Chuffin Cornwall

Cooo-eeee, Coooo-eeee, I'm back. Thanks for popping in :-)


Just spent three days in a good food/friend/wine induced semi-coma in the Cornish countryside. Better still, I've managed to stand, Lazarus like, from my arm chair and totter along like...like...well, like any normal person. No cowboy hobbles, yeeee haaaaa. Stretched me leg, knee pain gone and I'm back on form. My body IS a temple.


What've I been up to? Well, walking, eating, relaxing, talking, walking, relaxing, eating, talking. Roughly.

And, guess what? I saw a Chough (pronounce Chuff). Member of the crow family, pretty rare down here with only five pairs alive and pecking!
Me and Mrs Daddy-O were wandering along, minding our own business, when a Twitcher appeared before us on the path. 'Psssst, pssssst,' he said, glancing round and beckoning conspiratorially with a rhythmic gesticulation....ok, so he wasn't and he didn't... he was just stood there watching his choughs and he decided to share the moment with us, two dafties with not a clue which bird we might be looking at.


After pointing out the chough (red beak, red legs, looks like a crow) he found a common white-throated warbler (small, noisy, white throat, brown bits) in a bush and showed us that. He also explained about chough life and identified a fulmar (seagull with grey bits) and a kestral (russet, hovers). He was on chough watch. Me n Mrs D-O felt VERY honoured to have been selected to share his chough watch (round the clock when eggs are in nest, to prevent theft) and were even more excited when one landed about 5m away and started feeding. We were twitchin' with the best of them!

A Chough.

Well chuffed.

Not at all chuffed.

Too much chuffin wind.

Chaffinch.

So, back to Cornwall, I've spent the last few days with Daddy-O and Mrs Daddy-O, who've given me a brilliant tour of Cornwall, we visited some great places and ate some fab food. Had clotted cream and cakes galore and fish*. horrah!

* Not together.

Cornish facts:

The name "Cornwall" comes from Cornovii, meaning hill dwellers, and Waelas, meaning strangers.

The Cornish language gained official UK Government recognition in 2002 and funding in 2005.

D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda were expelled from Cornwall. He wrote much of Women in Love there. They first stayed in the local pub, then rented a cottage in spite of the writer’s instant and ignorant loathing for the Cornish. Their noisy rows, local suspicions about Frieda (cousin to German flying-ace von Richthofen) which included a belief that her red underwear drying on the line was signalling to U-Boats, (and doubtless Lawrence’s nasty beard) led the local rozzers to order them out in 1917.

In March 2004 a Morgan Stanley Bank survey showed that 44% of the inhabitants of Cornwall believe themselves to be Cornish rather than British or English.


The tin miners of Cornwall once traded with the Phoenicians and at this time Cornwall was known as The Cassiterides or The Tin Islands.
The Cornish language is closely related to that of Wales and Brittany.

Gorgeous

Charming.

Rugged.

Handsome.

Well-formed.

Cute.

Wooden.

What a man.

Then today I returned to Bristol. So, as of tmw, I'm back on the bike, exploring the local high-ways and by-ways. Have a new map and a little plan to meet up with Journo-Lad who should be joining me on his bike, cape flying in the breeze, no doubt. In the meantime I shall leave you with further Cornish spectacles:

Portscotho

St Mawes.

St Anthony's

Spot the foghorn.

Pub thatch.