Apart from the fact that I woke up feeling like death warmed up we had a reasonably leisurely start to the day. 7.30 am for breakfast and an 8.30 am depart. Not too bad as we are doing another night in the same hotel. The sun is shining but there is a bit of a breeze, all good for helping blow the cobwebs out and making me feel like I might survive. The bus takes out down through the town, rows of quaint housing down the Mayflower steps. We board a local ferry that takes us cruising up the river Tamar to Saltash. An interesting cruise pasts some incredible sights, a huge old castle/fort, where the cannon were pointing back into the village, to keep order on the community. This area is an historic naval port, which is also still functioning, the shores were lined with naval ships, with cannons armed and sailors on board, numerous submarines moored on the banks. The skipper provided a great commentary

The coach meet us at the final destination and we were soon on our way around he Cornish peninsula to St Ives. This quaint little beach colony is set on a hill and is made up of small cobbled road and walkways down to the curved beach walkways and harbour. Speckled with little café and bars, and lots of art gallery's it was certainly a place you could spend a lot of time in. David and I wandered aimlessly down to the beach, just following our noses and heading down the steep streets till we found a nice little café to watch the world go by.

We decided to wander further along, and then took a left hand lane and started heading up the hill towards the direction that we had come, figuring that we would come on one of the forks in the road that we had passed early. We came to corner from which we could see a nice view of the water, I wandered over as I was intrigued as the cliffs looked quite different to what we had been looking at. We were both mystified, we were looking out at completely different view. This was a sandy beach with swimmers and rock cliffed restaurants. We had no idea how we could have come to something so different in the few metres we had walked. Keep in mind that we really weren't walking far as every step that David takes really hurts him. It was one of those moments when we both felt like we had been abducted by aliens and set down somewhere else. We then had no idea where we were and no idea how we would ever find the local bus that we needed to catch to get back to the coach. We started asking directions, and the instructions didn't help at all!> We decided to head downhill at each fork, and after a few minutes we ended up back on the harbour side, at the furthest end from where we had started. We still need to get hold of a map to try and work out what in the world we had done… the whole thing seemed completely weird. It was however, comforting that when we got back on the coach to find that we weren't the only ones that had got lost!

The coach then meandered around the Cornish countryside and we took a side trip to see St Michaels Mount near Penzance. Pretty amazing…. Huge castle/fort on an island with a causeway. Nice side trip

Dinner involved a passenger ferry trip across the river to Cornwell. A buffet with beef and Yorkshire pudding, along with plenty of other trimmings was on offer in the local pub on the waterfront. Sat with some great people and made some more friends. The coach picked us up and we drove the coast line of forgotten Cornwell. (the great thing here is that the sun doesn't set till late in the night - so plenty of time for seeing the sights after a meal). The cliff lines were rugged and exciting, the coach then boarded the chain ferry and we got pulled back to the other side of the harbour

Getting back to our room proved rather challenging for there. To start with there were roadworks with a detour. The coach took the detour but found that it missed our hotel, so we turned around and tried coming in from the other direction, but no, that detour also missed our hotel, after numerous calls and turning down small lanes, (turning around in a coach our size is no small feat) the driver decided to screw it all, and he then drove down the wrong hand side lane up to the hotel, the joke was that there were a number of cars that also followed suit. Crazy - the fact that both lanes were shut just for roadworks!! There really was no other way to get in.

It didn't end there for us however, our room key didn't work. After a few electronic key changed and getting hotel reception involved, they worked out the battery in the door had died and that involved getting maintenance in. We finally got into our room at 11am… instead of the original tour planned return of 9.30pm. Grr… the only positive was that we got brought a complimentary glass of baileys to go to sleep on J