Our hostess this morning described the commercial aspects of Lands End as "kiss me quick" then look the other way and that really says it all for Lands End - I call the atmosphere at the actual site as naff.
We parked at Sennen Cove and walked up and along the coast the mile or so to Lands End - the morning was glorious, the sea was as flat as and the cliff top views were outstanding ...
... but Lands End itself was somewhat disappointing as it had been over commercialised and turned into a theme park.
If you wanted to have your photo taken in front of the signpost, which we were told had been moved closer to the commercial area, then you had to pay an operator for the privilege and he put your personalised message on the post.
Nevertheless as proof of us being there I took one of Sherry with the signpost in the background
Lands End is the westernmost point in the 🇬🇧 and we think that that point and where the signpost should be is in front of the "The First and the Last" house which is situated around 200m further north of where the above photo was taken
The above photo is taken from the commercialised area and looks over to the house.
Having returned to the car we then set the GPS for Porthcurno which is on the southern coast and home to the Minack Theatre - a simply stunning open air theatre set into the cliff face
The history of the theatre is fascinating and is best told by Wikipedia
The theatre was the brainchild of Rowena Cade, who moved to Cornwall after the First World War and built a house for herself and her mother on land at Minack Point for £100. Her sister the feminist dystopian author Katharine Burdekin and her partner lived with them from the 1920s.
In 1929, a local village group of players had staged Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in a nearby meadow at Crean, repeating the production the next year. They decided that their next production would be The Tempest and Miss Cade offered the garden of her house as a suitable location, as it was beside the sea. Miss Cade and her gardener, Billy Rawlings, made a terrace and rough seating, hauling materials down from the house or up via the winding path from the beach below. In 1932, The Tempest was performed with the sea as a dramatic backdrop, to great success. Miss Cade resolved to improve the theatre, working over the course of the winter months each year throughout her life (with the help of Billy Rawlings and Charles Angove) so that others might perform each summer.
Every week during the season a different theatre company puts on a performance (usually Shakespeare) and performances are invariably sold out.
It would be amazing even for a non-lover of Shakespeare to attend a show with the sea and coastline as the backdrop, though I can imagine that there have been many an occasion when the wind has been howling and the audience has been quite uncomfortable.
Driving the 6 or so miles from Porthcurno along typical narrow country lanes we arrived at Penzance, another fishing village but this time on the south coast.
The drive was more impressive than the town, the pirates must have been out on a raid somewhere, but we did get to have a chat with a guy who has lived in the area for many years but who was originally from Auckland - left on his OE, met and married a Brit and the rest is history!
An enjoyable day!
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