Month: October 2024

Cornwall: Penzance 2 – Penzance and its Environs.

An account of my explorations of Penzance and its Environs, complete with plenty of photographs.

This is the second of three posts I shall be writing about my trip to Penzance yesterday, and deals with my time in Penzance.

EXPLORING

I began my explorations by walking along the sea front and past the harbour, before heading upwards into town. In this early part of my exploration I passed the post box which was painted gold to honour 2012 Olympic Gold medallist and Penzance native Helen Glover. I also renewed my acquaintance with the Egyptian House, a remarkable building in Penzance. After lunching in a pub I followed a different route back towards the station and the path that heads towards Marazion. This road was well chosen as it enabled me to see a statue of Penzance’s most famous son, 19th century science great Humphry Davy.

TOWARDS MARAZION

I walked along the path towards Marazion as far as a point at which there is a bridge over the railway to one side and a route down the beach on the other. I made use of both side routes, doing some photography from the bridge. I turned back at this point, deciding it was time to get a train back to Liskeard. I had enjoyed Penzance.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Here is the main gallery for this post…

The Glover gold painted post box (two pics) .
The Egyptian House – many pics.
A connection from Penzance to the legendary Robert Menzies, which extends via Lady Bradman (nee Jessie Menzies, a distant relation of Robert) to Donald Bradman.

Cornwall: Penzance 1 – The Journey There

Starting a series-within-a-series about my trip to Penzance yesterday. This post deals with the train journey there.

The weather here in Cornwall is much improved from Sunday, an improvement which started yesterday afternoon, while I was visiting Penzance. This post is the first of three I shall be producing, covering Liskeard to the just before arrival in Penzance (Penzance station will feature as the starting point of the third post, about the journey back).

A COUPLE OF MINOR IRRITATIONS

My original plan had to been to catch the 10:33 out of St Germans, but unfortunately that had to be readjusted to catching the 11:12 out of Liskeard as we did not have time to get to St Germans for the earlier train. At Liskeard I joined a small queue for the ticket office (I was third in line at that stage, with two more people having joined the queue by the time the first customer had been dealt with, a mere trifle of 17 minutes later). I still had ample time after completing my purchase of a return to Penzance (fortunately the second customer in the queue was quick, as I was) to get down to the platform and take some pictures at platform level before the train came in (Liskeard has a slightly curious layout, with platforms 1 and 2 both being approached by way of a footbridge, while platform 3 which is the terminus of a minor branch line to Looe is approached by a separate footpath and is at 90 degree angle to the other two platforms).

A SMOOTH JOURNEY

The journey from Liskeard to Penzance passed smoothly, though with the usual frustrations for a photographer in motion of failed shots due to misjudging the precise moment at which to click the shutter to capture the target. I arrived into Penzance at about 12:50 and was ready for the next stage of the day, which will covered in my next post.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Here is the picture gallery for this post…

The final approach to Penzance (station building at front of shot).