There and back again
Aug. 27th, 2018 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torkellSo on Sunday I got back from a week-long holiday in Cornwall, wherein I managed to see and do quite a bit. It's amazing how many places one can visit if one actually gets up early enough :)
Win:
Shiny new smartphone! The battery life on Mercury (a Nokia 6210 Navigator) and lack of performance reached the point where I was sufficiently annoyed to Just Upgrade It, and on the Saturday before leaving I went and got a shiny new Sony Xperia XZ1 (which I've named Theia - I tend towards Greek mythology for naming my computers)! It proved its worth almost immediately when an accident closed the A35 and I used Google Maps to find an alternative route - while I could have achieved that with the mapping on Mercury, or with a paper map, just being able to plonk a destination into the phone was incredibly convenient. I'm not a complete convert to satnav - Google Maps doesn't quite get double-mini-roundabouts and seems to delight in picking awkward back roads to save maybe 30 seconds - but it's telling that I did the rest of the trip on satnav despite having printed out routes beforehand.
Staying in a castle! Yes, I stayed at the Custodian's House at Pendennis Castle again, because why wouldn't you when you get your very own key to the gatehouse! On the one hand I should search for new places, but on the other hand the first entry in the current guest book did begin "this is our 4th visit..."
The weather - it held for pretty much the entire week, apart from Friday which was blustery and Sunday which was just wet.
All the places I did visit - Falmouth, Pendennis, St Mawes, Trelissick, Glendurgan, Tintagel, Saltash, Cawsand.
Fail:
Hemera (my laptop) finally failing hard (terminal GPU failure), on the first day. Hence why there were no on-holiday blogs, because I'd have to write them up on Theia and I much prefer having a real keyboard for long-form blogging. This was doubly annoying as I also intended to use the laptop to copy photos off of the camera, but fortunately I'd brought a large enough memory card that that didn't really matter.
All the places I didn't visit - Truro, St. Ives, Porthcurno, Eden Project to name a few. Despite having the car I stayed fairly local to Falmouth, though I did achieve a trip out to Tintagel on the way to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pleaseremove's.
Meh:
Driving. On the one hand having a car was very handy for a couple of trips that I couldn't have done with public transport... on the other hand the journey up was horrendous, and the journey back just long. Train does have an enormous advantage in that I can just disappear into a book/film/3DS/whatever and not have to continuously pay attention (and there's the view from the Dawlish sea wall as well). That said the MiTo turns out to be quite comfortable for long journeys and did the 500+ mile round trip with ease. Would I drive it again - depends on what I plan to do. For a trip topleaseremove the train makes more sense, for heading deeper into Cornwall the car gives me more options.
Win:
Shiny new smartphone! The battery life on Mercury (a Nokia 6210 Navigator) and lack of performance reached the point where I was sufficiently annoyed to Just Upgrade It, and on the Saturday before leaving I went and got a shiny new Sony Xperia XZ1 (which I've named Theia - I tend towards Greek mythology for naming my computers)! It proved its worth almost immediately when an accident closed the A35 and I used Google Maps to find an alternative route - while I could have achieved that with the mapping on Mercury, or with a paper map, just being able to plonk a destination into the phone was incredibly convenient. I'm not a complete convert to satnav - Google Maps doesn't quite get double-mini-roundabouts and seems to delight in picking awkward back roads to save maybe 30 seconds - but it's telling that I did the rest of the trip on satnav despite having printed out routes beforehand.
Staying in a castle! Yes, I stayed at the Custodian's House at Pendennis Castle again, because why wouldn't you when you get your very own key to the gatehouse! On the one hand I should search for new places, but on the other hand the first entry in the current guest book did begin "this is our 4th visit..."
The weather - it held for pretty much the entire week, apart from Friday which was blustery and Sunday which was just wet.
All the places I did visit - Falmouth, Pendennis, St Mawes, Trelissick, Glendurgan, Tintagel, Saltash, Cawsand.
Fail:
Hemera (my laptop) finally failing hard (terminal GPU failure), on the first day. Hence why there were no on-holiday blogs, because I'd have to write them up on Theia and I much prefer having a real keyboard for long-form blogging. This was doubly annoying as I also intended to use the laptop to copy photos off of the camera, but fortunately I'd brought a large enough memory card that that didn't really matter.
All the places I didn't visit - Truro, St. Ives, Porthcurno, Eden Project to name a few. Despite having the car I stayed fairly local to Falmouth, though I did achieve a trip out to Tintagel on the way to
pleaseremove's.Meh:
Driving. On the one hand having a car was very handy for a couple of trips that I couldn't have done with public transport... on the other hand the journey up was horrendous, and the journey back just long. Train does have an enormous advantage in that I can just disappear into a book/film/3DS/whatever and not have to continuously pay attention (and there's the view from the Dawlish sea wall as well). That said the MiTo turns out to be quite comfortable for long journeys and did the 500+ mile round trip with ease. Would I drive it again - depends on what I plan to do. For a trip to
pleaseremove the train makes more sense, for heading deeper into Cornwall the car gives me more options.
