Lelant Cornwall

Thursday 7th May 2009
This morning we woke at our usual time, and went down for our breakfast at 8.00am. There are only people from 3 rooms at breakfast, us and a young couple, and a man on his own. The Badger Inn doesn’t rely on accomodation for its income, the main income would be from bar sales and meals. The food is really good, and we have enjoyed ours.
Because I wanted to get some more information and photos of the church of St Uny, Lelant, Deb and I head down the road to the church, and find that it is open. There is a nice helpful man there who tells us about the church and where we will find the records – in Truro! Deb takes lots of photos of the inside of the church, and I buy some of their publications about the church, and then we go outside and take more photos. We walk over to the other small church on site, and talk to the man doing the renovations, and he tells us that he is restoring the inside back to how it looked originally – there is a lot of work to do, but it should look lovely when finished.
After visiting the church we head up the hill again to catch the 300 bus hop-on hop-off round trip from Lelant to Penzance via Lands End. The bus picks us up just up the road from the Badger Inn, and we go upstairs to sit in the open top area so that we can take photos.
We soon find that it is very cold and breezy on top, but decided to tough it out – and have on our coats, beanies and gloves. Deb also has her knee rug wrapped around her.
The ride is quite exciting and we soon find ourselves heading off down narrow roads, and hair-pin bends – not just exciting, a bit scary also.
I take many photos all along the route, and try to take a bit of video as well – not sure that it will be worth watching due to the bouncing of the bus.
The ride takes 2½ hours, and when we get to Penzance we are in need of a toilet break and somewhere to warm up – so we head up the main street of Penzance, and find a nice warm restaurant for lunch.
After lunch we spend a little time looking around, and then head back to the bus terminal to catch a bus back to Lelant.
Back at the Inn, we have a rest before dinner – tonight we decide to just have starters and desert – a good choice, then off upstairs to watch TV – read our books, and sleep. Downstairs it is quiz night at the Inn and the place is full of people.

Friday 8th May 2009
The usual morning – breakfast at 8.00 – the owner of the Inn told us last night that he would be away on holidays from today and his son would be running the show. We arranged with him for his son to carry our bags down early Saturday morning as we have to catch a train to Southampton at 6.58am and will need to leave around 6.30am – we hope that we can get a taxi to turn up and convey us to the train station at St. Erth.
After breakfast we take the little train that goes around the coast from St Erth to St Ives and return the same way. The views of the coast on this ride are really quite beautiful, and I take photos and video to record the event.
After our return to St. Erth we transfer to another train for the trip to Truro. We plan to do some family research at the Records Centre there.
The train ride is really quite good – only 4 stops and about 30 minutes ride. When we get to Truro we have no idea where the Records Centre might be located so ask a taxi driver and he told us that it was just up the road about 100 yards – so off we went in search for the office. We quickly located it, and were told that we should have booked an appointment first – but – we were lucky, as many people who had booked had not shown up, so we were allowed in to do some research.
I had found a clue for a marriage date for my GG grandparents, and a Parish – so Deb started searching for that first while I started on another line.
Would you believe we spent only 3 hours at the centre and found and got copies of 2 records – that marriage certificate, and another one for the parents of my GGG grandmother as well as her baptismal date and details. Talk about lucky – hopefully we will be as successful in the Isle of Wight.
We left the Record Centre at 2.00pm and headed back to the railway where we picked up some sandwiches and coffee for lunch and caught the next train back to St Erth.
We had more luck when we arrived, as we were able to share a taxi back to Lelant, where we had a rest, wrote up the blog, and started packing to be ready to leave in the morning. I arranged a taxi for 6.20am – so hopefully it will come – not sure how to come up with a contingent plan if it doesn’t arrive as we can’t walk and drag our cases to St Erth – and there are no buses !!