A Stonehenge Pitstop

Our time in Mike's homeland of Cornwall was drawing to a close, and by this point we were just mopping up the last couple to-do's on our list before the long drive back to London.

One such minor to-do was a visit to Healey's Cornish Cyder Farm(AKA Scrumpy Town). I've done the whole brewery/distillery/other awesome product factory visit thing quite a few times now, so that's why this was a secondary trip. It was pretty cool but as was becoming the rule, the actual tour of the place cost something. We both agreed that seeing a bunch of apple trees and such was not worth the money so we amused ourselves by wandering around a bit unattended. There was free scrumpy and cider tasting galore, which was a nice way to expand my knowledge of the stuff. I even picked up some scrumpy jam for my mom.

I like to pick up t-shirts from my travels, but only if they look cool on their own. I've suffered through vacation buyer's remorse enough times to be pretty picky about what I buy and lug home. I thought getting a t-shirt with "scrumpy" on it would be completely cool, so I looked through the gift-shop's wares searching for a good one.

This was one of the few I could find that had the magic word on it, with two country looking gents laughing and enjoying some scrumpy. Pretty killer right? I was halfway ready to buy the thing when I read the little caption: "Legless but Smiling". "Legless" in English English means drunk, but among my people it just means "he who has no legs". The fact that the men pictured are only seen from the waist up made the whole thing a little too creepy for me. I'd be doing a lot of explaining if I wore this shirt around town.

Sign for the men's bathroom.

We took one last trip to the grocery store for goodies.

I didn't know what a crumpet was before Cornwall, and I left loving the damn things.

Pork pie sounds like it should be awesome. "Cornish pasties are great", I thought, "so this is probably just like that but with pork". False. First of all, you're supposed to eat them cold. The pie consists of a delicious crust and a meaty delicious pork filling. Separating delicious filling from delicious crust is a very unfortunate layer of pork jelly. Pork jelly that's really congealed due to the fact I was eating it cold. I couldn't finish it.

A really random side note is that in one of my favorite movies ever, Snatch, there's a lot of difficult to understand Cockney Rhyming Slang. In this coded dialect porky pie= lie. Here's a clip where Bullet Tooth Tony warns "you better not be telling me porky pies".

The road from Mike's house to Stonehenge was fraught with dangers.

A very cool and everpresent feature of the Cornish countryside were the hedges. Apparently there is a difference between Cornish hedges and others because they have their own wikipedia page. They are basically stone strutctures with dirt in the center that are covered in grass and plants, and were used to dileneate field boundaries.

Driving on country roads often meant navigating through tall walls of grass.

Well, our good friend Keeble was doing some sort of landscaping for the summer, and so he sounded like he knew more about the hedges than the average dude. He said that the hedges had been certified as a protected habitat, and permission was needed from some level of government in order to destroy one. He also said the grass on them couldn't be cut until the wild flowers had all died in order to preserve hedge species.

Mini-hedges were used to separate people's yards in Mike's neighborhood.

British speed bumps are known simply as "humps". As in, "my humps, my humps my humps my humps". That little blue whirlpool sign is another warning: "Here, There Be Roundabouts".

One feature of driving on the highway in the US is you can pretty much put your brain on autopilot.  You get on the road you need to be on, set a mental timer for the next time you need to make a directional decision, and just zone out. At least that's how I do it, especially when I've done the drive lots of times before. I'm pretty much an expert on the triangle of highways between St. Louis, Edwardsville, and Springfield at this point. I feel like I do a good amount of driving. In the UK, at least In Devon and Cornwall, this is not the way the game is played. This is roundabout country.

So, roundabouts are cute.  There weren't just nice clean intersections like there are in the square cornfields of Illinois. Every time two roads decided to touch, they did it in this whirly spriral of confusion and regret. Yes, Mike had a Garmin navi computer that told us where to go in a hilarious female British robot voice. No, we didn't use it. For whatever reason he had deemed it useless and didn't trust its assistance. We didn't have some highly topical state map to guide us, either. We had this big phone book atlas of the entire country. The kind of book where when you get to the edge of the page it tells you to turn to some other random page to find yourself again. Kinda like a sick game of Choose Your Own Adventure.

Spotty signage made every roundabout encounter stressful and unpredictable. There was yelling.

Stonehenge was guarded on all sides.

When we finally reached our goal, it was really just sitting in the middle of a big field. No visitor center around or anything fancy like that in sight. What was there was a chain link fence around the perimeter of the landmark, with a little path that looped around which was full of tourists. Long story short, I didn't want to pay to get 10 feet closer, and the parking lot cost as well.  So Mike dropped me off, I went and took lots of pictures and gazed at the majestic, ancient stones I'd seen and heard so much about, and then hopped back in the car on his way back. A short bit later we bought a small carton of strawberries from a little table on the side of the otherwise deserted road, and proceeded to eat them and whip the green tops out the window as we went. It was a great day. 

Plymouth!

When I returned back from my Euro-trip in late August, I began an internship and three classes in my marketing research program. I went from Mr. Freetime to candidate for busiest man in the world overnight. That's my current life update, and also my excuse for being so slow posting everything. This trip was completely awesome and I will properly document it if it kills me.

