Monday 17th May, a visit to Penryn Castle on the mainland

It rained again during the night, and dawned bright and sunny (it can keep doing that for as long as it likes!) and it looked reasonable rather than sunny over the mainland, so we decided to visit Penryn Castle, which was originally a fortified medieaval manor house, and on the way we stopped in the lay-by overlooking the Mena Strait
I was very surprised to see a small ship travelling along the strait against the tide, as I didn't even know that they did so as the current is so strong, it was certainly moving at a snail's pace.

For a change we followed a mowed path through the lawn in front of the castle so that we were further away from it and able to get more "in shot"
This gave us some different views than we had had before and as the grass was very short, it was a pleasant walk between the trees
And then we decided to have lunch in the Cafe before doing the grand tour: pat ordered soup and I opted for "Toad in the hole" this "Castle Sized" plateful was the result, when it came I wondered whether I was making a big mistake.
It was Pats turn to get her revenge for those photos I take of her tucking into scones, etc., so here I am about to do battle with the culinary monster!

It turned out to be delicious and eventually I managed to eat everything apart from a small piece of Broccolli.

After such a feed we felt better able to tackle the walled garden than the many staircases of the Castle, especially as Pat can only walk a limited distance due to Arthritis.

This then is the view as you enter the walled garden at the top.

Pat tells me that this beauty is a Camelia (not that I would know if it wasn't you understand)

It was bigger than my hand and smelled rather nice.

The Magnolias were getting past their best, but I did find one that yielded a good close up was the flower was wide open
There were many colourful bushes, despite it being so early in the season, these were very small flowers and on the same bush some were more red and others more purple, pat thinks these are Azaleas?
They were certainly attracting plenty of bees like this quite large one, and at a convenient height to be photographed, too

In among the trees there were these charming "White Bells?" well, they sure looked like blue bells without the blue to me.
By now pat had walked as far as she could so I was despatched to bring the car up the Disabled access road to collect her and as I walked back to the car park I took this shot, just look at the height of those Rhododendrons!
It just started to spot with rain as we left the grounds, though it didn't amount to much,

we had had a really enjoyable visit.