I'm glad we killed a few miles yesterday by walking to St. Michael's Mount. It was cloudy and sultry all day though the south east wind freshened things up. Where is the south west wind which I was looking forward to being behind me from now on. The views looking back to St. Michael's Mount got better and better. As we approached Perranuthnoe Mary got very excited for we saw and then walked past the house which used to belong to her mother and where they spent August each year for family holdays. The house has been tarted up but still has the same name but the big difference was that one of the 2 fields in front had completely erroded away. There was a lot of errosion all the way today except for the granite section. In fact the rocks kept changing. At Prussia Cove we came across some lovely clifftop properties. From a man who appeared from one of them we discovered that he was one of a large group who had rented the lot for a week to celebrate a friend's wedding. We had tea at Praa Sands and then walked another 2 1/2 hours to Porthleven. One of the highlights was meeting 2 Buddhist nuns on a pilgrimage to St. Michael's Mount. They were sleeping out in bivvy bags and since they don't touch money relied on gifts of food which seemed no problem. They walked in brown habits with wide brimmed hats to cover their shaven heads. They were very friendly, young and fresh looking and said we should visit their monastries in Sussex and Berkshire. The last stage to Porthleven was very tough but we ran to catch the bus back to Penzance as we saw it sitting there about to leave. It was at this point that Mary needed to get her day ticket out of her purse. Everyone waited patiently as we went through the contents of her bag several times but the purse was not there. The bus driver gave up on the ticket and drove on. We went over our movements since Mary had paid for tea and could only hope she had left it in the cafe rather than it being somewhere on the 3 1/2 mile stretch of footpath. We got off the bus at Praa Sands and were thankfully reunited with the purse which had been carefully looked after. We had a celebratory drink and got the next bus into Penzance. We had a lovely fish and chip meal at the very expensively priced though very famous and intriguing Admiral Benbow Pub. We are still celebrating the reunion of Mary with her purse sitting outside her B&B drinking whiskey and blogging away.
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- 2009-06-26 @ 15:46:12

Ah, the Admiral Benbow Pub in Penzance. Max and I had a memorable evening meal there about two days into our Mousehole honeymoon at the beginning of March 1968 - memorable in that I spent the rest of the night throwing up after some dodgy seafood soup! I wonder how many chefs have been through their kitchens since then. I remember my Polish mother-in-law getting very excited when we told her I had been sick during our honeymoon!
We are looking forward to joining you in Devon quite soon. May the wind be ever at your back.
Love Liz