England #8 – Tintagel Castle, Cornwall (part 1)

note: this is actually a trip that my bff Kim and I took to England last May – I’ve been posting entries on PB and am copying them here. I am clearly never going to catch up, let alone finish this series.  

Two entries back is the first half of this day, in which we planned to go to Tintagel Castle and Port Isaac, but by happy accident ended in Padstow. Upon reflection I’m not sure why we decided to go on to Tintagel from Padstow instead of going to Port Isaac, since Port Isaac is between the two, but we wanted to be sure we had plenty of time to see the castle, so delayed Port Isaac till the next day. None of them were that far from where we were staying. Hahahaha! Well, in miles they weren’t; in time it took to get there, especially Port Isaac… it was not as close as we thought.

But that’s for a later entry. It took about an hour to drive from Padstow to Tintagel, but of course it was a very pretty drive. Every drive in Cornwall is a pretty drive!

Tintagel Castle is an English Heritage site – and I’ll note here that we bought their pass while we were at Tintagel, and it was well worth the cost. Especially since we were able to buy a 2-person overseas visitor pass, which didn’t require the two people to be related. The 16 day pass was $40 each, which got us in Tintagel ($10.50 a person), Stonehenge ($20 a person- quite the price hike as it was something like $11 in 2010, but they’ve made huge improvements to the area since then), and we also went to a couple of other castles that were around $6 each, AND saved nearly $10 parking at Avebury, which surprised me as I thought they were just National Trust, but they took English Heritage passes for parking too. It covers a TON of other sites too- a lot of the historical sites are free, but a lot have at least a small charge. So, well worth it!

Tintagel Castle was absolutely stunning. It’s high on the cliffs over the Bristol Channel, and the views are breathtaking. The castle is ruins, and the site has been occupied since at least the late Roman period. In the 12th century, Geoffery of Monmouth, who wrote History of the Kings of Britain named it as the place where King Arthur was conceived, and the castle itself was built in the 1230s by Earl Richard of Cornwall, Henry III’s brother, who may have picked that site specifically because of its King Arthur associations. The castle actually wasn’t heavily used, and was largely deserted by 1600 – but it was a tourist attraction by the late 1600s, which I find just fascinating. There were tourists wandering around just like us, in the 1600s!!!

We parked in the town of Tintagel, and walked to the castle. It was a beautiful walk, and not far- maybe half a mile. Poor Kim, who you’ll recall fell and really hurt her knee right before we left, was having problems with a lot of walking, though, especially up and down stairs and hills. Which are what Tintagel is comprised of. Going back to the parking area was a pretty steep uphill climb, so we rode the handy Land Rover back out, since we’d walked miles by then.

This is the view going towards the castle and visitor center- you can see a bit of the ruins there on the left-

That was a TEENY bit of the ruins, and actually there are two areas of castle ruins. It was a peninsula back when the castle was built, but part of the connecting land collapsed and now there’s an island with ruins, and more ruins on the mainland. We went to the island part, and didn’t make it to the mainland part since both involved a LOT of steep stair climbing, which was about to kill poor Kim. I think we had the best views from the part we did see, too. Here’s an interactive map!

There are many many steps:

And omg the views…

These were the ruins on the side we walked up-

Remains of iron-age houses-

The jagged stone walls are what we walked through – and beyond them you can see the other ruins that we didn’t make it to. You can’t tell here that we’re separated from them by water, but we are. You can probably tell why we decided to forgo the hike over there, though, as those are the steps poor Kim would have had to go up and down again.

Okay, I can’t believe I’m going to make this a THREE entry day… but I am. It was just so gorgeous, and I don’t want to shortchange any of it, and I don’t want to kill my readers either! So, more later.