Awe

Not being able to go to the museum in Truro on Thursday morning, so going to Falmouth earlier than intended, has brought my outline schedule forward half a day. Yesterday I realised that if I gave up today's 'afternoon' (revised to morning) in Penzance (there'll be another chance) I'd have the full day I needed to get to the Minack Theatre.

On the early bus to Penzance I messaged tonight's Penzance hosts to see if I could dump my bag long before my check-in time so that I didn't have to haul it round all day. Yes! When I said I was going to the Minack Theatre he told me that she worked in the Global Communications Museum there. The what?

I discovered what, when my bus arrived at Porthcurno. With an hour before my Minack Theatre entrance time I went in. Wow! The things I don't know...

The museum records the laying of undersea cables from the beautiful, small, nearby sandy cove (extras 1 and 2) to Mumbai then everywhere else in the world from the 1870s. 150 years ago! How was I so ignorant of communications history that I had no idea that those visionary Victorian scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs were creating and laying thousands of miles of cable on the seabed to facilitate international telegraphy? My too-short time at the museum generated more questions than answers. How did they make those huge heavy cables? Where? How did they transport them to a small rugged valley in Cornwall? How did they join them out at sea?

I am in awe. I shall have to go back.

The Minack theatre generated a different sort of awe. An extraordinary theatre overlooking the sea, hewn into granite by one extremely determined woman, Rowena Cade, and her loyal gardeners and builders. She made costumes for the very early productions, she hacked at rock to turn the cliffs into terraced seating, she hauled sand up from the beach to mix concrete, she drew Celtic designs into the emerging steps, she started again after it was wrecked in the second world war.

I watched a group of mainly children rehearse (extra 3) for a forthcoming production in this stunning site. And being taught how to bow National Theatre style.

I am in awe. I shall have to go back.

Then I returned to the Global Communications Museum to absorb some more awe. I walked through the tunnels built in the second world war so that vital communications could be kept going in case of attack. I climbed the 124 escape steps (extra 4) up into the open air to save the workers in case they were attacked.

My host for this evening offered me a lift back to her house in Penzance but I couldn't resist the lure of the bus ambling down narrow lanes through Cornish daffodil fields on a vast detour via Lands End, where I'd never been. A mistake - it was so rainy, gloomy, windy and wet that I didn't even get out of the bus. But hey, I've been to Lands End! Kind of.

Back in Penzance, I walked to my lodgings for the night. I like this town. I shall have to come back.