the time that Suevic was the longest ship in the world, with her bow in Belfast and her stern in Southampton. The new bow was then towed to the shipyards of J. I. Thorneycroft & Co. in Southampton, where it arrived on 26 October. By mid-November, it was in position and being joined to the rest of the ship. The bow was a good fit, a testimony to the craftsmanship of the Harland and Wolff shipwrights. Ten months later, after the largest ship rebuilding effort ever undertaken at the time, on 14 January 1908, Suevic was completed and returned to service.
Heading North towards Helston, I stopped for fuel at just outside the much developed Lizard Point just after which I came to another one of the things I said I would track as I travel around the country, Airfields, as a quick reminder I am ex RAF and airplanes and airfields hold a natural attraction to me, I want to find out about their history etc, etc. so as I go around I am going to provide as much information as I can. So far I have passed by Popham Airfield, a grass strip near Basingstoke and the Royal Aircraft Establishment base at Boscombe Down and quite close to RNAS Yeolvilton, all of these on my route to and from the South West. Only Bembridge Airport on the Isle of Wight was truly on my Coast route so far. The latter is the home of the famous Britten Norman aircraft and the only airfield on the Isle of Wight.
Now it was the turn of Predannack Airfield. Building work began for an RAF advanced night fighter base to protect the nearby ports of Falmouth and Penzance during 1940 and RAF Predannack Down opened in 1941 as part of Portreath Sector. It later transferred to RAF Coastal Command until it went into care and maintenance on 1 Jun 1946. During the Second World War Coastal Command squadrons flew anti-submarine sorties into the Bay of Biscay as well as convoy support in the western English Channel using aircraft such as Bristol Beaufighters and De Havilland Mosquitoes.
After a short period of experimental use by Vickers under the supervision of Barnes Wallis around 1951, the base was taken over by the Royal Navy on 15 Dec 1958.
A World War II memorial was laid at the Predannack main gate, April 2007. It became a satellite airfield for nearby RNAS Culdrose, to handle intensive helicopter operations and as a relief landing ground. There is also a small arms range on the site and the RN Fire Fighting School moved here in 1971. And there are a number of obsolete and dummy aircraft throughout the airfield.
Writing up this part reminded me that I actually started from an old RAF base at Calshot Castle, also famous for a couple of other pieces of history "Aircraftsman Shaw", also known as T. E. Lawrence, or Lawrence of Arabia, was detached to Calshot to help with the 1929 Schneider Cup races. It is also believed that he was on his way back to Calshot from leave when he had his tragic motorcycle accident.
So that is now a total of 6, yes I am including Calshot as it was described as a ‘water aerodrome’ when it first opened.
It wasn’t long before number 7 would come up but first after turning off through Mullion I exited going out through Cury and passed Mullion Golf Club and Poldhu Cove. Famous for being the site of the first Trans-Atlantic radio transmission in 1901. In 2001 the Marconi Centre, a new museum/meeting building, was opened close to the site by the efforts of the Poldhu Amateur Radio Club, the National Trust and Marconi plc.
Coming back onto the A3083 the next airfield was in sight. RNAS Culdrose has three major roles: serving the Fleet Air Arm's front line Sea King and Merlin helicopter squadrons; providing search and rescue for the South West region; and training specialists for the Royal Navy.
It is one of only two remaining naval air stations in the UK, the other being RNAS Yeovilton. Admiralty surveyors first started preliminary surveys of land near Helston in 1942. RNAS Culdrose was commissioned as HMS Seahawk five years after these initial surveys. The station was originally designed to be a wartime airfield lasting about ten years.
