On the train again, heading from Cornwall up to Heathrow for the flight home, via an overnight stop near Reading to meet an old friend for a night. The train trip is a welcome few hours in a comfortable chair, to absorb the last few days of the holiday in a beautiful part of the world.

Falmouth and West Cornwall are beautiful areas, with pretty harbours, sandy beaches and graceful old towns. We stayed in Falmouth in a flat, 10 minutes easy walk from a sandy beach and slightly less to the town centre. A great base for us and so convenient, but so many times we saw beautiful villages full of rental places and empty houses.

Cornwall, along with so much of the UK, has suffered from wealthy people buying second homes, then using them as holiday rentals or just leaving them empty most of the year. This has squeezed out all the people who make a place and holiday memorable; where do the waiters and teachers and nurses and bus drivers live if they can’t afford a house in their home town ? And in the winter with no visitors, the villages and towns will be deserted with few people living and living their home. We visited Lizard, at the most southerly point of the UK mainland and, while picture postcard beautiful, it felt like a theme park or museum piece.

On the way to Falmouth, we stopped at the Eden Project, an other-worldly habitat project ( which I am sure has been in various sci-fi films) preserving and displaying a huge range of plants from around the world. It’s a fascinating educational resource as well as beautiful.

The first day was enjoying a swim in our first sandy beach, frequenting the beach bar, exploring an old castle and just watching the boats in the harbour. By lucky happenstance we were in Falmouth for the Sea Shanty festival so while busy, there were many fun groups to listen to and enjoy.

Land’s End was a great afternoon albeit the site is a fully developed tourist trap and has been for many years ! However it’s a well deserved fame as the cliffs and walls and scenery are well worth exploring and we got the perfect weather. After Lands End we ended up at a small sandy beach, to watch people and dogs in life jackets enjoy the water.

One of my best memories from this trip, and one which will stay with me, is both the show we saw at the Minack Theatre, and the place, a theatre in a tropical garden built into the side of cliffs near Land’s End. The show was a 5 person acrobatics and music production, very gritty with heartfelt monologues from each performer. Short, beautiful performance in a stunning setting as the sun was setting.

A far less touristy, but equally beautiful, place was the Lizard, the southern most point of the UK mainland. However, there are still many people from all over the UK and around the world and this is where the impact of tourism came home to me with the theme park that has been made of the local village. Saying that, we did get stuck behind cows on the road for a while so it’s not completely devoid of real people and real work.

Now it feels as if I’ve started the long trip home, after a trip around the UK which has reminded me of the beauty and variety of this country. Showing places I know to Lisa and Fiona has let me see them with fresh eyes and appreciate them anew.

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