I spent my final day in Cornwall in one of my favorite towns: Zennor. Home to the famous mermaid chair, Zennor is a cute little village near St Ives that boasts dramatic cliffs, ocean views, a beautiful old church, and (of course) a great pub. Usually, we hike the four miles to Zennor from St Ives via the coastal footpath, which is gorgeous. There are always raspberries and blackberries to pick along the way, and once I even encountered a couple of curious seals after wandering out on some seaside rocks. This time, though, we drove to Zennor and arrived (alas!) too late for our usual shepherd’s pie and lemonade at The Tinner’s Arms. Instead, I explored the church and graveyard, then hiked along the coastal path far enough to find a good spot to read my book.

To be honest, nothing much happened on day five. It rained all day, and we were supposed to take in an evening performance of La Traviata at the Minack Theatre, but that rained out. So I’m cheating a bit and including some leftover day four photographs. At the end of the day (after Kynance Cove) we stopped by Roskilly’s Farm to see if they had food/ice cream for us. But as it was a weekday, they had closed already. So instead we took a little walk, gushing over adorable baby ducks and marveling at giant rhubarb plants.

We spent the sunniest day of the week outdoors, on the Lizard. Mid-morning, the high tide was crashing into Mullion Cove, where I climbed a hill and made friends with a pretty bug. After that, we hit up the Lizard Pasty Shop for “Ann’s famous Cornish pasties” and ate them overlooking the ocean. We arrived at Kynance Cove just in time for low tide. All of the cliffs at Kynance are made of beautiful green and red serpentine (lizardite). I geeked out a little over this, and got strange looks from my fellow beach-goers as I leaned close to the rock walls to examine green serpentine veins. It amazed me that people were running around and climbing on these rocks without even noticing how gorgeous they were.

Before we left on our two hour drive from St Ives to Tintagel, we consulted trusty Google Maps for directions. While it did give us the most direct route, the first two miles also happened to be along a typical Cornish road. We don’t have roads like this in the U.S. so I’ll try to explain. Four inches of space on either side of the car, if you’re lucky. Beyond these eight collective inches is usually a vertical mass of assorted greenery: flowers, climbing vines, stinging nettles, grass. Behind this layer of plant matter–and I mean right behind–is a solid rock wall.

Arrived at Chysauster Ancient Village just in time for a violent rainstorm. After sheltering in what was left of the Iron Age homes, we made our way to Mousehole (yes, that Mousehole) for lunch. We finished up the day at St. Michael’s Mount, where it was very windy. My mother thought the horse’s head with a fancy filigreed bridle on display was real. It wasn’t. However, they did have a full set of samurai armor in the weapons room for no apparent reason.

In England for the next couple of weeks. More specifically, the lovely seaside town of St Ives in Cornwall for five days. Today was full of hiking coastal paths, taunting seagulls, discovering local restaurants, getting caught in sunshowers, and making friends with stray cats.

I finally got around to uploading part of the film I worked on last year for my independent study. This is just a 4-minute clip, but it will have to do for now.