Bodmin Jail

Monday, September 4th, we left Cornwall. There were so many things I had wanted to see while here but I know we made the right decision by keeping the sabbath day holy. Another time I would love to come back and spend a week just seeing all the many cool things that Cornwall has to offer. Although we were able to see a few this day. I am going to miss the beauty of these green, green roads. However, I won't miss the skinny roads or having to pull over to allow the oncoming traffic to get by. 

On our way to city Bodmin we pulled up behind this car. Kory got a kick out of the advertisement on the back of the car. Specifically the "rubbers" part.

A few months before our big trip we stumbled upon this tv series on Amazon.

We loved it. Some of the early episodes takes place in Bodmin and the jail there. So of course I wanted to stop and see it being we were so close. 

It was so, so sad to read some of the real encounters of the people who spent time in jail.  

The consequences of stealing a hen to feed your starving family! 

7 years in jail. Wow!

Prisoners were given a bath every 3 months! 

Oh my.... the stench there must have been.  

There was a man who served a few years for selling his wife at the cattle market. 

Walkway between jail rooms.  

When mothers were sent to jail, there children went with because there was no one else to watch them. One of the games the kids played was called Toss Penny. 

This little boy was 11 years old. He was caught stealing celery of all things and was sentenced to 4 days. No one was too young or too old to serve time in the Bodmin Jail. 

It was so incredibly sad to read the accounts that were posted. Wife's who killed there husbands because they couldn't take the physical abuse anymore. Mother's who killed there babies because they were so poor she knew the baby would starve and didn't want that innocent baby to suffer. These mothers were eventually hung for murder. Father's who were caught stealing food to give to their starving families. How horrible it must have been during that time. It made me thankful for the time and era I am living in now. Thankful for a husband who works so hard to support his family. 

As we were leaving the jail we saw some landscapers out the window. At first glance I thought someone was repelling. I guess he kid of was. However he was doing it with a chain saw in one hand trimming the vegetation and a rope in the other. 

 What a job!

Sunday

Sunday September 3rd we decided to drive 20 miles to the nearest church in St. Austell, Cornwall. Best decision ever!!!. 

Sometime during the night it had started to rain. It rained and rained and rained. When we pulled into the church the parking lot was flooded so we "followed" the crowd and parked on the lawn. It was great singing the familiar hymns, hearing the familiar scriptures and listening to the testimonies being born. The church is true in the UK too. 

During testimony meeting one of the locals got up and started talking about the new "tablet" he was given at the doctors. I was so confused for a few minutes. We had seen "tablet" as a dessert on many menus. 

 In fact we had actually bought some tablet one day after lunch. It was not my favorite. Tasted like burnt caramel. It wasn't gooey and smooth like our caramel but crystalized sugar and crumbly.  

After listening for a little longer I decided the tablet given by the doctor was a new pill or prescription. Kind of funny! I loved hearing their accents! The ward we attended was the largest ward in the Plymouth Stake. Shockingly there were only 13 women in RS. And that seems to be about the norm. One of the sister missionaries and myself were the only 2 sisters born into LDS homes. Everyone else was a convert. In fact in their whole stake there are only about 30 YW both inactive and active. I was told many times how lucky I was to be living in such a righteous community and to be surrounded by so many active LDS saints. It was such a humbling experience to talk with these sweet sisters. I learned that there aren't a lot of options for the youth to date other LDS members in Cornwall. The parents here hope and pray that the spouses their children choose will have the desire to learn the gospel and eventually become members themselves. They know the chances of their children marrying in the temple are pretty slim. And so they encourage their children to get a good education so that they can go to the States and attend one of the BYU's or attend school somewhere in Utah so that they can be surrounded by other people of their faith. It is there hope and prayer they will meet their spouse at that time. Wow!!! I didn't realize how much of the gospel I take for granted. Both Kory and I left the church building feeling spiritually lifted and a little bit in awe of the Latter Day Saints. 

