European Bicycle Trip - Minehead to Tintagel

European Bicycle Trip - Minehead to Tintagel, Pg 4a

Lynmouth, on the Bristol Channel


*From Minehead, I crossed the Exmoor to the Atlantic. At Instow I met a
marvelous man from northern England. When I first met him, I assumed he was a
Scotsman, because he wore kilts. Apparently, kilts as a tradition are not
confined by the Scottish border. He told me it was advantageous to wear kilts
while travelling by his method- hitching- because the tourists were more
likely to pick him up.
I went down to a pub with him to forget that
I had spent a day in a thick Scottish mist while crossing the forbidding moors,
driven into my face by a strong headwind.

Had lunch the next day on the back porch of a house in Stoke. The back
porch of the house was all that there was of a real "Home-Style" Cafe. The
porch had a thick semi-transparent corrugated plastic
roof, on which a gull landed, a daily visitor, I was told, begging for
handouts. It begged by tapping on the roof with it's bill, creating quite a
racket. It was funny, because the roof was slick and tilted, and the gull
had a hard time staying on, periodically scrambling and flapping to regain
it's footing. My lunch was a meat pie from the refrigerator, heated up for my
pleasure.
I travelled down the coast road from Bude, and found it very difficult
going, due to cross-winds which were strong enough at times to force me to
walk so I wouldn't be blown over, and 1:3 hills up and down the cliffs. But
the scenery made it all worthwhile, despite off-and-on rain. I tryed to get
into the hostel at Boscastle, but no luck- and was informed Tintagel was
full, also. So I stayed at another B&B, in Trevalga, halfway between
Boscastle and Tintagel. Poured rain all the next day on my ride to the
Tavistock hostel, where I decided to call it a trip.*

Journey to Tintagel
As I got settled in my second story Bed & Breakfast room in Trevalga,
just shy of Tintagel on the Cornwall coast, I could see out the
window across the road and a field, past a barn, to a silver sliver of
sea. A man wearing what I see as your basic English sheep farmer's
clothing- coat and cap, crossed the road with his sheepdog, looking straight out of a James Herriot
recollection.



I left the B&B and headed across that field to the cliffs. The wind was 
fierce, from out over the gray and silver Atlantic. It drove scattered 
heavy gray clouds before it. It was late afternoon or early evening.  
Over the course of the evening, several of those clouds dropped 
their contents briefly but heavily on me and the cliffs, which were 
black and intricately sculpted now and for thousands and millions of 
years by rain, wind, waves and tilting titanic upheaval. Huge jagged 
slabs of rock protruded from the ocean far below.


 The sculpting was 
intense enough to cause a delicate bridge of rock in one spot, in 
another a steep chasm with a creek dropping down the cliff-face,  
revealing the millions of years of layers of stone, in ragged edges like 
a  psychotic's creation from  black Lego blocks.
I walked along the cliff, tried to conjure King Arthur or Guinevere in 
the scuttling clouds and shifting shafts of sunlight between.

Finally, 
as one brief shower passed over the green ridge to leeward, one of 
those linear shafts of light refracted through the airborne drops into a 
glorious arc of glowing colors, revealing perhaps reflection of a 
distant century's  inspiration for a leader of mythical proportions.

 Not 
one to admit to succumbing to any irrational superstitions or beliefs, 
nonetheless this struck me later as a fitting climax to my journey. The
 rest was not journey, simply travel to my home. 
	I found a fish and chips stand- a walk-up window to 
procure this simple pleasure. Vinegar for that? I had come far along 
the cliff. By the time I traced my steps back to the B&B, it was locked 
up, even though the owners had agreed to leave it open when I left. 
I found an unlocked window and slid in. 
	The next day I pedalled through a heavy downpour 
towards Plymouth, railservice to London, and wings to home.

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