The initial plans were for Culdrose to serve as a Naval Fighting School, it soon developed other roles. These varied roles included such things as the trials of the Navy's first jets, training of Airbone Early Warning crews and as a home base for carrier based aircraft. Over the years the stations emphasis changed from fixed wing aircraft to rotary wing, although its main role remains largely the same. It is one of the largest Helicopter bases in Europe and the home of 10 squadrons, which believe me is one hell of a lot. It was still only 4.00pm and I decided I wanted to ride until it was 6.00pm before making tracks for home, the idea was to get as far back as possible then try and find somewhere to stay for the night, if that plan didn’t work take a few breaks and keep going to home, which would mean getting home some time after 10.30. In, around and out of Helston and down to Porthleven for a quick loop before coming back on to the A394 towards Penzance with a quick detour to Marazion and Longrock for the following photos of St Michael’s Mount and back towards Marazion.
Once again a father and his daughter came up to talk, looked at the bike, complimented me on it and said it was nice to see the bike used for what it was designed for. I had a drink and a little walk around to get the blood flowing in my legs. The ride through Penzance was on the slow side especially when this bimbo decided she was going to slow down and stop without warning whenever she wanted to look at something, after the third time she got a full blast of my horn and a mouthful. No indication, no idea and then she saw a boat in the docks and anchored up. It wasn’t that I was too close it was the fact the car behind almost collected me as she had backed up so much traffic with her antics.
It was now a relatively slow ride through Mousehole and Lamorna before coming back on to the B3315 to Lands End some nice roads and pretty good going, I arrived at Lands End itself by about 4.45pm and was let through at no cost, no charge for bikes, I parked up by 3 other bikes and immediately headed for the toilet block, on as I got there I met up with the bikes owners, they were ‘less than young’ bikers like myself were actually on a similar venture, they had ridden over from Brighton and were now planning to ride to John O’ Groats, good luck guys, hope you made it okay.
I then walked down to the iconic sign post to try and get that essential photo, only to find a sign stating ‘Sorry had to leave early today, back in the morning’ Damn! I therefore had to settle for taking the following photo myself, better luck at John O’ Groats .
I left Land’s End at 5.15pm and headed North through Sennen turning towards St Just and Land’s End Airport (a grass strip in reality) however The Airport is home to Skybus, the scheduled airline that carries passengers and freight to the Isles of Scilly, and Westward Airways who operate the airport, flying school and scenic
.Then it wasn’t long before I was overlooking St Ives.
15 minutes later I was in the centre of St Ives and down by the harbour, I have to say St Ives was packed and it did take a while to navigate my way through the one-way system, even witnessing a young lad running down to the beach to catch the last of the waves with his board under his arm. But this was the last thing I was thinking of, I wanted to take one more photo and get off on my way through Hayle to the A30 and home.
It was now 6.15pm and I had to get going, even if I rode throughout it could possibly be 11.00pm at the earliest before I got home, on top of this I would have to stop for fuel at least twice, given the distance and the capacity if the tank, therefore it would be more like 11.30pm at the earliest. But Hey I was now on the dual carriageway and the throttle set, I won’t say how fast, somewhere between the legal limit and the admitted one of the bike, bearing in mind fuel consumption.
I reached finally arrived at Exeter Services at 8.10 on fumes, with a totally numb backside and totally knackered, I had been riding for over 11 hrs with very few stops, from previous experience it was at least 3 hrs before I got home so decided to look for somewhere to stop I had stayed at a Holiday Inn Express just up the M5 at the next Junction, in fact the one I would take for Honiton and Home so decided to try there as I had a number of privilege points owing that could cover the cost of a night’s stay.
Luckily it worked out a treat with one exception. I go the room, paid for it with my priority points, got a meal, a couple of beers a great night’s sleep but when I went to have a shower in the morning, it was broken, so I had this bizarre style of all over wash from the sink, sorry to the maid who had to clean up, but it wouldn’t have come to that if the shower had been working.
I got home just after Lunch, in time to do all my chores, of unpacking, loading the washing machine, then going off the collect my Son’s birthday present, Wow back to reality with a bump or what?
Take care and as Mick says ‘You don’t stop riding when you get old, you stop riding when you come back down to earth’
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