After church our plan was to go back to the B&B, change our clothes and then drive to a somewhat local museum and garden nearby. There were entrance fee's, parking fee's and we would be making people break the sabbath day by working. And so on our drive back home we decided that we would keep the Sabbath Day Holy. Even though we were on vacation we were going to do our best to honor the Sabbath Day. And so we drove back to our B&B, changed our clothes and when the rain stopped and sun came out we went for a walk. 

We found another little red mailbox. It wasn't too hard to do as each side of the street had these boxes spread along the rock wall surrounded by shrubbery. 

There was a castle close by and so we tried walking to it knowing it would be closed but assuming we could walk around the outside of the ruins.  

We came across another cemetery. 

The little lane we walked along. 

Such beautiful vegetation all around us. And it changes so quickly every time we went around the bend the scenery changed. 

Cornwall has a lot of sheep farmers.

After walking almost 2 miles we finally came to the entrance of the Restormel Castle. 

Unfortunately the road leading to the castle had a locked gate so we never get to see the castle but assumed it was somewhere hidden past those tall trees. 

So, so green and beautiful.

On our way home we walked a different way allowing us to walk through the town.  We came across a local church surrounded by headstones. 

The oldest head stone we found was dated 1717.

A fun sign we saw posted on the door of the store front. 

This would say No solicitors back home. 

The parking in the UK is absolutely crazy. A lot of there parking signs state you can park for one hour but then you have to leave for at least 3 hours before parking in the same lot. People must shop a lot quicker. The bottom signs states no alcohol on the streets. Awesome!

After our walk we took a nap, read a conference talk or two and then went downstairs and visited with our great hosts. It was a great relaxing day!  

Leaving London

Saturday, September 2 we left London. When I reserved our car weeks ago I put our pick up time to be that morning at 8:00 am. This pick up place was just a block or two from our b&b and we had a 5 hour drive with some sights we wanted to stop along the way and see. Stonehenge was our first stop and was about 1 1/2 hours away. We wanted to be there around 10 when they opened. 

So we got up a little early, finished packing our belongings and left. We walked down the street and arrived just before 8:00 am. There was only one person working at the counter and they were currently with a customer. The customer could NOT make up there mind. We seriously sat there for 30 min before we were helped. Being it was just going to be Kory and I, I had reserved a small 2 door car with GPS. After our 1st experience with the car in Scotland I was so thankful that I had reserved what I had. 

We soon signed the paperwork, was given the keys to our car and we loaded up. When Kory started the car he immediately noticed a flashing light on the dashboard. While he was looking that up in the car manual we found in the glove department I was trying to enter our info into the GPS. Kory learned that the flashing light meant the car was low on blue fuel. What is that? During this time I couldn't get the GPS to work either. So Kory went back inside to get some help. Kory was told blue fuel is a type of oil, not to worry about it, the light just "probably" hadn't been re-set and that the GPS didn't work because we were in a underground parking center. So we took the guys word and drove out of the underground parking lot. As soon as we got out Kory immediately pulled over so that we could get the GPS running. We tried everything!!!! Nothing worked. The GPS was NOT working. So we drove around the block and back down to the underground. We were NOT going to have a repeat of the stress we had with our first rental car. Of course there were no more small 2 door cars available. The guy couldn't get any of the handheld GPS devices to work either and none of the cars he had available had GPS! So he called to a different car rental with the same company. They had a small car with GPS for us but it would be about an hour before we could take it. We decided we'd wait and went and got breakfast. An hour later we returned but our car was still not there. The guy helping us couldn't get a hold of his fellow employee to find out how much longer it would be. We waited another 30 minutes. When the other employee still could not be reached, the guy helping us said that while we had gone to breakfast a medium sized car had been turned in with GPS. It hadn't been cleaned yet, didn't have a full tank but we could take it if we wanted. It was now about 10:30 am. We took the dang car and left! My brother Matt was also renting a car from a different company. When he got to where his pick up was the car wasn't available. He had to rent a different car and was charged twice as much! He was NOT happy. Our rent a car experience was not the best in the UK and together we used 3 different companies!