I don't think I even realized Plymouth was in the area until we drove past it. Even then it didn't interest me until Mike explained it was that Plymouth. The one the Mayflower left from and then named a rock after. Then I was very much excited to check it out. I think Mike instantly regretted telling me. He was initially interested in doing outdoorsy things like surfing and camping. Well it was chilly and rainy a good portion of the time and we ended up doing touristy things and having a good time on the town instead. It all worked out in the end.

Our morning began at Mike's parents' lovely home. Their neighborhood was really idyllic, little streets with little shops. A really old stone church. A couple of old timey pubs. If I was rich I would have seasonal homes in the coolest places ever. This is the view from their back porch.

And then we drove to Plymouth. While Mike lives in Cornwall county, Plymouth lies just over the border in the county of Devon. I think Devonshire tea is the only instance I've heard this name before, but it was a really scenic place with a lot of fun history.

Plymouth Barbican on the waterfront was where our journey began.




The Mayflower Steps is the traditional leaving point of the Pilgrims on their most excellent voyage. The English are not a people in fear of misnomers, though, as this is likely not really the true historical spot they left from nor are there any steps. Good story anyway.






This area really identifies with its dairy products, so when I saw the classic ice cream truck I was already in. Then I saw that a little twist was available: for an additional 30p I could have my ice cream topped with clotted cream. As I mentioned a couple posts earlier, clotted cream is a butter like spread. So I'm conversing with Mike about whether getting butter smeared all over ice cream is something a human should really do, when a nearby person overhears our conversation and interjects. That nearby person just so happened to be Spangles the Clown! Spangles removes his bright red nose and begins what is hands down the most serious conversation anyone has ever had with a clown. He explains all about the ice cream, even going as far as asking the storekeep what brand of clotted cream they are serving. Talk about random.

Yes I am a weirdo, and yes I googled Spangles, and yes he has a website. It's right here. Don't judge me. His homepage informs that he possesses £10 million Public Liability Insurance. If I was a terminally ill child and had to make a wish, it would be: to be involved in some sort of incident with a British clown that causes £10 million worth of damage. That is all.

At this point I am pretty much committed. So against my better judgement I purchase a good sized ice cream cone with butter all over it.

The butter and the ice cream were nearly the same color, making each bite a surprise. It was actually quite good.


We did plenty of walking in this nice little area. There were lots of little bakeries and shops. That little smokestack looking guy in the middle is the Plymouth Gin Distillery. Heck yes I went in there.

The distillery had a tour of the facility available but it cost some forgotten amount more than free, which I disapproved of highly. It's interesting to me how decisions are made in different places about pricing. In the US a tour of a factory, brewery, or any other place where they make things you can buy is always always free in my experience. The place is going to be one big advertisement for whatever it is they are selling. Not a complaint by any means, but an observation. They did have a cool little area in the store where they talked about the history of Plymouth Gin. A couple of the stories were pretty damn awesome.

New Drinks were invented for this new style gin, notably by the British in India who created the Gin and Tonic when they mixed their daily dose of quinine, given to prevent malaria, with soda, ice, and gin. When the servants of the Raj came home they brought the taste for this exotic combination with them.

Plymouth Gin is still made at Naval Strength - 57% abv or 100 English Proof; as such because if gin is spilt on gunpowder at this strength, the powder would still light, a throwback to the days when the gin and gunpowder were stored side by side. Proof is a system of measuring alcohol invented by the Royal Navy originating from testing sailor's daily rations. A mixture of gunpowder and alcohol would be placed on deck and lit. If it burnt with a clear blue flame this was 'proof' that no water had been added. Eventually 'proof' was defined as 100 degrees.

I had no choice to but to buy some combustible Naval Strength gin. And that's the story of why you don't charge for tours.

It's hard to look tough while sipping tea and eating scones, but I did my very best. I once again had to borrow a jacket. I have some sort of mental block preventing me from packing anything other than short sleeved shirts when I travel.






Chips were an often talked about part of our collective diet. The funny part is Mike is deathly scared of eating fish, so we only ever got the chips. These were small, limp, and wet, exactly how Mike liked them. They tasted fine but an emergency trip to the restroom never seemed long afterward. Mike lamented that American style "fries" were infringing on the chip's rightful place in English society.


Said emergency "toilets". They really were "clean". I feel that in this "situation" that quotation marks are "unnecessary".






We met the parents later that evening for dinner. When I heard we were going to have Mexican food my first thoughts were not pleasant ones. It ended up being great though. I hope I'm not turning into a snob.


The local specialty drink was scrumpy. Once that word hit my lips I could not stop saying it. Scrumpy. Magical. Scrumping means to forage or steal fruit from the countryside. Mike's stepdad mentioned that he used to do it back in the day.


A sign for another local cider made by the same company.


Mike's fam has a British Bulldog. It was a great dog but the poor thing was dumb as a post. It spent so much time up at night barking at shadows and potted plants that they had to fit it with a shock collar. I don't remember his name, I alternated between calling him Scrumpy, Scrum, or the more respectful Mr. Scrumperton.