Due to some road construction we finally got out of London about 11am.     

Here are just a few pictures of things we saw along our way.

Cars pulling campers. 

A horse trailer being pulled.....

 I don't know much about trucks or hay or weight limits but Kory couldn't believe this guy! He said there was no way this would ever be o.k back home. 

We must have been in camping territory as we saw many campers being pulled. 

I liked the trailer carrying bikes on this one. 

The closer and closer we got to Stonehenge the more the traffic backed up. It also didn't help that we had construction most of the way.  We eventually came to a complete stop several times where we sat there for 5-10 min each time. We assumed there must have been an accident.  Our GPS told us at the very beginning we would arrive in Stonehenge after about 1 hour and 35 minutes. Not!!! 3 hours later we finally arrive around 2pm! There was a huge line we waited in just to get into the parking lot for Stonehenge, then the parking lot was full! As we were directed to the additional parking the man greeting us told us that they were very busy. That there was an estimate 45 min wait just to buy tickets. Once we had our tickets we could go wait in another line for up to an hour to get bused to the formations or we could walk the 1.4 miles each way. He told us if it were him he'd come back another day. Well.... buddy we don't have another day! The past 2 weeks we had walked so much everyday that I really wasn't feeling the love for walking. And my boots had broken that morning while we were walking to breakfast. I didn't want to have to unpack our bags and find my other shoes so...... we left. The excitement I had had earlier that day to see Stonehenge was long gone. We were both still feeling the frustration of that morning with the dang car, the construction, traffic and taking twice as long hadn't helped. We were both tired, hungry and just didn't care anymore. So we left! Before we got back out to the highway were I knew we would be driving by I got my camera out with my super awesome zoom lense and snapped pictures as we drove by!  

Good enough for me on this trip. When I had talked to Camille and Jonathan later that day they had also stopped. However, they had gotten there right at 10 when they had opened. It had only taken them the 1 1/2 hours to get there. They said they got stuck in the construction but traffic was not bad at all. They were able to walk right up to get there tickets and didn't have a wait to be bused out to the formations. Lucky them!!!

We still had a 3 hour drive to our bed and breakfast. This tractor was pulling a trailer with farm equipment as we passed him by. 

When we stopped for gas we picked up a package of chips. I don't particularly care for chips but oh my goodness! These were the best! Since we've been home we have searched everywhere for them and can't find them!

We took a short detour to a aviation museum that Kory really wanted to check out. We couldn't buy tickets on line and their website didn't disclose how much it would be to go inside. We were a bit disappointed to discover the fee was 20 pound each! Seriously!!!! No way.... So we left again!

I love how quickly the scenic drive can change. So green, so pretty!

Finally we arrived in Cornwall! 

 And not to much later we arrive at the Penrose B&B in Lostwithiel, Cornwall.

The past couple of nights we had stayed in some sketchy rooms whether it was in a hotel or apartment type building. This room was absolutely beautiful to our weary, traveled out bodies!

The best part was that the bed even had sheets! That's right sheets! Not one single bed that we stayed in over the past 2 weeks had a sheet. Most of the beds had a fitted sheet or a regular sheet that was tucked under the mattress. Then all that was on top of the bed was a comforter. No top sheet, no thin blanket! It's amazing what we take for granted! 

It was after 6pm. Our hosts offered to feed us dinner for 5 pounds each and so we took them up on it. Not quite ready to go to bed but so done with being in a car we walked around the block to stretch our legs. 

I love the little red mail boxes.  

This is the house across the street. Moss covered roofs.

We walked by an old overgrown cemetery. 

I thought this sign was kind of funny, it was stuck into the ground!